The Author is Former Director General of Information Systems and A Special Forces Veteran, Indian Army

The use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) by the Israeli Defence Force for targeting and killing Palestinians suspected to be Hamas was covered in these columns recently. The 'Lavender' software programme was developed by Unit 8200 (an intelligence division of the IDF) to mark suspected operatives in the military wings of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) as potential targets, including low-ranking individuals. The software analyses data collected through mass surveillance on most of Gaza's 2.3 million residents, assessing and ranking likelihood of each person's involvement militant activities, awarding a rating of 1 to 100, indicating their likelihood of being a militant for potential airstrikes. The programme was adopted despite the AI machine having an error rate of 10 per cent.

Profiling implies the use of personal data to evaluate certain characteristics of an individual, such as their work performance, economic situation, health, personal preferences, interests, reliability, behaviour, location, or movement. Data collection could include religion, caste, and association with organisations, political leanings, genetic and biometric data, mental and physical health, sex life, sexual orientation and the like. However, the use of profiling and automated decision-making also raises concerns about privacy and discrimination – read the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

India passed the Digital Personnel Data Protection (DPDP) Act on August 9, 2023, applying to the governing of how entities who process digital personal data. The DPDP Act built upon its predecessor, the Digital Personal Data Protection Bill, 2022 released in November, 2022. The DPDP Act 2023 came into effect on September 1, 2023, and it applies to all organisations that process personal data of individuals in India.

The Israeli Defence Force employs Artificial Intelligence (AI) through the 'Lavender' software to target and eliminate suspected operatives of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, despite a 10 percent error rate.

But articles appeared opining that the DPDP Act, being full of holes; it can't ensure personal data protection and even is inadequate to protect national interests. Now Whatsapp has threatened to leave India due to encryption issues.

Most countries engage in profiling, especially those facing terrorism. Biometric data like facial images, and fingerprints can lead to accurate identification of individuals and suspected terrorists using fake identity, thereby improving efforts to locate terrorists and undertake successful investigations and prosecutions. Then comes the phenomenon of spying on the public given the quality of politicians around the world and their quest to manipulate elections. India also acquired the 'Pegasus' spyware developed by the NSO Group of Israel.

China has one of the most extensive DNA profiling programme in the world. The Genetics Laboratory of the Institute of Forensic Sciences was the first DNA analysis unit established in China, founded in 1987 that began examining case evidence in 1989. It is China's central and main DNA profiling laboratory. On December 30, 2022, China's Ministry of Commerce published a proposed version of the Catalogue of Technologies Prohibited and Restricted from Export (Proposed Catalogue) for public comment, adding human cell cloning and gene editing technology to the prohibited list, and certain biotechnology used in drugs.

Germine gene editing is allowed in China for research but implanting genetically engineered embryos or allowing them to develop beyond 14 days is prohibited. Notably, without public consent, Chinese authorities have put genetic information into nationally searchable databases, which may already contain more than 140 DNA profiles of the Chinese population. The scale of such genomic surveillance is unprecedented in the world.

India enacted the Digital Personnel Data Protection (DPDP) Act in 2023 to govern the processing of digital personal data, though criticisms about its efficacy have arisen, leading to concerns such as encryption issues with WhatsApp.

But something more sinister has emerged recently, in that, China's communist regime is harvesting DNA en masse to create a global genetic database that it can use to produce weapons and new forms of surveillance. This revelation of China's genomic ambitions came during the hearing on March 7, 2024, of the US House Select Committee on Strategic Competition with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) on the subject of bioeconomy and national security.

Committee Chair Mike Gallagher said, "The CCP has made domination in biotech and genetic sciences a $9 billion dollar national priority. It's executing a plan to build a DNA database on every man, woman, and child on the planet. The database includes Americans, whose DNA they're collecting with large cyber hacks, corporate acquisitions, and other methods to include the collection of DNA from 8 million pregnant women globally."

Gallagher referred to Chinese genomics company 'BGI', which maintains links to the PLA and offers a parental screening test to women globally. That test collects the DNA of both mother and fetus and sends the data back to China. In addition to PLA efforts to leverage genetic data for engineering new weapons and surveillance technologies, the CCP is building devices to measure and affect the brainwaves of Party officers, as well as other types of genetic modification.

The CCP is thought to be conducting human experiments to develop better soldiers – reminiscent of the Nazi race experimented by Adolf Hitler. According to some reports, China is even researching mind-reading software to ensure CCP officials remain loyal to the Party. This relates to the US intelligence made public in 2021, which found that the CCP was engaged in the development of "brain-control weaponry"; believed to include gene-editing efforts and brain–machine interfacing processes designed to make people more loyal to the CCP and communist ideology.

The CCP's aggressive pursuit of dominance in biotechnology, including genetic sciences, is viewed as a strategic move to surpass the US and impose its values globally, with implications for future conflicts and the clash of civilisations.

The US view is that allowing China to dominate the bio-economy would be tantamount to allowing the CCP to etch the ideology of communism into humanity itself, imposing its values on the very genetic fabric of humankind. It was also opined that as the sector advances at an astronomical pace, the country who wins the race will be able to set the ethical standards around how these technologies are used. But here the question is, have setting global rules and norms for terrorism, nuclear proliferation, chemical convention and weaponisation of space 'stopped' global powers and rogue states from pursuing these?

Tara O'Toole, senior fellow at In-Q-Tel, a venture capital firm that supports US intelligence agencies, said, "China has explicitly vowed to dominate the bio-revolution and is aggressively pursuing comprehensive and ambitious strategies to accomplish this. We have to assume that every Chinese company is linked to the CCP and possibly to the PLA if they're doing research relevant to the military. He testified that the CCP considers biotechnologies as an essential front in its effort to solve economic, health, and food scarcity crises, as well as "to surpass the power and influence of the US.

Finally, monitoring capabilities apart, it is important to visualise what will be the genetic weaponry that China is developing, how this will assist China in global domination, how this would affect future asymmetric, conventional, semi-nuclear conflicts and the clash of civilisation?