I see human genetic manipulations as inevitable. Someone will go there, and others will need to follow to keep up. Of course, while I can see the author’s point that the Chinese will go there first, I think they might not actually be the ones to commit the worst offenses. After all, the Chinese are still a post-communist dictatorship, and those leaders are definitely not going to risk their hold on power from a gang of enhanced super-humans. Hence the introduction of a flaw to control them bye, and the proceeding unraveling of the whole thing.
The inevitable reality is that as technology and knowledge advances, it will present us with opportunities that can, and will, lead to bad things. I remember reading a book a while back that basically made the case that the reason humanity was not finding other intelligence out there was not merely because we were looking/listening for the wrong things as some that point out our technology doesn’t lend itself to the overcoming the difficulties of the vastness of space, but that they simply didn’t exist. Civilizations reached a point where their technological advances caused them to tamper with themselves or build bigger and better engines of destruction, with the inevitable consequence that they would wipe life out.
But who knows? Maybe Ideocracy had it right, an the greatest scientific minds will all gravitate to improving erections and solving hair loss, and we will be spared extinction as the stupid people out-breed the others.
The future looks bright!
