When COVID-19 erupted from Wuhan, China under mysterious circumstances, the Communist Party of China covered up its existence for as long as possible. It is now apparent that there is more to COVID than what the authorities wish for us to know. Biohacked: China’s Race to Control Life details the decades-long pursuit by the Chinese Communists to dominate the biotechnology industry—to control the very building blocks of life on Earth—to further their political control at home and their supremacy abroad.
More appalling than the egregious cover-up that China’s rulers engaged in with COVID-19 is the fact that Western scientists, pharmaceutical companies, and research labs have contributed to China’s rapid (and dangerous) growth in the biotech industry—so much so that China, not the United States, may become the seat of the biotechnology industry. The Chinese leadership believes that biotechnology is a critical industry for the Communist Party to achieve its goal of becoming the world’s dominant superpower by 2049. In China’s biotech sector, truly macabre practices are being developed, from ambitious cloning programs to the creation of potential pathogens that China’s military plans to use in “specific genetic attacks” against Beijing’s growing list of political enemies.
To stop the threat, author Brandon J. Weichert proposes the world’s nations create a comprehensive set of treaties for regulating biotechnology research and development. Further, Weichert calls for Washington to slow the transfer of advanced biotechnology knowledge and funding from the United States to China using means like the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS).
Unless an all-of-government (and society) approach is taken to curbing irresponsible biotech development in China, then another—deadlier—COVID-19-like pandemic could be at hand.
Brandon J. Weichert is a geopolitical analyst and author of Winning Space: How America Remains a Superpower and The Shadow War: Iran's Quest for Supremacy. Weichert is an educator, who travels the country lecturing leaders in the US military, academia, and business communities on the current trends in geopolitics and high-technology research and development. He has been described as a “panic-and-anxiety inducing scholar” who lives by Dr. Herman Kahn’s mantra that “I’m against fashionable thinking.” Weichert is a prolific writer who is a contributing editor to American Greatness, The Asia Times, and The Washington Times. He is a former Congressional staffer who holds an MA in Statecraft & National Security Affairs from the Institute of World Politics in Washington, D.C., and he manages The Weichert Report: World News Done Right. He splits his time between sunny Southwest Florida and bucolic Northern Virginia. Weichert can be followed via Twitter @WeTheBrandon.
