Chinese Covid-19 Tests Were Pushed by Federal Agencies Despite Security Warnings Jan. 13, 2021 5:30 am ET

U.S. intelligence officials have said publicly that BGI products pose privacy risks

At least two federal agencies worked to distribute Covid-19 tests from a Chinese genetics company, despite warnings about security risks from U.S. intelligence and security officials, according to interviews and documents obtained by The Wall Street Journal. In the early days of the virus, BGI Group or people trying to distribute its products approached at least 11 states in a sometimes aggressive push to get the products into government-run laboratories or set up entire labs, according to people who received the approaches and documents. BGI, China’s leading genetics company, enlisted a foundation tied to a former U.S. president and used a company linked to the United Arab Emirates’ top spy to promote its efforts. A prominent New York real-estate lawyer threatened to complain to California’s governor if state health officials there didn’t use BGI’s tests. Some of the company’s testing supplies were used in Nevada, according to the head of the state’s Covid-19 task force. BGI has tried in the past to get into the U.S. market and has sold testing equipment to U.S. private labs that advertise their work for government clients.

In March, an FBI special agent who monitors biotech threats for the Department of Health and Human Services told an HHS advisory committee that government agencies should be wary of doing business with the company, which, he said, had a history of misusing personal data. The agent, Ed You, echoed warnings from other law-enforcement, security and military-intelligence officials. They say gene-sequencing machines that BGI was trying to sell to U.S. labs can be used to catalog patients’ DNA, raising privacy risks. The Covid-19 test kits that federal agencies promoted don’t pose the same risk, but intelligence officials say they are concerned that BGI will parlay the testing kits into a bigger role in the laboratories. “BGI has undoubtedly taken advantage of the Covid-19 pandemic to expand its reach around the world, including the United States,” Bill Evanina, director of the U.S. government’s National Counterintelligence and Security Center, said. A BGI spokesperson said that in the U.S. the company has sold only its Covid-19 tests authorized by the Food and Drug Administration. “BGI has never proposed or established any clinical laboratories for genome sequencing or Covid-19 testing,” the spokesperson said. BGI laboratories were proposed in Nevada and California, but by a representative for a BGI partner. “It is necessary to understand BGI does not have access to either patient samples or test data,” the spokesman said.

A senior U.S. official who has been tracking BGI said the company has grown quickly in part by providing equipment at low or no cost. In some cases, that official says, genomics data collected by the equipment gets stored on systems made by Huawei Technologies Co., a Chinese company that the U.S. government has called a security risk. “It’s not about market share for economic gain. It’s about market share for the sake of data,” the official said. Huawei has repeatedly denied that it is a security risk. BGI, formerly known as Beijing Genomics Institute, is based in the Chinese city of Shenzhen and specializes in gene sequencing. The company plays an important role in China’s efforts to be a global leader in genomics. BGI administers the China National Gene Bank, a giant genomic database funded by the Chinese government. The U.S. Commerce Department sanctioned two of BGI’s subsidiaries earlier this year, saying they provided technology to collect and catalog the DNA profiles of China’s persecuted Uighur population. In a response to the sanctions, BGI said one of the subsidiaries, Beijing Liuhe BGI, did no work that includes “personally identifiable information or violations of privacy or human rights” and that the second, Xinjiang Silk Road BGI, hadn’t conducted any actual business. Since the start of the pandemic, China has sent medical equipment and doctors to numerous countries to spread its influence and deflect criticism of its early handling of the coronavirus, according to U.S. officials. While U.S. intelligence officials tried to keep BGI’s products out of the country, other parts of the government were doing the opposite. The FDA granted emergency-use authorization to BGI Americas, the company’s U.S. subsidiary, for its Covid-19 test. The FDA declined to comment.

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