Emily Glazer

This whole idea, they call it off-target genetic consequences.

Even in this moratorium that they wrote, they talked about how it could potentially be applied for personal enhancement.

They use the term designer babies.

And they even say in this moratorium the possibility of eugenics, which they describe as the programmed enhancement of offspring for a privileged few, shaping or even bifurcating evolution.

Brian Armstrong is one of the most outspoken people in the tech community on all this.

Armstrong has told people that he thinks gene editing technology could produce children that are less prone to heart disease, that have lower cholesterol, that have stronger bones to prevent osteoporosis.

That was a word that came up a bunch with my sources.

Enhancements.

Yes.

And, you know, they might talk about that more like muscle mass or, you know, stronger hearts.

You know, he has made comparisons to the movie Gattaca, the sci-fi classic.

He has referenced that.

It's out in the open.

He's not necessarily trying to hide it.

One plan that Brian Armstrong had floated was for a venture to work in secret and then reveal a healthy, genetically engineered baby before the scientific and medical establishment had a chance to object.

And it was almost like this leap that was meant to shock the world into acceptance.

I distinctly remember getting a phone call one day.

I was sitting in the Wall Street Journal newsroom in New York, and one of my sources called me and said that there was a company, like there really was one.

Yeah, I actually got up from my desk and I awkwardly power walked slash jogged slash ran to our investigations editor's office and like grabbed the deputy editor.

And I was like, you guys will not believe what I heard.