They are bazinga brained dip shits but we crossed the threshold from scifi to reality on this being doable (with money and disregard for law) over a decade ago. We've already had doctors and geneticists break the law by making edits to the genes of human children altering their brain architecture. Doing something this extreme would just require iteration and willingness to have many generations of fkd up test subjects born until the goal was achieved.

Most recent example was an IVF doctor in China who a group of US and UK scientists cooped to make gene edits to a group of children in China (is highly illegal regardless but didn't even inform their parents) to give them HIV immunity and alter their brain architecture. The IVF doctor got arrested and convicted after the group published their research paper, the western scientists who took part saw no legal consequences.

We can manipulate genomes along with having mapped in depth both human and other great ape genomes. It's why when we initially hit that tech level, laws were passed internationally and in nations with the required tech base to outlaw this type of genetics manipulation in specific. Gene editing to create food that are resistant to environmental collapse, pesticide resistant, or healthier is legal and so is editing genes of lab animals to make them express novel characteristics. But gene editing of human brain genetics into other animals is expressly illegal, as is editing any part of the human genome. The most allowed is creating chimeras where the human genes are present but not expressed.