Even if they have to genetically alter their soldiers in order to achieve the objective.
In an interview with Fox News Sunday, Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe said if China would ever outmaneuver the United States and become the globe’s leading superpower, that would endanger “individual liberties” and “freedoms” around the world, noting that “free enterprise [is] all at stake.”
He also said that China is “altering DNA,” citing U.S. intelligence reports indicating as much, The Epoch Times reported.
“It’s one of the things our intelligence shows that China is doing. … The People’s Republic of China has 2 million strong in its military, and it’s trying to make them stronger through, you know, gene editing,” Ratcliffe said, noting further that it’s “just one of the ways that, you know, China is trying to essentially dominate the planet and set the rules in the world order.”
Highlighting the Communist Party of China’s gross and frequent human rights abuses, Ratcliffe said what people everywhere “need to understand is this is an authoritarian regime.” He added that the Communist government “doesn’t care about people’s individual rights.”
“We’ve seen what they’ve done to the Uighurs; we’ve seen what they’ve done in Hong Kong. It’s about putting the state first, and that is the exact opposite of what has always made America great. Individual liberties, freedoms, free enterprise those things are all at stake if China dominates,” Ratcliffe, who was a GOP congressman from Texas before President Donald Trump appointed him to be DNI, added.
Ratcliffe’s remarks to Fox News were in line with a piece he wrote for The Wall Street Journal last week in which he labeled the Chinese regime as America’s “national security threat No. 1,” while providing more details about the DNA testing. (Related: Analysts claim Dominion’s server connected to Iran and China.)
“China has even conducted human testing on members of the People’s Liberation Army in hope of developing soldiers with biologically enhanced capabilities,” he said. “There are no ethical boundaries to Beijing’s pursuit of power.”
The Epoch Times noted further:
Chinese researcher He Jiankui in 2018 used CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing to alter the DNA of embryos of seven couples. Last year, researchers said the regime would try to use CRISPR gene-editing capabilities to alter the capabilities of its soldiers. The CCP “is pursuing military applications for biology and looking into promising intersections with other disciplines, including brain science, supercomputing, and artificial intelligence,” Elsa Kania and Wilson Vorndick wrote in Defense One last year.
“While the potential leveraging of CRISPR to increase human capabilities on the future battlefield remains only a hypothetical possibility at the present, there are indications that Chinese military researchers are starting to explore its potential,” Kania and Vorndick added.
In other developments related to China, Ratcliff said Beijing was already targeting members of the alleged incoming administration of Joe Biden and Congress, conducting influence operations.
“To address these threats and more, I have shifted resources inside the $85 billion annual intelligence budget to increase the focus on China,” Ratcliffe announced. “This shift must continue to ensure U.S. intelligence has the resources it needs to give policy makers unvarnished insights into China’s intentions and activities.”
He also urged Congress to ditch the hyper-partisanship and unite to address the threat posed by Communist China as Beijing is “preparing for an open-ended period of confrontation with the U.S.”
“Washington should also be prepared,” he wrote. “Leaders must work across partisan divides to understand the threat, speak about it openly, and take action to address it.”
That’s going to be a gigantic problem if Biden winds up being inaugurated, considering he and his son are compromised by Chinese business and government interests.
As China becomes a bigger threat to the U.S. and the world, keep current at NationalSecurity.news.
Sources include: