Sen. Hagerty: Stop China from Stealing Your Genetic Info!

➡ The podcast featured an interview with Senator Bill Hagerty discussing his amendment proposal to constrain the U.S. Defence Department’s contracts with Communist Chinese biotech companies, particularly BGI, due to concerns over the collection of American genetic data and its potential misuse. The scenario reflects past challenges faced with Huawei concerning data access, adding a new dimension of concern given BGI’s close ties to the Chinese Communist Party.
➡ Tennessee Senator Bill Hagerty, with the collaboration of Mike Gallagher from the House of Representatives, is working on an amendment to the National Defense Appropriations Act intending to restrict Defense Department contracts with Chinese biotech firms to prevent them from accessing U.S. citizens’ genetic data. They aim to reduce the threat posed by companies like BGI, perceived to have strong ties with the Chinese government and the People’s Liberation Army, comparing it to the previous situation with Huawei that had potential access to classified American data.

I’m Chris Farrell, and this is on watch. Welcome to on watch, everybody. The Jewish Watch podcast, where we go behind the headlines to inform you about news that the mainstream media would rather you not know, where we try to recover some lost history and explain the inexplicable. Great treat for you today. We are joined by the senator from Tennessee, Bill Hagerty. Senator Hagerty. Welcome to On Watch. It’s great to be with you, Chris.

Thank you. Thank you for your time. We know that we’ve learned and read that you are trying to move an amendment through on the National Defense Appropriations Act that has some very important language in it to constrain or can restrict our Defense Department contracting with Communist Chinese biotech companies. Would you tell us about that, what your amendment is trying to do? Certainly what I’m aiming to do here in the Senate, I’ve worked very closely with Mike Gallagher in the House of Representatives.

He’s working the companion there. Mike chairs the China Committee there. We’re focused very much on the collection of genomic data on genetic data of US. Citizens. We’ve got a company called BGI that is very active here in the collection of genetic data, DNA testing, et cetera. The problem is, BGI is not a private company in the sense that you or I might think it is here in America.

The relationship with the Chinese Communist Party and the People’s Liberation Army? Very close. And we see this yet again parallel to what I’ve worked on in the past dealing with Huawei. And I think many of our listeners, viewers, would remember the Huawei situation. I served in the Trump administration and worked very hard to get Huawei out of our networks, out of our systems here. And without going into classified information, I can just say the same sort of danger that was present with Huawei in terms of the potential of accessing Americans data, our government’s data, our intelligence information, our economic information.

That same sort of danger exists here, except this time we’re talking about genetic data, whether it be data from pregnant women here in America, data from any of us that happen to have our genetic data tested by these machines run by BGI. We run a very significant danger here, and it’s something that I view cannot wait. Their market share is expanding. We can catch it early. We can nip it in the bud early with our legislation that would stop this, that would block any federal government procurement of these machines.

We should do it now before they have obtained a much larger footprint. That’s why we’re focused on the National Defense Authorization bill right now. It’s moving now. I’ll be working all this week trying to get this component of our legislation in to block the federal government from purchasing anything associated with BGI or any other problematic CCP related companies that could be involved in collecting the same sort of data.

So BGI is essentially operating as the medical intelligence arm of the People’s Liberation Army. That’s what their function is, intelligence collection. And they’re doing this in the form of medical intelligence, whether that be genetic or genomic information. What in the world are we doing contracting in any way, shape or form with a Chinese Communist arm? Look, nothing operates in the private capacity in China. It’s all part of the Chinese Communist government.

So why are we contracting in any way, shape or form with an entity like this? Chris, that’s a very good question that I’ve been asking as well. I think what you’ll see here, again, I’ll go back to the parallels with Huawei. You get these Chinese champion companies that are subsidized, that have extensive support from their government. They’re not necessarily operating for profit. They’re operating for a strategic purpose.

Of course, Huawei was very much that way as well. There’s no one that compete on cost that can compete on cost with Huawei because of the subsidization. But I think you’ve got to step back and ask yourself, why does that subsidization exist? What purpose does the CCP have in supporting this? Why did they create these champions? And I think we all know the reason for this. They’re trying to gain an advantage any way they can against the rest of the world.

And certainly letting them have access to our private data, as we were concerned about with Huawei, letting them have access to our genomic data is even more deeply concerned. And so is this approach or this angle, this contract vehicle, is it coming through a Pentagon or Defense Department mean? Who lets the contract that allows BGI to come in and provide this service? What element of the federal government is paying for that? It could be any arm of the federal government that’s doing it.

Think about Los almos labs. You think about the Department of Energy. We certainly don’t want these machines being purchased by our national laboratories, by the NIH. We don’t want them in our Department of Defense, as you mentioned. We want them in the federal government at all. So there are many avenues where this could take place. That’s why this legislation is critical, to make an absolute ban on purchasing these BGI equipment across all of federal government.

Who is opposing you? Who says, no, we got to have this? It’s too? Well, we not surprising to you, I’m sure, Chris. We’ve encountered a major lobbying effort by BGI. The disclosures that we’ve been able to identify have shown $410,000 of lobbying fees paid just here in the past number of weeks. That’s an enormous amount of money when you think about the short period of time that it’s been unloaded here in Washington.

So BGI are lobbying hard. They’re putting pressure on all members of the Congress and the Senate, certainly ones with jurisdiction here in the Senate, the jurisdiction is falling under the Homeland Security Committee. So that would be Senators Peters from Michigan and Senator Paul from Kentucky. We need their help to get this done. And encourage all of your viewers to talk with their congressmen and senators to reach out to try to help us get this across the finish line.

We’ve got to get this added to the NDAA. That will require the permission of the Revelate Committee of Jurisdiction. And as I mentioned here in the Senate, that would be led by Senator Peters of Michigan, and the ranking member would be Senator Paul of Kentucky. I’m sure they’re being lobbied very heavily by the other side, but this is something we need to see across the finish line. We’re going to work very hard this week to get it done.

So somebody sitting at home in Knoxville is watching this and they’re saying, so what does this really mean? What do you mean when you say genetic and genomic information? How does that impact me? I’m at know I sell insurance or whatever it is I’m doing. I’m leading my life. And these guys in Washington are arguing over funding for some Chinese contract. How does it affect the ordinary citizen hanging out in Knoxville, Nashville, anywhere? I think it’s something that we don’t know the full extent of it at this point, but collecting this data means that they may be trying to engineer something using our genes that would target certain peoples.

Everybody’s got different genetics. It’s deeply concerning that they would want to know exactly this information about American citizens and whether it could be used to design a virus that only attacks folks with a certain DNA sort of footprint, whether it be used to make people sick or more well, it’s hard to say what could happen. But given the advances in technology, particularly given the advances in quantum computing and artificial intelligence, the last thing we want is this data set in the hands of someone that doesn’t have our best interest at heart.

Right. I guess the real warning is the fact that if the Chinese want it that badly, then we should oppose it just that strongly. Very well put, Chris. Very well put. And the lobbying effort has been enormous. Again, this is one of their champion companies. As you know, they’ll subsidize them. They’ll do everything they can to press them into service around the world. And America is the leading entity in the world.

If we ban this, I hope it’ll have repercussions around the globe. Now, do you have a fact sheet or some further information? People can go to your website and read up on this or read about your amendment to block it. Where should our viewers and listeners go to get more information? What I will do, Chris, is send a link to you after this interview. Sure you’ll be able to post that and connect right into this.

So be on the lookout. My team will send that to you. That’s great. And we will post that up with this show. So you can read for yourself and figure out what’s going on. Senator Bill Hagerty of Tennessee, thank you for your hard work. We appreciate it. Thank you, Chris. All the best. I’m Chris Farrell on watch. .