Biosecurity

National Security Implications of Gene Editing

Giordano, a Georgetown professor of neurology and biochemistry, and chief of the neuroethics studies program of the Pellegrino Center for Clinical Bioethics, is not an expert on geopolitics and doesn’t talk about nuclear weapons, large-scale cyberattacks, the Middle East and Russian aggression — the potential problems we all know about. But rather he casts his eye on the world of biotechnology, looks at the art of the possible, and then thinks a great deal on what they might mean for the future of warfare. He is also an advisory fellow to the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Weaponizing biotech is scary stuff and it’s all the more concerning because many of the scenarios he speaks of — once the purview of science fiction writers — seem to grow closer every day.

Readers of this column might remember Giordano as one of three experts interviewed in these pages on the mysterious directed energy attacks that have taken place in Havana against members of the U.S. intelligence community and Canadian diplomats. The victims reported odd sensations in their ears, were later examined, and found to have some neurological damage.

The trauma was recently explained away in a handful of media outlets as a combination of “crickets” and “mass hysteria.” More on that later.

Giordano recently called to discuss another incident that made headlines: a Chinese doctor who used gene-editing technology to alter the DNA of human fetuses.