Former U.S. National Counterintelligence and Security Center Director William Evanina said that China used the COVID-19 pandemic to steal American's DNA.
The U.S. Sun reported that China has used COVID to steal DNA and hack personal data from 80% of Americans through biotech firm BGI Group who offered to "provide technical expertise" to the state of Washington on the virus besides proposing to build and operate a premium testing labs.
"Current estimates are that 80 per cent of American adults have had all of their personally identifiable information stolen by the Communist Party of China," Evanina said during an interview with CBS' "60 seconds."
"The concern is that the Chinese regime is taking all that information about us--what we eat, how we live, when we exercise and sleep--and then combining it with our DNA data," he added, "With information about heredity and environment, suddenly they know more about us than we know about ourselves."
As per the U.S. Sun, China has a vast internal surveillance system that it uses to spy on its own citizens. The Chinese government recently ordered the 700 million males in its population to give DNA samples.
A week prior to his resignation from the U.S. National Counterintelligence and Security Center last Jan. 20, Evanina revealed in an interview with Washington Post Live that the three biggest counterintelligence threats to the President Joseph Biden, Jr.'s administration "are the geopolitical aspects of why China, Russia, and Iran do what they do: big data theft and concerns about the U.S. supply chain."
CBS News clarified that what China is up to is to acquire American health care data, including the DNA of American citizens, which Evanina describes as a danger to both national and economic security.
"The quest to control our biodata--and, in turn, control health care's future--has become the new space race, with more than national pride in the balance," quipped CBS News in the introduction of its interview with Evanina.
The China-based BGI Group, as per CBS News, offered to help the State of Washington when its COVID cases spiked last March 2020. Evanina said BGI is suspicious since it is required by China to turnover whatever information it has acquired to them.
"Under a series of laws unthinkable in western democracies, Chinese companies like BGI are obligated to share data with the Chinese regime. It's as if, say, Google, Amazon and Facebook had to turn over their data to the CIA, on demand," Evanina said.
In fact in an exclusive report, Reuters revealed last Saturday that the BGI Group has actually "worked with China's military on research that ranges from mass testing for respiratory pathogens to brain science." Reuters cited that BGI has "worked on PLA projects seeking to make members of the ethnic Han Chinese majority less susceptible to altitude sickness, and genetic research that would benefit soldiers in some border areas."
"For a deep dive on the risks posed by China's collection of genomic data and other healthcare information from America, see the fact sheet released today by @NCSCgov," NCSC said on Monday via its Twitter account with a link to a PDF file containing the said information.
For a deep dive on the risks posed by China's collection of genomic data and other healthcare information from America, see the fact sheet released today by @NCSCgov.
Visit: https://t.co/OzWhPolsUB pic.twitter.com/hDqx34yyuz
"” NCSC (@NCSCgov) February 1, 2021
