The CIA’s Colossal investment

A woolly mammoth, dodo bird, and Tasmanian tiger all walk into a bar — who’s there waiting for them? The CIA… to do a business deal.

According to the portfolio page of its venture capital arm, America’s intelligence agency has invested in Colossal Biosciences, a startup aiming to resurrect extinct animals using advanced genetic sequencing.

🤔 The CIA has an investment arm?… Yep. In-Q-Tel, a registered nonprofit venture capital firm wholly funded by agency/taxpayer money. And its mission can basically be summed up in two words: technological hegemony. Meaning its focus is on funding tech startups with the potential to safeguard national security.

🧬🦣 Which brings us to Colossal: The biosciences startup aims to revive extinct animals – like the woolly mammoth, Tasmanian tiger, and dodo bird – using CRISPR, a gene-editing tool.

But the agency’s focus here is less about the mission, and more about the tech being used and developed in its pursuit. Per an In-Q-Tel blog post, its investment in Colossal will help to:

• Enable US gov’t agencies to better understand – as well as read, write, and edit – genetic material (Captain America irl?🤔)
• Position the US “to help set the ethical, as well as the technological, standards” for its use
• Steer global biological phenomena impacting “nation-to-nation competition”

⚖️ On one hand… Colossal co-founder George Church says the research involved to resurrect the animals could help with conservation efforts and other things, like curing the herpesvirus in Asian elephants. But as anyone who's seen Jurassic Park can tell you, it could also have some pretty gnarly implications.

So you tell us: good idea or nah?

Yes

No

Don’t really care