DHS’s Ban on Chinese Biodata Firm Addresses Human Rights but not Bioweapon Threat

China has a major stake in the genetic data of millions of Americans. It is using that data to further the Chinese Communist Party’s ambitions of engineering a military super soldier or targeted bioweapon to eventually be deployed against the United States.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) last week added BGI Genomics, MGI Tech, and Shenzhen BGI Technology to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act’s (UFLPA’s) Entity List. The DHS cited BGI’s collusion with the regional government in the northwestern province of Xinjiang, using its genetic analysis as a key component of China’s targeted surveillance regime against the persecuted Uyghur minority.

But the designation covers only BGI’s circumvention of U.S. export and investment controls. Other means are needed to address the fact that China can use the same infrastructure and tools created by BGI to train its AI models, intensify its own human rights abuses, or engineer a bioweapon potentially targeted at ethnic minorities in the United States.

Impact of DHS Ban Limited to Restricting Imports

Passed in 2022, the UFLPA is a response to forced labor and related human rights abuses against Uyghurs and other ethnic and religious minorities in Xinjiang. The Chinese government and state-linked entities have subjected detainees to forced labor as part of a broader campaign of internment and repression. The  genetic data BGI collects is a key component of China’s sweeping biometric regime, which it employs to identify Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities for internment in labor camps — conduct for which the Department of Commerce had already sanctioned two BGI affiliates in 2020. The UFLPA designation automatically blocks their products from entering the United States without a case-by-case import review.

China’s military-civil fusion strategy places biotechnology at the center of the state’s national security priorities. The FBI, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, and the U.S. National Counterintelligence and Security Center have all warned that China’s collection of Americans’ genetic information not only poses a privacy threat but also presents the potential to enable enhanced warfighting capabilities and targeting of “specific U.S. population subsets.”

But the UFLPA, by design, is an import-control statute. It cannot limit companies like BGI from collecting sensitive biodata.

BGI’s Collusion With People’s Liberation Army

Lawmakers have warned for years about the company’s extensive collaboration with the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). For over a decade, BGI has collaborated with PLA researchers on more than a dozen joint studies and “sensitive” research, including using a PLA supercomputer to examine the genetic characteristics of Tibetan and Uyghur minorities. Under the company’s own policy, BGI can share that data with the state when it is “directly relevant to national security or national defense security.”

In 2021, investigators found that BGI was “stor[ing] and analyz[ing]” blood samples from its NIFTY prenatal test, designed to identify genetic markers in early gestation. Developed with the Chinese military, the test allowed BGI to amass and retain genetic data from roughly 8 million individuals from 52 countries, including women in the United States.

Washington Must Close Oversight Gaps

The Department of Commerce Office of Information and Communications Technology and Services (OICTS) should evaluate the national security risks posed by the continued expansion of BGI and affiliated technology companies in the United States. The Department of Justice should also investigate whether MGI Americas, an American BGI subsidiary, has violated the law in continuing to transfer Americans’ genomic data back to affiliates in China.

Washington should also strengthen the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States’ bankruptcy review authority, requiring companies holding sensitive biotech data to notify the government of bankruptcy upon filing to prevent adversary-linked buyers using workarounds to acquire these assets.

Johanna “Jo” Yang is a policy analyst at the Center on Cyber and Technology Innovation (CCTI) at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), where she works on issues related to nation-state cyber threats, critical infrastructure protection, and U.S. cybersecurity policy. For more analysis from the author and CCTI, please subscribe HERE. Follow FDD on X @FDD and @FDD_CCTI. Follow Jo on X @JohannaYang_. FDD is a Washington, DC-based, nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.