"My gift to industry is the genetically engineered worker, or Genejack. Specially designed for labor, the Genejack's muscles and nerves are ideal for his task, and the cerebral cortex has been atrophied so that he can desire nothing except to perform his duties. Tyranny, you say? How can you tyrannize someone who cannot feel pain?"
- Chairman Sheng-ji Yang, "Essays on Mind and Matter"
I have no idea how you'd manufacture both a loyal and genius breed - what/whom are they loyal to?
"Bokanovsky's Process"... x-ray, and alcohol to clones of the "worker class" to make them slow and stupid to do your bidding.
In the short term though, it seems like a good idea. Regardless, in a multipolar world we don’t have much choice in the matter.
Generational planning...who will be at the helm 20+ years later? "The Party"? Maybe if it was a Medieval Kingdom, but even then you'd wonder how that would affect the fighting spirit of the people. Might commit national suicide
This will probably happen in the distant future. Most of the genetic research this decade will be driven by national competition. it's an arms race
To back this up, at least this paper claims that the idea that natural selection is being referred inoperative in modern human populations is widely rejected by evolutionary biologists.[1] Changes in human society have actually accelerated selection for certain types of traits that we know of. For example, genes that help people deal with our increasingly unhealthy diet may be strongly selected for.
Apart from that I do believe, that in the future human gene editing makes sense. Once it is actually understood. (until then volunteers are allright with me, but experimenting with babys ... is a bit off)
Because we are successfully eliminating natural selection in various ways. But evolving works naturally through selection. Degeneration would be the long term effect, unless we find other ways. And improving our genes as we see fit ... seems to be a solution.