Uyghurs
With an unlimited budget, Lindstrom made rapid progress with his DNA profiling technique.
Hansen worked on refining models and eventualising the database platform. Sherlock was in Wuhan Institute with Chiang Zhou-wen inserting a SARS sequence into a mutated Yunan bat virus. The three men gathered on Zoom once a week to formally report, catch up - but also texted daily.
This week there’s a big announcement. Lindstrom announces they’ve got the go ahead for a large-scale human trial.
It involves the Uyghurs
The who?
The Uyghurs - they’re an ethnic group in Xinjiang
Where’s that?
It’s way out west - it’s the middle of fucking nowhere
So what about these... what did you call em?
Uyghurs. Anyway, they’s been some incidents - like terrorist incidents - these crazy fucking knife attacks on a a fucking farmers' market - cops were killed as well as you know like civilians
Fuck! I didn't hear about that.
Yeah so it’s China right? They’re not gonna put up with that shit - so they had a crackdown, as you would.
Ok.
So what’s that got to do with us?
They’ve made these, well they call them ‘Re-education Camps’ so they’re like processing the whole area. They’ve constructed these, you know, pre-fab internment facilities. They’re state of the art - fucking massive - we flew over the area in a helicopter
Cool!
So’s ‘we’?
What?
'We flew over in a helicopter' Who's 'we'?
i don’t like to name drop haha.
C'mon
You know i can't say. Anyway, it's not the point. The point is as part of the processing they want to trial DNA gathering - you know - so - i mean there’s a lot of fucking people gonna be locked up in these...ah ...education facilities.. this is..
Sounds a bit fucking weird man. Is it like a concentration camp?
No - it’s not like that - it’s really about education. They’ve got a problem with terrorism - just like we do - you know it’s like it’s ok for the US labeling everyone terrorists and bombing the shit out of them but the Chinese can’t take measures to control their own?
Yeah - good point - probably do it with a lot less fucking death and destruction as well
Exactly! They just want them to assimilate into society - get the job skills for today's economy - you know get 'em invested. It's not about locking them up it's about bringing them in.
So our job is to monitor health?
Pretty much - they’re really serious about that shit. All our genomic surveillance work - this is our chance to try it on for real on a scale that...
What sort of scale are we talking - in the thousands?
Try the millions
Fuck, really!
This is our chance to take it around the block. People will be in close quarters - so it’s a place where disease can break out - so they want to control that right?
Around the block? I just googled Xinjiang - it’s like the size of fucking Texas
This is the start of the.. well i was gonna say 'brave new world' haha but that's maybe not the best reference - you know what i mean. We all know data gathering is exploding - we're riding the crest of it.