Read on Twitter
this is true for basically everything that gets floated as "oh, we have this intel leak that some uniquely unethical technology is being developed over there and not here" https://twitter.com/AthertonKD/status/1168937118405746689
(today I'm revisiting it in response to the weird "China is using CRISPR to make super-sniper super soldiers, says US Intelligence" piece: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/china-has-done-human-testing-create-biologically-enhanced-super-soldiers-n1249914 & https://www.msnbc.com/yasmin-vossoughian/watch/national-security-correspondent-reports-that-china-is-conducting-human-tests-to-create-biologically-enhanced-super-soldiers-97192005546?cid=sm_npd_ms_tw_ma)
the source material shared in that story comes from here: https://jamestown.org/program/chinas-military-biotech-frontier-crispr-military-civil-fusion-and-the-new-revolution-in-military-affairs/ which cites a handful of studies and papers from China about using CRISPR to, like, eliminate susceptibility to HIV or understand circadian rhythms
It's weird to float this as a story without more than that, and especially so to do it in a way that misses that, even if the tech is used to modify human genes (BIG MASSIVE "IF"), that's at least a couple decades away from existing as anything other than novelty. Weird piece!
But what's way, way more telling than anything about the tech itself is the way it's discussed. The military is sharing this news with the reporter as evidence, specifically outlined, that "someone over there is doing a thing we can't do for ethics reasons over here." Which. look
This is the exact same line that comes up time & again when Pentagon & industry types talk about developing lethal autonomous robot systems, designed to target and kill faster than humans can. Never "we want this for an advantage," always "how can we trust that the enemy won't?"
There's no guarantee, of course, that a country won't try to develop a weapon if it thinks it can. Trust and verification are hard problems, though not impossible. But "we have to develop this because our unethical enemy will do" is a crutch, it's projection, it's a dodge.
Like, I'm not thrilled when I talk to people who say "we should build the lethal autonomous robot because it's faster and that matters in battle," but at least that's honest, and not deflecting that onto the culture or motives of a rival state. Same here with the CRISPR thing.
That's about all the bandwidth I have for this now, but maybe someday I'll get back to the weird shadow game of tech trial balloons floated as foreign fears.
