China Human Testing To Create Bio-Enhanced Super Soldiers

[maximus otter]

U.S. intelligence shows that China has conducted "human testing" on members of the People's Liberation Army in hope of developing soldiers with "biologically enhanced capabilities," the top U.S. intelligence official said Friday.

John Ratcliffe, the director of national intelligence, included the explosive claim [in a Wall Street Journal article.].

Last year, two American scholars wrote a paper examining China's ambitions to apply biotechnology to the battlefield, including what they said were signs that China was interested in using gene-editing technology to enhance human — and perhaps soldier — performance.

Specifically, the scholars explored Chinese research using the gene-editing tool CRISPR, short for "clusters of regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats." CRISPR has been used to treat genetic diseases and modify plants, but Western scientists consider it unethical to seek to manipulate genes to boost the performance of healthy people.

"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," wrote the scholars, Elsa Kania, an expert on Chinese defense technology at the Center for a New American Security, and Wilson VornDick, a consultant on China matters and former Navy officer.

"Chinese military scientists and strategists have consistently emphasized that biotechnology could become a 'new strategic commanding heights of the future Revolution in Military Affairs,'" the scholars wrote.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/na...biologically-enhanced-super-soldiers-n1249914

maximus otter

 

[Kondoru]

Does anyone believe this?

it would not be cost effective for a start.

 

[kamalktk]

Does anyone believe this?

it would not be cost effective for a start.

it would not be cost effective... yet.

 

[Xanatic*]

It might depend how fancy you want to get with it. It might be simple stuff like trying increase stamina, rather than Universal Soldier things.

 

[Junopsis]

I mean, if you don't care what possible negatives you could get by introducing genes for specific proteins, or removing ones, I'm sure it would have been easy to start experimenting with animal embryos once the editing capability existed. Just to see what happens. And to try that with humans if eventually they get any results that garner a sign-off. I know they've fixed muscular dystropy in mice by altering a particular gene (which was a mutation, but that just means that you could put in any known sequences that further your ends or which look like they might result in the traits you want. ugh, I shiver writing that, that's eugenics junk that is).
Not that I'm suggesting that China is less ethical than any other government that could fund labs to do that. I am probably suggesting that it's being played with in multiple places, although maybe not at the human level currently-- a potential step would still be human applications because I don't see ethics being a roadblock to classified research.