Natalie Winters from The National Pulse broke the news this past weekend that BGI Genomics, flagged by U.S. officials as “mining” the DNA of Americans, collaborated extensively with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
Winters went on The War Room on Monday.
Bill and Melinda Gates took several trips to China to visit the BGI Genomics.
The National Pulse reported:
BGI Genomics—the Chinese Communist Party-linked genomics firm flagged by U.S. officials as “mining” the DNA of Americans—has collaborated extensively with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, The National Pulse can reveal.
The company has recently come under fire following a 60 Minutes exposé on the company’s use of COVID-19 tests to “collect, store and exploit biometric information” on American citizens, according to former U.S. intelligence officials. What’s more, a recent Reuters article linked the firm to the Chinese Communist Party’s military.
In addition to the Obama administration enabling the firm to gain a foothold in the U.S., the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation played a critical role in BGI’s American expansion.
In September of 2012, the Microsoft founder’s foundation signed a “Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to form a collaboration on global health and agricultural development with the goal of achieving common objectives in health and agricultural development.”
The co-founder of BGI praised the agreement, celebrating the forthcoming “scientific breakthroughs in the areas of human, plant and animal genomics.” He also revealed that the collaborative efforts focused on sequencing genomes—the precise activity flagged for national security threats in the 60 Minutes segment.