Why senator says US should spy more on China’s companies

Go back a decade and most Americans had never heard of Huawei. Today, the Chinese telecommunications giant is a symbol of how quickly China can dominate the strategic technology sector and create new national security and market threats to the US government and industry in the process.

Democratic Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, the top Democrat on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, is now worried about another Chinese company that he predicts will eclipse Huawei in both scale and results: BGI. It’s not building base stations or smartphones for the 5G era. Collecting DNA.

“If Huawei was big, BGI would be even bigger,” Warner said Wednesday at the CNBC CFO Council Summit in Washington, D.C.

BGI is one of the world’s largest genomics companies. It operates DNA sequencing laboratories in China and abroad. It processes genetic data for hospitals, pharmaceutical companies and researchers in dozens of countries. a new report Emerging Biotechnology by the National Security Commission.

The company started as the Beijing Genomics Institute, a Beijing-based research organization closely linked to China’s national genome projects. It later grew into a global business powerhouse, selling DNA sequencing, prenatal testing, cancer screening and large-scale population genetic analysis. NBC News report.

Through subsidiaries, BGI It says it operates in the US, Europe and Japan. He helped establish national genetic databases in many countries and pandemic testing systems.

U.S. intelligence officials believe its global footprint gives BGI access to one of the largest collections of genetic data in the world. Lawmakers have warned that genetic data is not just medical information. On a large scale, it becomes a strategic asset that promotes the “DNA arms race.” a Washington Post report. DNA profiles can reveal ancestry, physical characteristics, disease risk and family relationships, and when combined with artificial intelligence, the data could also be used for surveillance, tracking and long-term biological studies tied to national security, the Washington Post reports.

At this week’s CNBC event, Warner continued to push for more focus on BGI. “They’re hoovering up DNA data,” Warner said. “We should all be concerned about this level of experimentation on humans and theft of intellectual property.”

Congressional investigators had previously warned that BGI maintained close ties to the Chinese Communist Party and the Chinese military, according to a report from the House of Representatives. Select CCP Committee. They argue that China makes little distinction between commercial data and state security needs.

‘Super soldier’ ​​fear

One of the biggest fears tied to BGI and China’s broader biotechnology push is the possibility of a genetically enhanced soldier. US officials have openly claimed that China is researching human performance enhancement and military biotechnology. U.S. defense analysts say China’s research includes population DNA collection, military databases and artificial intelligence-driven human performance modeling. Wall Street Journal column It was written by US Central Intelligence Agency Director John Ratcliffe in 2020, when he was Director of National Intelligence during President Trump’s first term.

Warner addressed those concerns directly this week.

“This is very scary,” Warner said.

Warner described China as a great nation, a major competitor, and a former telecom executive (he co-founded Nextel). What Huawei can achieve Producing good products at cheap prices before U.S. and Western competitors are prepared is a cautionary tale.

The BGI story sounds disturbingly familiar to Warner.

“When you go back eight or nine years in time, most people had never heard of Huawei,” he said.

huawei rose By combining massive government support, global market reach and aggressive pricing, it has not only surpassed Western firms in scale and cost, but also positioned itself within the world’s telecommunications infrastructure before governments realized the security implications. Huawei was first placed on the US trade blacklist in 2019; In this blacklist, US companies were prohibited from selling some technologies to the Chinese technology giant due to national security concerns. Chip restrictions on Huawei have become even stricter since then.

However, Warner said at the time when the USA was taking action to restrict Huawei: “[we started to] Get lost a little.”

Much of the 5G backbone was already shaped by Chinese technology.

“We’ve seen in different areas how they’re running the game of overcapacity, price manipulation, putting people out of work; they’re going to continue to run that game,” Michigan congressman John Moolenaar, the Republican chairman of the House committee of the Chinese Communist Party, said during a separate interview with Javers at the CNBC CFO Council Summit. “We want to be friends with China, but China is not our friend. They are our most important enemy,” he added.

The Soviet Union was a military and ideological rival, but Warner says China is a different kind of rival in technology, from telecoms to 5G, artificial intelligence, quantum computing and biotechnology.

Warner now sees BGI following a similar model in biotech. like huawei BGI scaled quickly With state support. Washington DC-based think tank Foundation for Defense of Democracies Earlier this year, he called on lawmakers from both parties to restrict BGI’s access to U.S. institutions.

Congress is trying to pass various versions of the BIOSECURE Act, which would limit the ability of Chinese biotech firms to operate in the United States. Associated PressBut some medical experts in the U.S. say they risk losing support for basic research on key medical targets. BGI told the AP that the bill “is a misleading signal targeting companies under the premise of national security.” “We strictly comply with the rules and laws and do not have access to Americans’ personal data in any of our business.”

US intelligence progressed too slowly, disrupting key espionage alliances

Warner said the U.S. intelligence apparatus moved too slowly to recognize the biotechnology threat. He says intelligence agencies focus too much on foreign governments and militaries, with less attention paid to commercial technology sectors. But in a world where technological superiority is national security, Warner says more of our intelligence efforts must reflect that shift.

It is only in the last two to three years that the United States has seriously expanded its espionage activities into artificial intelligence, semiconductors and biotechnology, he says. Warner says we need a more “advanced approach” in this area, citing as a recent example how China’s largest chipmaker, SMIC, stunned US officials by producing a six-nanometer chip despite sweeping US export controls. This breakthrough showed that Washington had underestimated both China’s technical capabilities and its ability to overcome restrictions. “We were caught off guard by SMIC’s six-nanometer chip,” Warner said.

Warner also worries that tracking China’s rise in technology requires the kind of deep cooperation with U.S. allies that the Trump administration has squandered; for example, the global intelligence sharing network “Five Eyes” alliance.

Those relations are currently strained, and key partners including the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and France have publicly stated that they are reluctant to share intelligence with the United States, Warner said. “They think we might be politicizing the intelligence product, and that’s not good news for America,” Warner said.

Underlying their concerns about technology competition with China in areas such as artificial intelligence and biotechnology is that the United States has abandoned global leadership in setting standards. For decades, the United States has shaped the rules for wireless networks, satellites and internet infrastructure. That dominance has helped Americans lead global markets, but China is now aggressively positioning itself as the international standard-setter, Warner said.

Warner described the US role in international institutions as one of the “secret sauces” in the era of American dominance of the global economy and technology; this allowed the United States to benefit from innovations occurring around the world “even if they did not originate in America.”

Influencing standards and protocols across technology domains is critical not only to maintain competitive advantage but also to establish ethical boundaries. “Will it be us or the Chinese?” Warner said. “The Chinese are clearly coming with a less humanistic approach. It has been effective in many areas. We see this in standard-setting institutions. China is flooding the region with large numbers of engineers, almost buying votes. We need to reconnect with American business and government,” he said.