Brandon Weichert has written a scary book—most likely on purpose. A geopolitical analyst and prolific writer, he has been described as a “panic-and-anxiety inducing scholar.” In Biohacked: China’s Race to Control Life, he fulfills that description. The Chinese military-political-biotechnology threat, he reports, is abroad, among us, and even living next door. 

Weichert says the United States has made itself vulnerable to China’s emerging dominance in the biotechnology field. This leads him to imagine all sorts of possible attack scenarios, ranging from a bioweapon that targets specific Americans for assassination based on their DNA, to a more traditional weapon that causes a pandemic and kills people indiscriminately. In reference to the latter, Weichert suggests that COVID was just a trial run. He also raises the possibility of China cloning millions of soldiers with special abilities to defeat our armies. Even short of an outright attack, China has many other ways to inflict damage, he says. Chinese biotechnology companies already have access to the medical data of millions of Americans. This can be used to track them, threaten them, or blackmail them. Even fingerprints can be copied, enabling the Chinese to impersonate anyone, potentially throwing the government and society at large into turmoil.

All this sounds kind of nutty—unless, of course, it all happens, in which case it isn’t nutty. Until then, which is it?

I come down on the side of more nutty, not less. In much of the book, Weichert pushes his conspiratorial theme too far. For example, in his chapter titled, “Biological 9/11,” before he launches into a long, ten-page screed about how China might have intentionally caused the COVID pandemic, he offers a couple of short disclaimers: “While evidence supporting the lab leak hypothesis is scarce, it does exist.” But then, just before he dives into his screed—so long and detailed that readers might assume it’s all fact unless they happened to read the disclaimer—he says, “But, if you’ll allow me, I’d like to spend a few pages conjecturing.” This smacks of false advertising: “China attacked America; here’s what happened; let’s get ready for war—oh, but first read the fine print.” 

Is President Xi Jinping a madman willing to risk the attacks that Weichert describes? Weichert seems to think so. In his imagination, the COVID pandemic may have been a vast conspiracy on the part of the Chinese government to take down Trump, because Trump was too effective an opponent. It was also a way to weed out the weak and the elderly from the Chinese population, two groups, Weichert says, “that China’s rulers historically view as burdens on their society and its readiness for war.” Such madness and cruelty would indeed make “the new total war,” as Weichert describes it, plausible. But is it true? For Weichert’s purposes, perhaps it doesn’t matter. Whether they will it or not, Weichert’s readers will be inclined to start thinking and calculating in terms of a new dimension. He opens the possibility that China has already attacked America, but before the brain even has time to digest the claim and consider the veracity of his charge, the readers’ emotions have already suffered a metamorphosis, leaving the spirit anxious and hostile. They become vehemently suspicious of China, which is perhaps what Weichert wanted to accomplish.

In another example of overreach, Weichert says it was foolish for the United States to copy China’s harsh response to the pandemic, including the severe lockdowns. It serves as another example of the American failure to recognize the Chinese threat, he says. Yet the reader is confused as to how copying a failed Chinese policy ties into the issue of China threatening the US through biohacking and stealing secrets. Weichert seems to be strategically redirecting our attention here by picking a fight over the side issue of lockdowns, which has nothing to do with the Chinese biotech threat.

The same thing occurs in a chapter where Weichert describes the dangers of biotech research in general. He focuses primarily on the risks posed by the new CRISPR technology that lets scientists edit DNA sequences through a “cut and paste” tool. He talks about the bad things that might happen because of this research, such as the genetic engineering of the human race. China is not really mentioned. Then, in the chapter’s last paragraph, he suddenly introduces China, implying that all the bad things just discussed will happen because of China. Indeed, he says in this paragraph that American biotech companies may even take on the characteristics of the Chinese Communist Party. How did China suddenly get pulled into this matter?

Sometimes Weichert may simply have misinterpreted events. For instance, he describes how the crew of the aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt was unnecessarily exposed to COVID when it docked in Vietnam, leading to an outbreak on board that incapacitated the ship. The ship was supposed to be there for an important reception. It was part of America’s larger geopolitical strategy to bring Vietnam into the coalition to help contain China. Despite being aware that COVID infections had already been detected in Da Nang, the Theodore Roosevelt arrived as planned. As a result, many crew members fell ill from COVID, and one person died. The ship was practically incapacitated. According to Weichert’s interpretation of events, the ship’s captain did all this because he believed the US was not at war—in other words, the captain risked the ship’s safety to attend a reception in Da Nang because he was lighthearted about the risk, and perhaps didn’t think it would be a problem if a few sailors got sick. But this may not be the correct interpretation. On the contrary, I have been told through my own network that the Theodore Roosevelt went to Da Nang despite the risk of COVID, because doing so was viewed as a wartime duty. Vietnam is a key ally in the containment of China. The reception had been planned long before. Vietnam might have interpreted the Theodore Roosevelt’s failure to show up as a sign that the Americans did not take the alliance all that seriously, which would have posed a serious threat to American strategy. Weichert may have it completely wrong.

Reading Weichert’s book won’t help us deal with the China threat, because readers will wonder whether they are being played by Weichert. Rather than feel anxious and nervous about China, readers simply won’t know how they should feel. He had to do better, for several reasons.

Weichert alludes to a deeper cultural issue in a chapter titled “Bionationalism vs. Bioglobalism.” Simply put, a large part of America’s intellectual elite do not see the Chinese threat because they do not see the Chinese nation-state. They don’t even see the American nation-state. Increasingly they think in globalist terms. In Weichert’s words, many Americans believe in “borderless” science—in bioglobalism—which, he says, is “going to get us all killed if we’re not careful.” Other major currents of thinking in American society are equally “borderless.” Science is global. Capitalism is global. Environmentalism is global. Belief in uncontrolled immigration is global. Our culture of expressive individualism, captured in countless movies, books, and songs, is global. All these opinions are held by a large chunk of the American elite.

The nation-state is increasingly viewed by them as an anachronism, and something that will wither away if properly ignored. It is why patriotism today is often mocked. It is why the history of America’s founding is often dismissed as something not worth teaching, or, when taught, is often taught from a highly critical perspective. An American student these days has a good chance of emerging from our educational system thinking that the country was a mistake from the moment the Pilgrims landed. China, in contrast, thinks nationally. Although communism is international, as is capitalism, that ideology doesn’t seem particularly operative in China these days. 

All this means that China can engage in plenty of nefarious activity, which Weichert documents, and Americans won’t see it. That might be because they don’t want to see it, but also because they no longer see nation-states as significant entities in the world. 

China’s Thousand Talents Program, Weichert reports, inserts Chinese scientists into sensitive workplaces in the US, and even recruits American scientists with the goal of transferring American technology to China. Weichert describes in detail the theft of American scientific research that arises as a result, which includes an interesting story of a spy caught red-handed with computer drives while preparing to board a secret charter plane in Alaska, en route to China. The stealing is real. The spying is real. Even today, this program continues to operate. Meanwhile, joint biotech research ventures continue to go forward. Ironically, this is often because the Chinese nation-state is so nefarious. When the US government restricts what American scientists can do, those scientists often offload the unethical stuff onto Chinese labs, where the research gets conducted. 

The American scientists think globally. From their perspective, the American nation-state is an impediment and a nuisance, and something to get around. They don’t see the Chinese nation-state using unethical research methods as a harbinger of more dangerous activity to come, and that might threaten the nation-state in which they live.

Weichert is at his best when describing such activity. He has done some serious investigative journalism. But given the thinking that prevails within a large section of the American elite, including among foreign policy professionals, scientists, and business CEOs, his journalism is not enough to make America go on a war footing against China, especially when he undercuts his argument in so many other places. Weichert does connect some dots and shows how there might be something of a grand design in all this. But not enough to make one lose any sleep over it. 

Seventy years ago, when trying to rouse support in the US to fight the Cold War, an American politician reportedly said, “We have to scare the hell out of the American people.” After reading Weichert’s book, I’m afraid I’m still not that scared.