The CIA's venture financing business believes that expensive genetic
modification technologies are worthwhile even while doubters question the
likelihood of de-extinction.
The Dallas-based biotechnology business Colossal Biosciences has a vision:
"To see the Woolly Mammoth thunder upon the tundra once more," as a RAPIDLY
ADVANCING climate emergency causes the earth to become much hotter. Peter
Thiel, Tony Robbins, Paris Hilton, Winklevoss Capital, and, based on the
public
portfolio its
venture capital arm revealed this month, the CIA, are just a few of the
notable funders and investors that founders George Church and Ben Lamm have
already amassed.
Colossal claims it plans to employ cutting-edge genetic sequencing to bring
back two ancient creatures, including the gigantic ice age mammoth and the
Tasmanian tiger, a medium-sized marsupial that became extinct less than a
century ago. The firm promises on its
website that it
would "jumpstart nature's ancestral heartbeat by combining the business of
discovery with the science of genetics."
Its new investor, In-Q-Tel, is listed as a CIA-funded nonprofit venture
capital business. The organization appears to support technological firms
with the potential to promote national security. Along with its
long-standing interest in weapons and intelligence technologies, the CIA
unit has recently shown a greater interest in biotechnology, notably DNA
sequencing.
Why is there interest in Colossal, a corporation that was established with
the goal of "de-exterminating" the woolly mammoth and other species? reads a
September 22
blog post
from In-Q-Tel. "Strategically, it's more about capabilities than it is about
the mammoths."
"For mankind to advance, biotechnology and the larger bioeconomy are
essential. All branches of our government must create them and be aware of
what is conceivable, Colossal co-founder Ben Lamm said in an email to The
Intercept. Although Thiel gave Church
$100,000 to start
the woolly mammoth project that became Colossal, he is not a shareholder
like Robbins, Hilton, Winklevoss Capital, and In-Q-Tel, a representative for
Lamm said.
CRISPR gene editing, a technique for genetic engineering based on a
particular kind of naturally existing DNA sequence, is used by Colossal.
Some bacterial cells naturally contain CRISPR sequences, which function as
an immunological defense mechanism and enable the cell to recognize and
remove viral material that tries to penetrate. Similar functionality is
provided by the named gene editing technology, which enables users to remove
undesirable genes and design a genetic code that is more suitable.
Robert Klitzman, a bioethicist at Columbia University and a well-known
voice of warning about genetic engineering, said of CRISPR: "CRISPR is the
use of genetic scissors." "You are replacing some of the
3-billion-molecule-long strand of DNA by cutting off portions of it. With
these editing scissors, you can remove undesirable mutations and insert
beneficial ones, but you may also remove too much.
By adopting this technology, the United States will be able to "help set
the ethical, as well as the technological, standards" for its use, according
to a blog post by In-Q-Tel. This will allow U.S. government agencies to
read, write, and edit genetic material and, more importantly, to control
global biological phenomena that affect "nation-to-nation
competition."
Requests for response from The Intercept were not answered by
In-Q-Tel.
The portfolio of the venture capital firm has grown recently to include
Ginkgo Bioworks, a bioengineering startup with a focus on producing bacteria
for biofuel and other industrial uses, Claremont BioSolutions, a company
that makes DNA sequencing hardware, Biomatrica and T2 Biosystems, two
producers of DNA testing components, and Metabiota, an artificial
intelligence-powered infectious disease mapping and risk analysis database.
In-Q-Tel also invested in Clearista, a skincare company that uses a thin
epidermal layer removal procedure to expose a younger-looking face beneath
it and
allows DNA to be extracted
from the skin cells that are scraped off, as The Intercept revealed in
2016.
When President Joe Biden issued an executive order on biotechnology and
biomanufacturing earlier this month, the Biden administration gave notice
that it prioritized related advancements. In addition to encouraging
public-private cooperation, the order includes instructions to strengthen
biological risk management, increase the availability of products based on
bioenergy, and "engage the international community to enhance biotechnology
R&D cooperation in a way that is consistent with United States
principles and values."
The government's affinity for contentious biotechnology precedes the Biden
administration by a considerable margin. In spite of a 1972 international
convention banning them, American defense agencies under Presidents George
W. Bush and Bill Clinton continued to experiment with biological weapons,
according to a 2001 New York Times
investigation. When The Guardian
reported
in 2011 that the CIA had staged a phony Hepatitis B vaccination push in
Pakistan in order to track down Osama bin Laden's relatives through forcible
DNA collection, the agency
finally made a commitment to stop conducting fraudulent vaccination drives.
The 2020 program known as "CIA Labs," which is being directed by Gina
Haspel, the CIA director under Donald Trump who is notorious for overseeing
a
torture facility in Thailand, is based on In-Q-Tel. The initiative allowed participating CIA
personnel to directly profit
from their research and patents while simultaneously fostering a research
network to nurture elite talent and technologies for use across U.S. defense
organizations.
Board members of In-Q-Tel are
permitted
to serve on the boards of the businesses that the firm invests in, which
raises ethical questions about how the non-profit chooses which businesses
to support with public funds. According to a 2016 Wall Street Journal
investigation, over half of In-Q-board Tel's members had ties to the
businesses in which it had invested.
Colossal won't disclose the level of In-Q-ownership Tel's until the
publication of its financial results the following year, but the investment
might be advantageous based on reputation alone: According to In-Q-Tel,
every dollar it invests in a company brings in an additional $15 from other
investors.
The two co-founders of Colossal, Lamm and Church, stand in for the
company's commercial and scientific minds, respectively. Lamm, a
self-described "serial technology entrepreneur," started his first business
as a senior in college before shifting to mobile apps and artificial
intelligence before assisting in the founding of Colossal.
Church, a Harvard biologist, pioneer of
genome-based dating apps, and former
Jeffrey Epstein grantee, has previously suggested bringing back extinct animals.
Speaking to Der Spiegel in 2013, Church proposed the resurrected Neanderthal, a controversial proposal
given the need for human cloning technology.
It's quite conceivable that we could clone a human, according to Church,
who added that we can clone all types of animals. "Why can't we do that?,"
you ask. The interviewer brought up the prohibition on human cloning, and
Church said, "And laws may change, by the way."
Many scientists are dubious about de-promise, extinction's even when the
techniques utilized are lawful. A team of scientists from Canada, Australia,
and New Zealand discovered in a 2017
publication
for Nature Ecology & Evolution that "[s]pending limited resources on
de-extinction might lead to net biodiversity loss."
When Colossal announced that it would invest $10 million in the University
of Melbourne for its Tasmanian tiger project over the summer, Jeremy Austin,
a University of Adelaide professor and the director of the Australian Center
for Ancient DNA,
told
the Sydney Morning Herald that "de-extinction is a fairytale science."
People like myself can see very clearly that the de-extinction of the woolly
mammoth or thylacine is more about garnering media attention for the experts
and less about conducting rigorous research.
"Critics who assert that it is impossible to revive extinct genes in order
to produce proxy species are just uninformed and ignorant of the science.
The development of technology that we think will be helpful to both human
healthcare and conservation has been a goal of ours since day one, according
to Lamm, who wrote to The Intercept. The sharing of the technology we
produce with the rest of the world will continue.
It will be interesting to see if Colossal can deliver on its claims with
In-Q-support. Tel's Furthermore, it's unclear exactly what the use of CRISPR
may contribute to the intelligence community. However, it's possible that
the CIA concurs with the firm's noble, though nebulous, objectives: "To
advance the economy of biology and health through genetics. to improve the
human condition. And to resurrect the planet's extinct wilds. to allow
ourselves and the earth to breathe more easily.
