大国角力的新领域:基因数据

There are not many agents in the Federal Bureau of Investigation like Ed You. In a workforce that cultivates anonymity, his clean-shaven head gleams. While most of his colleagues are notoriously tight-lipped, Mr You is the chatty star of technology conferences such as South-by-Southwest and DEFCON.

在美国联邦调查局(FBI)，没有很多特工像埃德?尤(Ed You)那样。在这个鼓励工作人员让自己看上去平淡无奇的工作环境中，他那剃得锃亮的光头十分抢眼。尽管他的多数同事都是出了名的口风严密，但尤却是科技会议上健谈的明星，例如西南偏南大会(South-by-Southwest)和拉斯维加斯国际黑客大会(DEFCON)。

He is also at the forefront of a potential dispute between the US and China, which could have implications for both commercial relations between the world’s two biggest economies and for the future of biomedical research.

他还处在一场中美潜在争端的前沿，这场争端可能对这两个全球最大经济体的商业关系以及生物医学研究的未来产生影响。

The high profile that Mr You has adopted is part of an unusual FBI campaign to highlight the risks in America’s headlong pursuit to unlock the secrets of the human genome. A supervisory special agent in the bureau’s biological countermeasures unit, Mr You warns that the US is not protecting the genomic data used to create lucrative new medicines — but which can also be used to develop fearsome bioweapons.

尤的高调作风是FBI一项不同寻常的行动的一部分，该行动的目的是突出美国仓促寻求破解人类基因组秘密的风险。作为FBI生物对策部门一位负责监管的特工，尤警告称，美国没有保护用来制造有利可图的新药的基因组数据，而这些数据可能还被用来开发可怕的生化武器。

“We don’t know how much bio data has left our shores,” he says. “Our concept for biological security needs to be broadened.”

“我们不知道有多少生物数据流到了国外，”他表示，“我们对生物学安全的概念需要扩大。”

That has led him to focus on China, which the veteran lawman says is gaining access to US genomic data — the biological software that governs human organisms. In recent years, Chinese investors have purchased stakes in, or partnered with, US biomedical companies that specialise in genomics. At the same time, state-sponsored hackers believed to be Chinese have penetrated the laboratories, health insurers and hospitals where other valuable patient records reside. Mr You suggests stricter controls might be needed on what sort of health data can be transferred overseas — to China and elsewhere.

这让他关注中国，这位经验丰富的执法者表示，中国正获取美国基因组数据，即管理人体组织的生物软件。最近几年，中国投资者购入专门研究基因组的美国生物医学公司的股权或与它们合作。同时，据信为中国人的、由政府资助的黑客潜入了存放其他重要患者记录的实验室、健康保险公司和医院。尤认为，在哪些健康数据可以转移到海外（中国和其他国家）方面，可能需要加强控制。

Nearly two decades after the first human genome was decoded, the field is one of the most exciting in biomedical research — and one that relies on an open network of international collaboration.

在第一个人类基因组被解密近20年后，该领域成为生物医学研究最令人兴奋的领域之一，它依赖开放的国际合作网络。

But it is also the latest area where national security questions — about Chinese objectives and the links between its companies and the state — are leading to calls for important sectors of the US economy to be ringfenced.

但也正是在这一领域，国家安全问题（有关中国的目的以及中国企业与政府的关系）正使得一些人发出保护美国经济重要行业的呼声。

Since the 2017 decision to bar Huawei from selling into parts of the US telecoms infrastructure market, America has blocked Chinese acquisitions of a wind turbine company in Oregon, a California cloud computing firm, and the US-based division of a German semiconductor maker. The Pentagon has raised concerns about Chinese investment in artificial intelligence.

自2017年美国禁止华为(Huawei)进入美国电信基础设施市场部分领域以来，美国阻止了中国企业收购一家俄勒冈州风力涡轮公司、一家加州云计算公司以及一家德国半导体制造商在美国的分公司。美国国防部对中国在人工智能领域的投资感到担忧。

Traditionally, the FBI’s weapons of mass destruction directorate has concentrated on preventing toxins such as Ebola or anthrax from falling into the wrong hands — and contributing to the spread of new germ weapons.

FBI的大规模杀伤性武器部门传统上主要关注防范埃博拉(Ebola)或炭疽病毒等病毒落入不法分子手中并导致新的细菌武器扩散。

Now, the bureau fears that digital data sets may prove just as lethal. The concerns about large volumes of US genetic data being scooped up help explain why a law enforcement agency is tracking the potential loss of US competitive advantage. “The economic impact is the principal near-term threat — the monetisation of large data sets,” says Mr You.

如今FBI担心，事实可能证明，数字数据集也具有同样的杀伤力。对美国大量基因数据正被大肆收集的担忧，有助于解释为何一家执法机构要追踪美国竞争优势的潜在丧失。尤表示：“经济影响是主要的近期威胁：大规模数据集的变现。”

Some observers believe the US government is right to ask questions about the implications of Chinese investment in genomics. “I’ve never seen an agency, the FBI, come out of the woodwork like this,” said Michael Wessel, a member of the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission, a congressionally-chartered advisory body. “This is a critical area that needs a lot more attention?.?.?.?It’s a real threat.”

一些观察人士认为，美国政府就中国在基因组领域投资的影响提出疑问是正确之举。“我从未看到过FBI突然冒出来这么做，”美国国会批准创建的顾问组织——美中经济与安全评估委员会(US-China Economic and Security Review Commission)成员迈克尔?韦赛尔(Michael Wessel)表示，“这个关键领域需要更多关注……这是真正的威胁。”

Others worry that it would be damaging for the US to put up excessive barriers to Chinese biomedical investment. Dan Rosen, founding partner at the Rhodium Group in New York, points out that China has invested more than $3.2bn in the US biotech and pharmaceuticals sector over the past five years — cash that often brings with it talented Chinese scientists. In some disciplines, such as large-scale, low-cost gene sequencing, China leads the US. If Chinese companies become less welcome in the US, he says, they will go elsewhere.

另有一些人担心，美国对中国生物医学投资设置过多障碍将是破坏性的。纽约荣鼎咨询(Rhodium Group)创始合伙人丹?罗森(Dan Rosen)指出，过去5年，中国在美国生物技术和制药领域投资逾32亿美元，随之而来的往往是优秀的中国科学家。在一些领域，例如大规模低成本基因测序领域，中国领先于美国。他表示，如果中国公司在美国变得不那么受欢迎，他们会到别处去。

“I don’t think drawing a line around biotech and calling the entire industry a critical sector is going to do the trick,” said Mr Rosen. “We’re going to have to maintain the ability to look at investments case by case.”

“我认为围绕生物技术划定界限并把整个行业称为关键行业不会达到目的，”罗森表示，“我们必须能够继续对投资具体情况具体分析。”

The promise of genomics is a new era of precision targeted drugs that make traditional one-size-fits-all medicine look like a second world war dumb bomb. But treatments that are customised for a patient’s individual genetic make-up remain in their early stages.

基因组研究有望带来精准靶向药物的新时代，这种药物使传统的通用药物看起来就像是二战时的傻瓜炸弹。但针对病人个人基因组的定制治疗方案仍然处于早期阶段。

Both the US, the acknowledged global leader, and China are pursuing personalised treatments for diseases such as cancer, cystic fibrosis or Alzheimer’s. China last year unveiled a $9bn 15-year research initiative, dwarfing an Obama-era plan that earmarked $215m for the National Institutes of Health.

美国（目前公认的全球领头羊）和中国都在积极研究癌症、囊性纤维化和阿尔茨海默症(Alzheimer's)等疾病的个人化治疗。去年中国公布了一项90亿美元的15年研究计划，令奥巴马时代为美国国家卫生研究院(NIH)拨款2.15亿美元的计划相形见绌。

DNA science has leapfrogged since 2000 when the human genome was first sequenced. What once required years of work and cost billions of dollars now takes less than a week and costs just $1,000. The US is gathering genetic data from more than 1m volunteers, so that automated lab systems can investigate how individual genes interact.

自从2000年首次对人类基因组测序后，DNA科学呈现飞跃式发展。曾经需要花费数年时间、数十亿美元的工作，如今用1000美元不到一周就能搞定。美国正在从逾100万名志愿者收集基因数据，以便自动化实验室系统可以研究个人基因如何相互作用。

“The first problem is having access to data?.?.?.?You need a lot of data,” says Eleonore Pauwels at the Wilson Center in Washington.

“第一个问题是数据……你需要很多数据，”位于华盛顿的威尔逊中心(Wilson Center)的埃莱奥诺雷?保韦尔斯(Eleonore Pauwels)表示。

Beijing’s ambitions in this area have led some Chinese companies to go on the acquisition trail — especially in the US. In January, for example, iCarbonX of Shenzhen, which aims to create personalised health treatments by combining AI with large pools of genetic data, invested more than $100m in PatientsLikeMe. The US company says it is the world’s largest personalised health network with more than 500,000 individuals sharing their medical details. PatientsLikeMe, based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, says that its data are anonymised and retained on US-based servers.

北京方面在该领域的野心使得一些中国企业走上收购之路——特别是在美国。例如，1月深圳的碳云智能（iCarbonX，旨在把人工智能和大型基因数据库结合起来以打造个性化健康治疗方案）向PatientsLikeMe投资逾1亿美元。这家美国公司自称全球最大的个性化健康网，逾50万人在此分享了医疗细节。位于马萨诸塞州坎布里奇的PatientsLikeMe表示，其数据是匿名的，存放在美国境内的服务器。

That kind of data — stored in 100 gigabyte to 1 terabyte digital files — could be used to develop new drugs. Laboratories gather enormous numbers of such files, then combine them with detailed demographic, diet, health and lifestyle records. Supercomputers search for patterns, identifying genetic malfunctions and suggesting new remedies.

这类数据——储存在100 GB到1TB的文件内——可以用于研发新药物。实验室收集海量此类数据，之后把它们与详细的人口统计、饮食习惯、健康和生活方式等记录数据相结合。超级计算机寻找规律，识别基因缺陷并提供新的治疗建议。

The same data sets can, however, be used to develop bioweapons. The FBI, which first raised its biomedicine concerns in late 2017, has not officially offered any policy recommendations. Mr You, who has a masters degree in biochemistry and molecular biology, suggests tightening regulations on health records to make it harder to transfer them overseas.

然而，同样的数据集也可以用于研发生物武器。FBI于2017年末首次提出对生物医学的担忧，目前尚未正式提出政策建议。拥有生物化学和分子生物学硕士学位的尤建议，收紧健康记录方面的法规，使之更难转移到海外。

Although most of the Trump administration’s top science jobs are vacant, Mr You insists the FBI’s concerns are “starting to get more traction” inside government.

尽管特朗普政府在科技领域的大多数高级职位目前仍处于空缺，但尤坚持认为FBI的顾虑已经开始在政府内“产生更大影响”。

Outside Washington, views are mixed. “I don’t think he’s an alarmist. He’s raising some questions that need to be asked and answered,” says Ben Shobert, senior associate at the National Bureau of Asian Research.

政府之外，人们的看法不一。“我不认为他是杞人忧天。他提出了一些需要提出和回答的问题，”美国国家亚洲研究局(National Bureau of Asian Research)高级研究员本?肖伯特(Ben Shobert)表示。

But Bernard Munos, senior fellow at the Milken Institute’s FasterCures, says the bureau’s concerns are exaggerated. “What they can steal from us is data,” he says of competitors. “Data are a necessary ingredient, but not sufficient. You need bright people who are going to extract knowledge from that data and from that knowledge imagine potential new treatments. At the moment, the capabilities of the Chinese to do that are limited.”

但麦肯研究院(Milken Institute) FasterCures中心的高级研究员伯纳德?穆尼奥斯(Bernard Munos)称，FBI的担忧夸张了。“他们能从我们这里偷的是数据，”他这样说竞争对手，“数据是必要条件，但不是充分条件。你需要聪明人从数据中提取知识，再根据知识设想可能的新疗法。现在，中国人实现这一点的能力有限。”

FBI officials recognise that science is a global endeavour that would wither if confined within national borders.

FBI官员意识到，科学是一项全球努力，如果局限在国界线内，这项努力将会凋敝。

The US Human Genome Project, for instance, would have taken far longer without help from the UK, Germany, France, Japan and China. And roughly 40 per cent of the biomedical scientists in the US hail from China or India, according to Mr Munos.

例如，如果没有英国、德国、法国、日本和中国的帮助，美国人类基因组计划(Human Genome Project)会耗费更长时间。穆尼奥斯表示，美国约40%的生物医学科学家来自中国或印度。

“US biomedical research could hardly function today without this contingent of people,” he says. “The collaboration is an essential part.”

“如果没有这些人，美国生物医学研究今天很难运转，”他表示，“合作是必不可少的部分。”

That’s why cross-border deals so far have faced few objections. In 2013, the US government’s committee on foreign investment (Cfius) approved BGI-Shenzhen’s purchase of Complete Genomics in California, which has sequenced more than 20,000 human genomes.

这就是迄今为止跨境收购几乎没有遭到反对的原因。2013年，美国政府外国投资委员会(Cfius)批准了深圳华大基因(BGI-Shenzhen)收购位于加州的完整基因公司(Complete Genomics)。后者对超过2万个人类基因组进行了测序。

Today such a deal might be rejected, says Mr Wessel, a member of the US-China Commission. One reason is a lack of reciprocity. Even as Chinese groups take stakes in US biomedical companies, Chinese regulations prevent foreign companies from taking genetic data out of China, according to Mr Shobert.

美中经济与安全评估委员会成员韦赛尔表示，如今这样的交易可能遭到否决。其中一个原因是缺少互惠性。肖伯特表示，尽管中国企业持股了美国生物医学公司，但中国法规不允许外国企业将基因数据带出中国。

Cfius also does not track most foreign loans, non-controlling investments of less than 10 per cent — such as the iCarbonX deal — or stakes in start-ups.

美国外国投资委员会也不跟踪大部分的外国贷款、股份不足10%的非控股性投资——比如碳云智能的收购——或对初创企业的入股。

“That’s what’s scaring the crap out of the FBI,” says Mr Rosen. “That the most early-stage interesting stuff, the stuff happening in garages, could get sort of infiltrated with Chinese money.”

“最初期的有趣的东西，在车库里研究的东西，可能被中国的资金渗透，这可把FBI吓坏了，”罗森表示。

In Congress, Senator John Cornyn, a member of the Republican leadership, plans to introduce legislation to expand government reviews of foreign investments to include joint ventures and other technology company acquisitions. “The status quo on investment from China is simply unsustainable,” Mr Cornyn said at a June Council on Foreign Relations event.

在国会，共和党领导层成员、参议员约翰?康宁(John Cornyn)计划引入立法，将政府审核外国投资的范围扩大到合资企业和其他技术公司收购。“中国投资的现状是不可持续的，”康宁在美国外交关系委员会(Council on Foreign Relations) 6月一次活动中表示。

Cross-border deals are not the only risks to US genetic data. The healthcare industry is notoriously vulnerable to cyber attacks. Though most public attention to date has centred on identity theft or pilfered credit card details, patient medical records are even more valuable, says Mr You. Some recent hacks involved “actual penetration and acquisition of clinical data”, he told the US-China commission in March.

跨境收购不是美国基因数据面临的唯一风险。医疗行业出了名的容易受到网络攻击。尤表示，尽管迄今为止大多数公众关注都集中在身份盗用或信用卡信息被盗上，但病人医疗记录往往更易被窃取。他3月向美中经济与安全评估委员会表示，最近一些黑客事件涉及“真正渗透和获取临床数据”。

In December, hackers infiltrated Quest Diagnostics, which boasts the world’s largest clinical lab database, and gained access to 34,000 patient records, including laboratory results.

去年12月，黑客潜入探索诊断公司(Quest Diagnostics)得到了3.4万份病人记录，其中包括实验室成果。该公司自诩拥有全世界最大的临床实验室数据库。

Although there is no evidence of foreign involvement in that episode, hackers who US officials believe were operating on behalf of the Chinese government broke into Anthem’s networks in 2017 and spent a year rummaging through records of 78.8m customers, California regulators said in announcing a January settlement with the insurer.

尽管没有证据表明外国势力参与此次事件，但加州监管部门在1月宣布与保险商Anthem达成的和解方案时表示，美国官员认为代表中国政府的黑客于2017年攻入了Anthem的网络，并且花了一年的时间翻遍了7880万客户的记录。

“The healthcare industry in general is far less secure than many other industries and sectors out there. So the ability for a determined actor to get access to that type of information is certainly feasible if they’re motivated to do so,” says Charles Carmakal, vice-president at Mandiant, a cyber security company. “We just haven’t seen it yet.”

“总体上，医疗保健行业远没有其他很多行业和部门安全。因此，如果下定决心的行动者有动力的话，他们的能力肯定足以获得此类信息，”网络安全公司曼迪昂特(Mandiant)的副总裁查尔斯?卡玛卡尔(Charles Carmakal)表示，“我们只是还没遇到罢了。”

Meanwhile, national security risks loom. The US government has long invested in defences against about 60 pathogens and 10 toxins that pose a “severe” health risk, including the Ebola virus, the H1N1 flu virus and ricin.

与此同时，国家安全风险若隐若现。美国政府长期投资于抵御会造成“严重”健康风险的约60种病原体和10种毒素的手段，包括埃博拉病毒、H1N1流感病毒和蓖麻毒素等。

But advances such as gene editing and next-generation DNA sequencing allow scientists to weaponise new viruses, perhaps including custom pathogens engineered to overcome existing immunities or to be impervious to current drugs. Some experts warn of bioweapons engineered to kill specific populations or even individuals.

但基因编辑和新一代DNA测序等技术进步使得科学家可以把新病毒变成武器，或许包括用定制病原体攻破现有免疫系统或抵抗现有药物的影响。一些专家对用来杀死特定人群、甚至个人的生物武器发出了警告。

Last year, James Clapper, director of national intelligence, included gene editing aimed at producing new biological weapons as among the nation’s top security threats. “The risks are real,” a White House scientific advisory panel said in November, “and will only grow as biotechnology becomes more sophisticated in the years ahead.”

去年，国家情报总监詹姆斯?克拉珀(James Clapper)把旨在制造新生物武器的基因编辑列入国家最大安全威胁。“风险是实实在在的，”白宫一个科学顾问小组去年11月表示，“而且会随着未来几年生物技术日益复杂而越来越危险。”

Insider threat: Scientist accused of stealing trade secrets

内部威胁：科学家被控窃取行业机密

With a PhD in biological chemistry and four patents to her name, Yu Xue was “one of the top protein biochemists in the world”, prosecutors said when they charged her with stealing trade secrets from her employer.

拥有生物化学博士学位和4项专利的薛瑜(Yu Xue)是“全世界最顶级的蛋白质生物化学家之一”，检察官在指控薛瑜从其供职公司窃取行业机密时表示。