China will weaponize biotech weapons when dominant, potentially creating AI-powered super soldier: U.S. Commission

China’s rapid growth in biotechnology poses a national security threat, urging the United States to make substantial investments in innovation and defense. File | Image source: AP

As the world enters the era of biotech, there is new evidence that China is “distorting” the biotech market and rapidly rising to its “advantage” in the field, which has made this strategic priority over the past 20 years.

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In a report to the U.S. Congress, the committee warned that China is likely to weaponize the technology and could create a genetically enhanced super soldier powered by artificial intelligence or AI.

“To remain competitive, the United States must act quickly over the next three years. Otherwise, we may fall behind, which is a setback that we will never recover,” the report said.

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The Committee reiterates that it is certain that the biotechnology revolution is coming. It warned: “The biotech moment will have a chat moment and if China gets there first, no matter how fast we run, we will never catch up.”

“Steal, scale”

In a sober analysis, the report said that the world is entering the era of biotechnology, and biology is the foundation of innovation.

The report said the committee’s research shows that China may follow the script of the same biotech as other strategic technologies. “First, they stole it. Then, they expanded. Once they got stuck in the market, they strangled,” it said. It pointed out the 2024 Chinese restrictions on glycerol and germanium that undermined U.S. semiconductor production.

The report noted that U.S. allies and partners offer unique features, which mentioned India, which it said was a “priority” for cost-effective biomanufacturing, especially for vaccines. “We must do more to take advantage of our partners’ unrivaled advantages, which may include signing mutual data sharing agreements or pooling the need for biotech products,” it said.

AI-powered super soldier

The committee is particularly concerned about biotechnology in the defense field and says there is good reason to believe that the Communist Party of China (CCP) will “weaponize” biotechnology. Now, through its military convergence strategy, the CCP’s goal is to use biotech-powered forces (called this “smart war”) to make the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) a “world-class military” in 2049.

The report illustrates how China distorts the biotech market, which delves into how the Beijing Institute of Genomics (BGI) and MGI Tech have funded their growth in an “atypical way”, indicating participation and “subsidies” of “unpublicized” status that undermines foreign competitors in the genome sequence market. It observed: “China’s ability to manufacture active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) at low prices has allowed India to impose a unilateral anti-dumping obligation on certain Chinese APIs in 2022 to protect its domestic manufacturing sector.”

US advice

The committee’s main recommendation is that the U.S. government should donate at least $15 billion over the next five years to release more private capital into the national biotech sector.

After an extensive study, including more than 1,800 stakeholder consultations, the committee listed a set of high-level recommendations for the U.S. government. These recommendations include: prioritizing biotechnology at the national level; mobilizing the private sector to expand our products; maximizing the benefits of biotechnology for defense; surpassing strategic competitors; building a future biotechnology workforce; and mobilizing the collective advantage of allies and partners.

Further warning that the window to action is closing, and the commission has adopted a two-track strategy to enable the United States to innovate faster and slow down China. In this regard, it calls for the defense of U.S. biotech IP and data to prevent state-funded corporate espionage, even if it means rejecting attractive investments. “Even if this means using more expensive alternatives, we must not regard Chinese state-owned companies as ordinary competitors in our market. China has no right to U.S. research,” it said.

The committee said artificial intelligence (AI) is accelerating us to the inflection point, noting that although the US’s advantage was once considered “unscrupulous”, China has become a strong country in AI-a-Sable Biotechnology.