CIA is investing in project to bring woolly mammoth back from extinction
By Team Newsable | First Published Oct 3, 2022, 4:15 PM ISTBen Lamm echoed the venture's point, telling The Intercept in an email that "biotechnology and the broader bioeconomy are critical for humanity to further develop. It is important for all facets of our government to develop them and have an understanding of what is possible."
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), along with several other entities, has taken part in funding the biotechnology company Colossal Biosciences, which is attempting to bring back the woolly mammoth from extinction, The Intercept reports.
Speaking to the investigative publication, Colossal co-founder Ben Lamm said, "Biotechnology and the broader bioeconomy are critical for humanity to further develop. It is important for all facets of our government to develop them and have an understanding of what is possible."
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Colossal's new investor, In-Q-Tel, is a nonprofit venture capital firm funded by the CIA that has recently shown an interest in biotechnology and DNA sequencing.
In a blog, the In-Q-Tel on September 22 expressed plainly that its interest was not in resurrecting the woolly mammoth but in the technology used to do so.
"Why the interest in a company like Colossal, which was founded with a mission to 'de-extinct' the woolly mammoth and other species?" the nonprofit asks.
"Strategically, it's less about the mammoths and more about the capability. The next wave of progress in synbio will lead to advances in our ability to shape both form and function in organisms at the macroscopic level. Solving the challenges that must be overcome in engineering animals and plants."
Ben Lamm echoed the venture's point, telling The Intercept in an email that "biotechnology and the broader bioeconomy are critical for humanity to further develop. It is important for all facets of our government to develop them and have an understanding of what is possible."
According to reports, mammoths were massive elephant-like creatures that lived roughly 5 million years ago to roughly 4,000 years ago that navigated the arctic conditions of Ice Age glaciers at approximately the same time as the Great Pyramids of Egypt were in construction.
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