What Does China’s “Genetic Surveillance” Mean for Americans?

We reported last week that the Biden Administration leaked the news that it is drafting an executive order to restrict “countries of concern” from acquiring Americans’ most sensitive and personal digital and DNA information.
 
At the top of the Administration’s concern is the likely acquisition by the People’s Republic of China of a vast databank of Americans’ DNA from Chinese-owned companies that perform genetic testing for U.S. healthcare. Should we care? A glimpse of the dangers of such tracking can be seen in how China uses mass DNA mapping of whole populations to track and persecute religious minorities.  
 
At a recent conference in Washington, D.C., on surveillance of religious minorities in China, we heard evidence – well documented by many journalists – that China is using facial recognition (with racial filters), car sensors, cell-site simulators, and location tracking to systematically surveil that country’s Uighur Muslim and Tibetan Buddhist minorities.
 
A recent Human Rights Watch whitepaper details how China’s authorities are systematically collecting DNA in Tibet. The cover story for one such program for people aged 12 to 65 is that the government is performing a health-check program called Physicals For All – though patients are not allowed to learn the results of any of their tests. DNA testing in Tibet is, to paraphrase the Godfather, an offer that cannot be refused. With this data, the government can track people by ethnicity, and map their families by their genes and presumed beliefs.
 
The most pernicious aspect of this program is the collection of children’s DNA, a unique identifier that will never change. Such genetic surveillance also necessarily connects a whole bloodline to one person suspected of religious dissidence – what Chinese police call “one household, one file.” Such files can be used to track people who lead worship services or advocate religious or secular views not approved by the government. This program of police-community relations is called “spreading information tentacles.”
 
DNA is also used to identify (and presumably, from samples located at a given site or shrine) to track clerics and lamas, village elders, and others who might be engaged in meetings or conducting unofficial mediation of local disputes. Combined with electronic surveillance, authorities can detect forbidden material accessed by phones and other devices, and then turn to DNA mapping to break up social and religious organizations, keeping civil society atomized before the state.
 
Thus, China’s DNA database is amplified by many forms of electronic surveillance, with artificial intelligence putting together patterns of association and blood relations for police. Researcher Adrian Zenz told The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists that in 2017 alone, China spent almost $350 billion on internal security outlays.
 
According to the Biden Administration, China is also spending money to purchase Americans’ data. This could include medical, financial, occupational, familial, and romantic profiles: genetic surveillance provides another tile that forms a mosaic of the American population for China.
 
Thus, an American child sequenced for a medical test today could have his or her genetic health profile and identity known to the Chinese state for life. As the Office of the Director of National Intelligence warns: “The loss of your DNA not only affects you, but your relatives and, potentially, generations to come.”