A group of U.S. senators is asking the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) why it is working with a Chinese biotech firm and warning that doing so is giving China a competitive edge and putting U.S. security at risk.
BGI, the Chinese biotech firm in question, has already been blacklisted by both the Department of Defense and the Commerce Department for its criminal business practices and its links to the Chinese military, but the USDA continues to work with the company on the Earth BioGenome Project, which is an effort to map the genomes of over 1.5 million species to catalog life on earth.
The USDA has awarded this Chinese company $1 million in U.S. tax dollars for its part in this decade-long project. BGI also holds leadership positions on four of the project’s nine subcommittees. And the most concerning leadership position it holds is on the subcommittee of IT and Informatics — meaning it has control on the key systems of the whole project.
The senators, including Roger Marshall of Kansas, Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, Marco Rubio of Florida, and Susan Collins of Maine, have sent a letter to the USDA asking the department if it has taken adequate measures to safeguard important data to prevent China from weaponizing the information.
“U.S. Senator Roger Marshall, M.D. led a letter to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) requesting information about their relationship with BGI, a genomic data collection firm deemed by the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) to be linked to China’s People’s Liberation Army. Since 2018, USDA has awarded over $1 million to BGI in research grants through collaboration with its Agriculture Research Service (ARS),” the senator wrote in a Tuesday press release.
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“In light of the access by BGI and EBP to sensitive American DNA and federal government funding, Senator Marshall is asking USDA about precautions taken to protect this information. Senators Marsha Blackburn, Marco Rubio, and Susan Collins cosigned Senator Marshall’s letter to the USDA,” Marshall added.
Marshall described the Earth BioGenome Project as “an effort that will yield millions of powerful new solutions to agriculture’s challenges” as the world moves forward into the challenges of the future.
But the link to the Chinese company that is so closely linked to the Chinese military is concerning.
“As the agency’s chief research division, USDA-ARS must be extra vigilant in safeguarding U.S.-funded research that has potential to be weaponized against the U.S., especially when projects involve countries of concern, like China. Research partners and contracts must be thoroughly vetted to identify potential threats to U.S. security whenever genomic modification research or dual use research of concern (DURC) is involved,” the senators wrote.
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Marshall spoke to the Epoch Times about his letter, and noted, “Our government must take extreme caution to prevent sponsoring research that gives any sensitive materials and intellectual property to the Chinese Communist Party.”
The senator added that the Chinese government could use this genetic information to create bio-weapons that threaten not just the U.S., but all life on earth, and they warn that China is “weaponizing biotech in preparation for strategic advantage in a new domain of biological warfare.”
Epoch also noted that BGI has been blacklisted for its part in aiding the Chinese military.
“Last year, the Department of Defense placed the firm on a sanction list for supporting the ‘modernization goals of the People’s Liberation Army,’ and the Department of Commerce imposed trade restrictions on it in March. Two of its affiliates are also put on the Commerce Department’s blacklist in 2022 for their role in ‘conducting genetic analyses used to further the repression of Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities.’”
China is one of the most dangerous practitioners of intellectual espionage in the world, stealing science and technology from any company or country foolish enough to allow Chinese companies to become integral parts of their research and manufacturing process. And every piece of information they steal ends up benefiting the Chinese military and is weaponized for use against China’s enemies — which happens to be the whole world.
Indeed, China itself has extremely strict laws to prevent dissemination of data outside China, meaning that the data in this USDA genome project could conceivably get sucked up by the Chinese company, then locked away by the Chinese government, thereby preventing the USDA from having access to its own data.
The senators’ letter even presents an example of how dangerous China’s refusal to share data can be for the rest of the world.
“Following the COVID-19 outbreak, the PRC [People’s Republic of China] blocked access to patient and virus samples that could assist in our investigation into the origins of the pandemic, despite data-sharing agreements and multiple-year collaborations between the PRC and U.S. public health agencies and universities,” their letter states.
“Even if USDA stopped paying BGI directly, through partnering with BGI and sharing U.S. intellectual property, the collaboration could endanger our security by giving China a strategic competitive edge to hold and store data that U.S. scientists have worked hard to develop.”
Ultimately, the senators want to know how secure the data is that is being collected by the USDA’s genome project and if there are any safeguards preventing the Chinese military from stealing it all and preventing American scientists from accessing it.
They also want to know if the USDA is barring China from gaining information on dangerous pathogens that can be used as bioweapons.
The truth is, the U.S. government should not be working with any Chinese firm or government entity on risky research projects because no Chinese company is independent from the Chinese Communist Party and its military. So, everything that is created with such collaborations is a threat and goes to strengthen the belligerence of the Chinese war machine.
