The Chinese regime has for years been collecting large amounts of American health care data, including sensitive genetic information—which pose serious privacy and national security risks, a top U.S. counterintelligence agency has warned.
Alongside illegal means such as cyber hacking, Beijing has used investments in American biotech companies and partnerships with hospitals and universities to gain access to U.S. healthcare and genetic data, the National Counterintelligence and Security Center (NCSC) said in a fact sheet (pdf) released on Feb. 1.
Vast amounts of genomic information (a person’s entire genetic sequence) can fuel developments in the cutting-edge field of precision medicine (or personalized medicine), allowing China to overtake the United States to become a global leader in biotech, the paper said. Such data can also be weaponized to target individuals in the country for intelligence and military operations.
The warning came as Chinese genetics giant BGI Group has drawn scrutiny over its aggressive efforts to push its COVID-19 test kits and support labs around the world, raising data security concerns. By last August, the company had sold 35 million rapid COVID-19 testing kits to 180 countries and built 58 labs in 18 countries. The company approached several U.S. states last year to build and run COVID-19 testing labs, but none accepted after U.S. officials warned against the partnership, according to recent CBS report.
BGI says it does not gain access to patient data from its COVID-19 labs or test kits, but former director of the NCSC William Evanina told CBS that the labs were like trojan horses: by setting up its gene-sequencing equipment in the United States, the company could later exploit the equipment to mine Americans’ genetic information. Sequencers are machines used to decode and analyze a person’s entire genome.