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