What happens when digital surveillance, genome mapping, artificial intelligence and gene editing are combined? Those who control this system will have the power to hack the human race.
This is the course the National Institutes of Health will be charting if President Biden can get Congress to fund his proposed ARPA-H, the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health.
TAKE ACTION: Tell Congress to stop ARPA-H!
As Unlimited Hangout’s Whitney Webb reported in May (This Biden Proposal Could Make the US a “Digital Dictatorship”), the Biden Administration has requested $6.5 billion from Congress to create a new agency modeled on the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency: the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health or ARPA-H.
The White House’s ARPA-H draft concept paper, prepared by Dr. Eric Lander, Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy and Assistant to the President for Science and Technology, and Dr. Francis Collins, Director of the National Institutes of Health, describes an ARPA-H that would massively increase funding of corporate experiments in digital surveillance and human gene hacking.
Digital surveillance
Imagine a comprehensive digital surveillance system where physical data is provided by hardware worn by the user. Visual, aural and haptic sensors capture what the user sees, hears, and feels. GPS, digital compass, and inertial sensors capture the user’s orientation and movements. Biomedical sensors capture the user’s physical state. The system incorporates physical data with medical data. Population-level data from the system supports medical research and the early detection of emerging epidemics.
This vision, from a 2003 DARPA request for proposals, is perfectly in line with Biden’s current plan for ARPA-H, with its emphasis on expanding government and corporate access to biometric data.
Among the new sensors and artificial-intelligence-assisted medical decision making tools that Lander and Collins propose ARPA-H invest in are:
• Small, highly accurate, inexpensive, non-intrusive, wearable 24/7 monitors (e.g., smart watches).
• Brain imaging and blood biomarkers capable of measuring synaptic loss, neuronal death, and glial inflammatory pathways.
• Regular virtual house calls.
• Smart devices and telehealth to make sure patients follow doctors’ orders.
Ethicists are concerned that wearable monitors will function like lie detector tests, able to detect our deepest feelings through our biometric data, even as they track our every move.
As Yuval Noah Harari explained to the World Economic Forum in 2020, in his talk on the coming Digital Dictatorship, once biological knowledge, artificial intelligence, computing power and data are combined, those who control it will have the ability to create algorithms that understand us better than we understand ourselves and therefore can manipulate or replace our decision-making.
Human genetic engineering
DNA is not destiny.
As anyone who has noticed the differences between identical twins can tell you, gene expression can be impacted by a range of environmental and behavioral factors, including exposure to toxins, nutrition, stress levels, exercise routines, relationships, and even spiritual practices.
Managing health by addressing these factors is effective, but it doesn't make the pharmaceutical companies any money, so it isn’t included in the Biden Administration’s plans for ARPA-H.
Human genetic engineering, including gene transfer and gene editing, on the other hand, has an enormous potential for profit, so it takes center stage. The global market for DNA sequencing alone is expected to grow to $35.7 billion by 2028.
“Genetic studies,” Lander and Collins write, “have discovered the genes responsible for more than six thousand rare genetic diseases, opening prospects for gene transfer or gene editing therapies.”
They propose using mRNA vaccines to prevent cancer by correcting 50 common genetic mutations that drive cancers.
All this trouble and all these billions of dollars to address the 5 percent of cancers that are caused by genetics?
The promise of new technologies to treat rare genetic diseases is likely just a ruse to get everyone to submit their genetic data. That will give the artificial intelligence a larger gene pool to work with when the squeamishness about designer babies wears off—or everyone’s infertile and can’t procreate the old fashioned way anymore.
Vaccines
Despite concerns about the COVID-19 vaccines’ safety and effectiveness, Lander and Collins want an ARPA-H that invests heavily in vaccination campaigns that rush new jabs to market in even less time with even fewer safety precautions.
Corporate Control
The U.S. already spends billions of dollars on medical research and the discovery of health treatments each year. Why is the Biden Administration so set on a DARPA-style program?
A DARPA-style program would allow it to circumvent the National Institutes of Health’s peer-reviewed grant making process, as well as its civil service hiring system and pay-scale.
Lander and Collins like the DARPA model because it gives corporations control over government spending, creating opportunities for the same self-dealing and ethics violations we’ve seen at DARPA with revolving-door appointees like Regina Dugan.
Plus…
If Lander and Collins’ plans for human genetic engineering, digital surveillance, fast-tracked vaccines and corporate control isn’t concerning enough, there’s reason to speculate on what else they might do if Congress were to give them billions of dollars to start an ARPA-H.
One suggestion is to explore pre-crime sensors that can detect when people are about to turn violent.
Another idea possibility is that genetic data from millions of people could be used to develop super computers’ artificial intelligence until the machines can learn everything about a person, including what they look like, from a sample of their DNA.
One thing is for certain: We have to stop this!
TAKE ACTION: Stop ARPA-H! Don’t Let Congress Fund Digital Surveillance & Human Gene Hacking!