Paul Dabbar, undersecretary of energy for science during the Trump administration, writing in the Wall Street Journal last week:
Around 2017, the Energy Department’s national laboratories started having significant concerns about biosecurity with regard to China. A Chinese general who was head of the National Defense University in Beijing publicly declared an interest in using gene sequencing and editing to develop pathogenic bioweapons that would target specific ethnic groups, which may be the most evil idea I have ever encountered. Taking note, the Commerce Department ordered export restrictions of potentially dangerous biotechnology to China. But the NIH and NIAID refused to believe that there was any risk involved in collaborating with Chinese labs. Their indiscriminate commitment to open science blinds them to threats, even when a country like China is open about its intentions.
The Chinese general that Dabbar is referring to is Zhang Shibo:
Biology is among seven “new domains of warfare” discussed in a 2017 book by Zhang Shibo (张仕波), a retired general and former president of the National Defense University, who concludes: “Modern biotechnology development is gradually showing strong signs characteristic of an offensive capability,” including the possibility that “specific ethnic genetic attacks” (特定种族基因攻击) could be employed.
The 2017 edition of Science of Military Strategy (战略学), a textbook published by the PLA’s National Defense University that is considered to be relatively authoritative, debuted a section about biology as a domain of military struggle, similarly mentioning the potential for new kinds of biological warfare to include “specific ethnic genetic attacks.”
Michael Knutzen, a biosecurity specialist who is former Army intelligence and a Presidential Management Fellow at the Department of Homeland Security, wrote at the U.S. Naval Institute:
Some researchers (including Lieutenant General Zhang Shibo, former president of the PLA National Defense University) foresee the possibility of “specific ethnic genetic attacks” on whole racial or ethnic groups, although there remain political and scientific obstacles at present.12 A unique person with unique genes is easier to target than population-level differences in the nearer term. SBWs with high levels of asymptomatic transmission could pass from host-to-host through the human domain, until reaching a vulnerable target or targets possessing the “right” genes. (Procuring a president or admiral’s DNA is easy. Simply invite the target to dinner at a venue you control.)
And China may already have hacked from medical records or purchased the genetic information of millions of ordinary Americans through genealogical companies such as 23andme.13 Bill Evanina, former director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center, warned against Beijing Genomics Institute–linked COVID-19 tests, noting: “Foreign powers can collect, store and exploit biometric information from COVID tests.”
Potential SBW effects include not only incapacitation and death, but also boutique outcomes. Colonel Guo emphasizes that “learning, memorizing . . . and even the ‘bellicose character’ can be injured precisely without a threat to life.” Making an adversary’s leader docile (or erratic, confused, or hyper-aggressive) might be as effective as a kinetic decapitation strike. Further, the ability to reach and nonlethally modify a target creates opportunities for coercion. A compellent threat creates conditions to force change in an adversary’s behavior. The ability to remotely hold a person’s biology hostage—through degenerative, frustrating, or simply embarrassing symptoms—but promising a personal cure (or enhancement) could create enormous strategic leverage.
In a testament to the wonders of the modern world, you can find Zhang Shibo’s book discussing “specific ethnic genetic attacks” on Amazon, or at least you could until it sold out.
My novel from late 2020, Hunting Four Horsemen, features a mercenary virologist calling himself “Hell-Summoner,” who claims to be able to engineer a virus to target particular genes, and is offering his services to the highest bidder – set in the immediate aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic, when the world is still reeling from the consequences of that virus. Mild spoiler: Our protagonists conclude that the Chinese government is an unlikely client of Hell-Summoner, as the regime in Beijing already has more than enough research facilities, expertise, equipment, and ability to engineer ethnic bioweapons themselves.
Of course, if you create a virus to target a particular gene, there’s always the chance the virus mutates in a way that enables it to infect members of the non-targeted population.