This is John Batchel. Colleague Craig Singleton of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracy

is profiling in a lengthy detailed report how the People's Republic of China's PLA, this is cut out for the military,

is looking in labs to weaponize genetic information, our genetic, everybody's genetic information,

have been looking at it for a number of years accelerating under Xi Jinping.

Regarded as data, Craig will explain, your genes are not yours, say China.

They want that information. Why? Craig explains as well.

More of this tonight. Craig Singleton. No, I don't think any of us really do. You know,

Xi Jinping is called Data, the 21st century oil. And I think that that quote, it's a direct quote, by the way,

sort of captures how the Chinese view data and the ability to, you know, siphon it all up now.

And they might not know what to do with it today, but through investments in artificial intelligence and quantum computer,

they're thinking about how they can harness it and weaponize it tomorrow.

And I think one of the things we're learning, whether it's through the TikTok debacle or other things,

is that we have to be very careful about leakage, leakage of our data, data localization and keeping our data here, but also

making sure that Americans understand where their DNA, in this case, is being sequenced.

And it's not uncommon, whether you're at a hospital in the United States or going to a clinic

in the United States for genetic testing, for that material to be sent back to China because of the cheap costs of the sequencing there.

And I just think as Americans learn more and more about their genetic material being shared with an

adversary nation, they may have questions about whether more needs to be done,

just like in the case of TikTok, to keep that data here and to prevent an adversary from getting

their hands on.