I don’t know if the risks described in this article are overblown or not. However, I will leave it to the DNA experts to read the article and decide for themselves (and hopefully tell the rest of us about the risks).
Could your aunt’s (or your) genealogy research be used to kill you? From an article by Joel Gehrke of the Washington Examiner:
Your aunt’s genealogy hobby could help China or Russia design a biological weapon to kill your family.
That risk alarms policymakers and officials in the United States, even if it’s a remote prospect for most people. The emergence of such technology could allow rogue regimes to develop exquisite assassination programs with more than the usual impunity.
“There are now weapons under development, and developed, that are designed to target specific people,” Rep. Jason Crow (D-CO), a member of the committees that oversee the Pentagon and the U.S. intelligence community, said Friday at the Aspen Security Forum in Aspen, Colorado. “That’s what this is, where you can actually take someone’s DNA, you know, their medical profile, and you can target a biological weapon that will kill that person or take them off the battlefield or make them inoperable.”
The most sophisticated U.S. rivals could use such methods to open a new front against the American population, another senior lawmaker added, through the targeting of food supplies on a vast scale.
“If we look at food security and what can our adversaries do with biological weapons that are directed at our animal agriculture, at our agricultural sector … highly pathogenic avian influenza, African swine fever,” said Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA), a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee. “All of these things have circulated around the globe, but if targeted by an adversary, we know that it brings about food insecurity. Food insecurity drives a lot of other insecurities around the globe.”
The lawmakers outlined those risks to elaborate on a warning aired more obliquely by Army Gen. Richard Clarke, the commander of U.S. Special Operations Command.
You can read the entire article at: https://bit.ly/3RPIb61.