China creating a generation of ‘super soldiers’ using using ‘gene editing’ – John Ratcliffe
National Intelligence Director John Ratcliffe has said that China is creating a new generation of ‘super soldiers’ using ‘gene editing’ to make them ‘stronger and more powerful’.
Speaking in an interview on Fox News today, he said that the Chinese Communist Party’s military expansion has been so aggressive that they are now engaging in human testing to create a biologically enhanced army.
Clarifying comments he made in an op-ed published on Thursday in The Wall Street Journal he said: ‘Their aim is to dominate militarily, technologically and economically.
‘On the military front they have already achieved having the largest navy in any country in the world. The People’s Republic of China has a military of two million.
‘They want them to be the largest and they also want them to be the strongest which is why they’re engaged in gene editing – literally trying to alter the DNA to make soldiers, sailors and airmen stronger and more powerful.’
It comes after a critical article he wrote for the WSJ last week where he said that China poses the greatest threat to America and the rest of the free world since World War II.
In the piece Ratcliffe said that U.S. intelligence shows that China has conducted tests on members of the People’s Liberation Army.
Ratcliffe – a Republican former member of Congress from Texas – said: ‘There are no ethical boundaries to Beijing’s pursuit of power.’
His office and the CIA did not immediately respond to requests to elaborate on the claims that China is seeking to create ‘super soldiers’.
U.S.-based think tanks have reported that China is giving increasing importance to biotechnology in its military strategy but they have not released detailed reports about the kind of testing alleged by Ratcliffe.
Last year, two American scholars wrote a paper examining China’s ambitions to apply biotechnology to the battlefield.
Their studies found what they said were signs that China was interested in using gene-editing technology to enhance human performance.
