Why The U.S. Military Is Wary Of DNA Testing Services

By Steve Goldstein
Published: Thursday, January 9, 2020 - 12:57pm
Updated: Thursday, January 9, 2020 - 12:58pm
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DNA testing services like Ancestry and 23andMe have proven to be extremely popular among the general public, as we get the opportunity to figure out whether the family history we’ve been told about actually matches the reality.

But members of the military are now being discouraged by the Pentagon from swabbing their cheeks and sending in a sample.

A memo issued late last month includes the sentence “exposing sensitive genetic information to outside parties poses personal and operational risks to service members.”

To learn just how true that may be, Jamie Winterton, director of strategy at ASU’s Global Security Initiative, joined The Show to talk about it.

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