Return a decade and most People had by no means heard of Huawei. In the present day, the Chinese language telecom large is an emblem of how rapidly China can dominate a strategic expertise sector and within the course of create new nationwide safety and market threats for U.S. authorities and business.
Democratic Senator Mark Warner of Virginia, the highest Democrat on the Senate Choose Committee on Intelligence, is now nervous about one other Chinese language firm that he predicts will eclipse Huawei in each scale and consequence: BGI. It’s not constructing cell towers or smartphones for the 5G period. It’s amassing DNA.
“If Huawei was huge, BGI might be even larger,” Warner stated on the CNBC CFO Council Summit in Washington, D.C. on Wednesday.
BGI is among the largest genomics firms on the earth. It operates DNA sequencing laboratories in China and overseas. It processes genetic information for hospitals, pharmaceutical corporations and researchers throughout dozens of nations, in keeping with a recent report by the Nationwide Safety Fee on Rising Biotechnology.
The corporate started as a Beijing-based analysis entity, the Beijing Genomics Institute, tied intently to China’s nationwide genome tasks. It later expanded into a worldwide industrial powerhouse, promoting DNA sequencing, prenatal testing, most cancers screening, and large-scale inhabitants genetic evaluation, in keeping with an NBC News report.
Via subsidiaries, BGI says it operates within the U.S. Europe, and Japan. In a number of international locations, it helped constructed nationwide genetic databases and pandemic testing systems.
A person visits the sales space of BGI on the Wholesome Life Chain space of the third China Worldwide Provide Chain Expo CISCE in Beijing, capital of China, July 16, 2025.
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U.S. intelligence officers imagine that international footprint offers BGI entry to 1 the biggest collections of genetic information on Earth. Lawmakers have warned that genetic information is not only medical data. At scale, it turns into a strategic asset spurring a “DNA arms race,” in keeping with a Washington Post report. DNA profiles can reveal ancestry, bodily traits, illness danger, and household relationships, and when linked with synthetic intelligence, the information may also be used for surveillance, monitoring and long-term organic analysis tied to nationwide safety, in keeping with the Washington Put up’s reporting.
On the CNBC occasion this week, Warner continued to press for extra give attention to BGI. “They’re hoovering up DNA information,” Warner stated. “This degree of experimentation on people and mental property theft, all of us ought to be involved about it.”
Congressional investigators have beforehand warned that BGI maintains shut ties to the Chinese language Communist Get together and Chinese language navy, in keeping with a report from the Home Select Committee on the CCP. They argue that China makes little distinction between industrial information and state safety wants.
The ‘tremendous soldier’ concern
One of many greatest fears tied to BGI and China’s broader biotech push is the opportunity of a genetically enhanced soldier. U.S. officers have publicly claimed that China has explored human efficiency enhancement and navy biotechnology. U.S. protection analysts say China’s analysis spans inhabitants DNA assortment, navy databases, and AI-driven human efficiency modeling, in keeping with a Wall Street Journal op-ed written by U.S. Director of the Central Intelligence Company John Ratcliffe in 2020, when he was Director of Nationwide Intelligence throughout President Trump’s first time period.
Warner straight referenced these issues this week.
“It is terrifying,” Warner stated.
Troops make preparations earlier than a navy parade in Beijing, capital of China, Sept. 3, 2025.
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Warner described China as a fantastic nation and nice competitor, and as a former telecom govt (he was among the many founders of Nextel), he stated what Huawei was able to execute on — producing good merchandise at cheap costs earlier than the U.S. and Western opponents had been ready — is a cautionary story.
The BGI story seems uncomfortably acquainted to Warner.
“Return in time eight or 9 years, and most of the people had by no means heard of Huawei,” he stated.
Huawei rose by combining huge state help, international market entry and aggressive pricing, not solely outcompeting Western corporations on scale and value, however positioning itself contained in the world’s telecom infrastructure earlier than governments understood the safety implications. Huawei was first placed on a U.S. trade blacklist in 2019, which banned U.S. corporations from promoting some expertise to the Chinese language tech large over nationwide safety issues. Chip restrictions on Huawei have since turn into even stricter.
However Warner stated by the point the U.S. moved to limit Huawei, “[we started to] lose slightly.”
A lot of the 5G spine had already been formed by Chinese language expertise.
Throughout a separate interview with Javers on the CNBC CFO Council Summit, the Republican Chairman of the Home committee on the Chinese language Communist Get together, Michigan congressman John Moolenaar, stated “We have seen how they run the play of extra capability, worth manipulation, driving folks out of enterprise in numerous areas; they are going to proceed to run that play,” he stated. “We need to be pleasant with China, however China just isn’t our good friend. They’re our foremost adversary,” he added.
The Soviet Union was a navy and ideological competitor, however China, in tech area after area, Warner says — from telecom and 5G to AI, quantum computing and biotech — is a unique form of competitor.
Warner now sees BGI following the same mannequin in biotechnology. Like Huawei, BGI scaled rapidly with state help. The Washington, D.C.-based assume tank Foundation of Defense of Democracies known as upon lawmakers of each events earlier this yr to limit BGI’s entry to U.S. establishments.
Congress has been making an attempt to move varied variations of the BIOSECURE Act, which might restrict the power of Chinese language biotechs to function within the U.S. Some U.S. hospitals and analysis establishments with ties to Chinese language genomics corporations are beneath federal strain, in keeping with the Associated Press, although some medical professionals inside the U.S. say they danger dropping key analysis help for core medical objectives. BGI informed the AP that the invoice is “a false flag focusing on firms beneath the premise of nationwide safety. We strictly observe guidelines and legal guidelines, and we’ve no entry to People’ private information in any of our work,” it stated.
U.S. intel has moved too slowly, and disrupted key spying alliances
Warner stated the U.S. intelligence equipment has moved too slowly to acknowledge the biotech menace. He says that intelligence companies focus an excessive amount of on international governments and militaries, with much less consideration positioned on industrial expertise sectors. However in a world the place expertise supremacy is nationwide safety, Warner says extra of our intelligence efforts have to replicate this shift.
Solely up to now two to 3 years, he says, has the U.S. significantly expanded spying into AI, semiconductors, and biotechnology. Warner says we want a extra “superior strategy” on this space, and he gave as one current instance when China’s largest chipmaker SMIC stunned U.S. officials by producing a six-nanometer chip regardless of sweeping U.S. export controls. The breakthrough confirmed that Washington had underestimated each China’s technical qualities and talent to work round restrictions. “We bought caught off guard with the SMIC six-nanometer chip,” Warner stated.
Warner can be nervous that monitoring China’s tech rise requires a sort of deep cooperation with U.S. allies that the Trump administration has squandered, corresponding to the worldwide intelligence-sharing community known as the “Five Eyes” alliance.
These relationships are actually beneath pressure, he stated, and key companions together with the UK, the Netherlands, and France have gone public in saying they’re reluctant to share intel with the U.S. “They really feel like we could also be politicizing the intel product and that’s not excellent news for America,” Warner stated.
Underlying his issues in regards to the expertise competitors with China in areas together with AI and biotech is the U.S. ceding the worldwide lead in requirements setting. For many years, the U.S. formed the foundations for wi-fi networks, satellites, and web infrastructure. That dominance assist People lead international markets, Warner stated, however now China is aggressively positioning itself because the worldwide requirements setter.
Warner described the U.S. position in worldwide our bodies as one of many “secret sauces” within the period of America’s dominance of the worldwide economic system and expertise, permitting the U.S. to leverage improvements occurring across the globe, “even when it did not come up in America.”
Throughout expertise domains, influencing requirements and protocols is crucial to not solely sustaining a aggressive edge but additionally establishing moral boundaries. “Will it’s us or the Chinese language?” Warner stated. “The Chinese language are available with clearly a much less humanist strategy. It has been efficient in numerous domains. We see it on standards-setting our bodies. China floods the zone with numerous engineers, virtually shopping for off the votes. We have got to reengage for American enterprise and authorities,” he stated.
