Even if the straw-man "everybody is totally equal" can't stand up, I think there's a good argument for:
"We have to assume everybody is equal by default,(A) because we are absolutely too ignorant and limited to determine the long-term value or trade-offs within a gene or gene-combination, (B) because some diversity is itself a collective benefit to the species, and (C) because history shows most people who claimed they had the answers were often wrong and racist."
Does anyone know of anyone who became a racist because they looked at the scientific literature? My experience is people become racist for a variety of reasons and then (occasionally) draw upon a paraody of science to try and justify their beliefs.
Maybe here in the West, but something tells me China isn't going to get caught up in either the ethical or political implications of such research. They'll just do it and quickly operationalize (or weaponize) whatever they discover as fast as possible.
Everyone familiar with history knows the consequences of surveillance, most people don't like surveillance but is that stopping anyone?
China is not the one bombing random countries and killing hundreds of thousands of people and setting entire societies back decades. These are crimes against humanity with no accountability and consequences for those involved so where is the ethics and morality? China is not the one who used just discovered nuclear weapons recklessly on a civilian population, not once but twice.
Blanket statement of ethics and morality are meaningless when not consistent with actions on the ground. They merely serve to fabricate a non existent moral high ground whose existence requires a denial and diminishment of one own actions while pointing fingers and demonizing others. Posturing may be fun but ignoring the ethical deterioration in your own society has consequences.
"We also have extreme difficulty parsing what may be caused by (epi)genetics and what may be caused by differences in experiences or development"
Not only do we lack fine-grained data with which to make that comparison, we probably lack the epistemological capabilities and experimental infrastructure to even attempt gathering such data.
This doesn't have to be mutually exclusive with the argument(s) that population-scale difference in distribution of [whatever] have been experimentally observed. It's just that for most conceivable [whatever] with some kind of relevant social impact, we still can't assign causality with high confidence to the actual (epi)genetics themselves.
Can you give an example?
Whether you agree with that guidance or not, whether you agree with the implications, such data exists. Trying to wish it away contributes to the toxic hellstorm that exists in public discourse around these subjects. It retrenches the people who are curious about it and sends them into the narrative arms of the people who want to misuse it for their own social ends. It's much more productive to argue why such data is extremely limited, poorly understood and not conclusive.
If epigenetics is multi-generational then what of things like slavery and the ungodly number of atrocities littering our history, both race-based or otherwise. What things do we do now that are going to be harmful in such capacity, beyond the obvious prison system.
More importantly, I think we could potentially improve ourselves collectively by harnessing this power. I know my own family history is littered with trauma.
Evolution is messy. Epigenetics makes it even messier. We have to be careful not to conflate the value of someone by anything genetic. Especially not epigenetics, which seems from this article to be related to childhood trauma.
I'm interested in how we can use AI to modify genetic code to improve and fix our past epigenetic and genetic shortcomings.