SHARON WEINBERGER2026年8月18日 Brendan ConroyMany Americans watched with surprise as Silicon Valley’s most powerful entrepreneurs fell in behind Donald Trump when he returned to the White House last year. The same C.E.O.s and investors who once celebrated globalization and consumer apps were suddenly embracing patriotism and advanced weaponry such as killer drones.去年唐纳德·特朗普重返白宫后，硅谷最有权势的企业家纷纷表态支持他，这让许多美国人感到惊讶。突然之间，这些曾歌颂全球化和消费级应用软件的首席执行官和投资者开始拥抱爱国主义以及杀手无人机等先进武器。Don’t misconstrue this as a thoughtful political shift, or a change of heart. Silicon Valley has always been fertile ground for mythmaking, and no myth is bigger than the notion that the ideological chasm between the Valley and the Pentagon is too vast to bridge.不要将此误解为深思熟虑的政治转向或态度转变。硅谷向来是制造神话的沃土，而其中最大的神话莫过于认为硅谷与五角大楼之间有深不可测的意识形态鸿沟。For tech companies, the personality and politics of the person occupying the White House is less important than that person’s willingness to buy what Silicon Valley is offering. The federal government is, at base, a purchasing agent, and Silicon Valley’s pivot to the military — and to Mr. Trump — is less a story of political conversion than of market adaptation.对于科技公司而言，白宫里那个人的人格与政治立场远不如这个人是否愿意采购硅谷提供的产品重要。联邦政府本质上是一个采购代理，而硅谷转向军工——以及转向特朗普——与其说是一场政治上的“皈依”，不如说是一种市场适应。Silicon Valley’s values haven’t changed, just its customers.硅谷的价值观并没有改变，改变的只是它的客户。People seem to forget that Silicon Valley was largely born on the back of Pentagon funding during the Cold War. Fairchild Semiconductor, a company that became the wellspring of the computer chip industry’s growth, was one of those beneficiaries. Conventional wisdom held that, by 2016, many firms, not to mention their employees, found the idea of working on defense projects distasteful, if not unthinkable. Mr. Trump’s election that year seemed to widen the divide. In 2018, Google, under pressure from employees, pulled out of Project Maven, a Pentagon-funded A.I. project to advance drone warfare.人们似乎忘记了，硅谷在很大程度上是在冷战时期依靠五角大楼的资金建立起来的。作为计算机芯片行业发源地的仙童半导体(Fairchild Semiconductor)就是受益者之一。传统观念认为，一直到2016年，许多公司（更不用说它们的员工）都还是反感国防项目的，甚至觉得参与这样的项目根本不可想象。特朗普在那一年的当选似乎加剧了这种分歧。2018年，谷歌在员工压力下退出了马文计划(Project Maven)，这是五角大楼资助的一个旨在发展无人机战争技术的人工智能项目。The real dividing line between the tech industry’s bosses and the Pentagon had little to do with politics and a lot to do with markets. For more than three decades, tech industry leaders such as Apple and HP were focused on consumers, whether personal computers, smartphones or later, apps. That market is global, which in the 2000s led these companies to start selling their wares in China — where many of the firms were already basing their manufacturing — which offered access to more than one billion consumers.科技业的老板们与五角大楼之间的真正界线与政治关系不大，而与市场密不可分。30多年来，苹果和惠普等科技行业领头羊一直专注于消费者——无论是个人电脑、智能手机还是后来的应用软件。这个市场是全球性的，这使得这些公司在2000年代开始在中国销售产品（许多公司当时已在中国设立了生产基地），从而可以触及超过10亿消费者。Unlike today, China in the early 21st century represented more opportunity than threat, which led venture firms such as Sequoia Capital to make enormous investments there. Digital service companies, such as Uber, Airbnb and Facebook, chased the market. Investors marveled at China’s burgeoning tech economy, even as Washington was beginning to warn about the strategic threat from Beijing. “China should be another United States from an economic standpoint,” Marc Andreessen, a prophet of the venture capital world, said in 2013, the year China’s Communist Party leader, Xi Jinping, became president. “Beijing should be another Silicon Valley.”与今天不同，21世纪初的中国代表的是机遇而非威胁，这促使红杉资本等风险投资公司在中国进行了巨额投资。Uber、Airbnb和Facebook等数字服务公司纷纷追逐这一市场。投资者对中国蒸蒸日上的科技经济赞叹不已，即便当时华盛顿已开始警告来自北京的战略威胁。“从经济角度来看，中国应该是另一个美国，”2013年——即中国领导人习近平就任国家主席那一年——风险投资界的预言家马克·安德森曾表示。“而北京应该是另一个硅谷。”China has since closed its doors to many American technology companies. Relations between Washington and Beijing deteriorated over the next decade. Recently, the Tesla C.E.O., Elon Musk, denied reports that he is considering jettisoning his China business to enable the merger of his electric vehicle company with SpaceX, a major Pentagon contractor. But he’s well aware of the difficulties his business there presents.此后，中国对许多美国科技公司关上了大门。接下来十年里，华盛顿与北京关系恶化。最近，特斯拉首席执行官埃隆·马斯克否认他正考虑放弃中国业务并推动其电动汽车公司与五角大楼主要承包商SpaceX合并。但他非常清楚自己的中国业务所带来的困境。Today, the shift from consumer markets to defense industries is clearly visible at Mr. Andreessen’s firm, which has a dedicated division, called American Dynamism, that focuses on investing in weapons and technologies aimed at competing with China. Or even, potentially, waging war with China. Sequoia, one of Silicon Valley’s most storied venture capital firms, has spun out its China business and joined the growing number of venture capital firms funding companies dedicated to building military weapons. Sequoia’s initial defense tech investment was in a start-up founded by a 19-year-old that is building killer drones.如今，从消费市场向国防工业的转变在安德森的公司显而易见，他的公司设立了一个名为“美国动能”(American Dynamism)的专门部门，专注于投资旨在与中国竞争、甚至可能与中国交战的武器和技术。作为硅谷最传奇风投公司之一的红杉资本已分拆了其中国业务，并加入了越来越多资助军用武器研发公司的风投行列。红杉资本最初的国防科技投资是一家由一名19岁年轻人创立的初创公司，该公司正在制造杀手无人机。As for Google, it only took a few years for the company whose motto was once, “Don’t be evil,” to again pursue contracts with the Pentagon. Not because of patriotism, but apparently out of financial self-interest. The federal government, and particularly the Pentagon, has emerged as one of the world’s largest customers for A.I. and autonomous weapons — technologies needed for war in the future, especially the Pacific. Earlier this year, Google agreed to provide the Department of Defense with A.I. for classified networks after Anthropic became embroiled in a dispute with the Pentagon over how its A.I. models were being used.至于谷歌，这家曾以“不作恶”为座右铭的公司仅仅过了几年就再次寻求与五角大楼合作。这并非出于爱国主义，而是显而易见的财务自利。联邦政府，尤其是五角大楼，已成为全球人工智能和自主武器（未来战争所需的技术，特别是在太平洋地区）的最大客户之一。今年早些时候，在Anthropic因其AI模型的具体使用方式与五角大楼爆发争端后，谷歌同意向国防部提供用于机密网络的人工智能。For Anthropic, the issue was never a choice between working for the Pentagon or competing with China, but a question of how much control it would have over its models and their use. Anthropic’s C.E.O. has frequently warned about the threat from Beijing, even saying that selling A.I. chips to China is like “selling nuclear weapons to North Korea.”对Anthropic而言，问题从来不是在为五角大楼服务和与中国竞争之间做出选择，而是它对其模型及其使用拥有多少控制权的问题。Anthropic的首席执行官频繁对来自北京的威胁发出警告，甚至表示向中国出售人工智能芯片就像“向朝鲜出售核武器”。That’s quite the pivot. “Silicon Valley has changed partly because people realized you’re not going to make any money in China,” noted the Palantir Technologies C.E.O., Alex Karp, in 2024, as tech were again chasing defense business. Peter Thiel, the right-wing tech billionaire who co-founded Palantir with Mr. Karp more than 20 years ago, was early to recognize the potential and was long skeptical of China. (Not surprisingly, Mr. Thiel was also the first major Valley figure to back Mr. Trump in 2016, though he later soured on the Republican president.)这确实是个巨大的转变。“硅谷的变化部分是因为人们意识到你在中国赚不到钱了，”帕兰泰尔科技公司首席执行官亚历克斯·卡普在2024年说，与此同时科技业再次开始争夺国防业务。20多年前与卡普一同创立帕兰泰尔的右翼科技亿万富翁彼得·蒂尔很早就意识到了这一潜力，并长期对中国持怀疑态度。（毫不意外，蒂尔也是2016年第一个支持特朗普的硅谷大牌人物，尽管他后来对这位共和党总统失去了兴趣。）Few things illustrate this dynamic better than the poster child for defense start-ups, Palmer Luckey, the Hawaiian shirt-clad founder of Anduril Industries, which makes A.I.-powered weapons. Mr. Luckey was just 19 when he co-founded Oculus Rift to build virtual reality headsets for consumers. The Oculus Rift development kit from 2013 ended with a single line: “Made in China.” But like other tech companies, Oculus grew disillusioned with China as a consumer market, even if it still needed it as a manufacturer. The following year, Oculus suspended sales to China, reportedly over aggressive scalpers who were reselling the company’s hardware.没有什么比国防初创公司的代表人物帕尔默·拉奇更能说明这种动态了。总是穿着夏威夷衬衫的拉奇是安杜里尔工业的创始人，该公司专门制造人工智能驱动的武器。他在19岁时与人一起创立了为消费者打造虚拟现实头戴设备的Oculus Rift。2013年的Oculus Rift开发套件末尾写着一行字：“中国制造”。但与其他科技公司一样，Oculus对作为消费市场的中国感到幻灭，尽管它仍需要以中国为制造基地。次年，据报道由于公司的硬件被黄牛大量采购转售，Oculus暂停了对中国的销售。In 2014, Facebook bought Oculus, making Mr. Luckey a centi-millionaire. Facebook itself was then bullish about breaking into the Chinese market. That year, the Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg swooned over a book by President Xi Jinping of China, “The Governance of China,” and recommended it to his employees.2014年，Facebook收购了Oculus，使拉奇跻身亿万富翁行列。当时Facebook本身对打入中国市场充满信心。那一年，Facebook创始人马克·扎克伯格对中国国家主席习近平的书籍《习近平谈治国理政》倾心不已，并将其推荐给员工。Three years later, Mr. Zuckerberg’s company fired Mr. Luckey, who had become a Facebook executive after the Oculus deal, after it emerged that he donated to a pro-Trump group. (Mr. Zuckerberg has denied that the departure had anything to do with politics.) Mr. Luckey made what would become the most pivotal move of his career: He started an arms firm backed by Mr. Thiel’s Founders Fund, which had only just dropped language in its “vice clause” prohibiting investments in weapons.三年后，在拉奇被曝光向一个支持特朗普的团体捐款后，扎克伯格的公司解除了他在Oculus交易后担任的Facebook高管职务。（扎克伯格否认他的离职与政治有任何关系。）随后拉奇走出了他职业生涯最关键的一步：他成立了一家军工企业，得到了蒂尔旗下创始人基金的支持，而这家基金刚刚删除了其“道德条款”中禁止投资武器的规定。Mr. Luckey once said his goal with Oculus was to make virtual reality “available to everyone.” A little more than a decade later, he wanted to make virtual reality available to everyone in uniform. “I strongly believe you are going to see augmented reality on every soldier’s head before you see it on every consumer’s head,” Mr. Luckey said last year. Facebook, today called Meta, is in fact now working with Anduril on a multibillion-dollar project to sell virtual reality headsets to the U.S. military.拉奇曾表示，他创办Oculus的目标是让虚拟现实“惠及每个人”。十多年后，他希望让每一个身穿军装的人都能用上虚拟现实。“我强烈相信，在每一个消费者戴上增强现实设备之前，你会先看到每一个士兵戴上它，”拉奇去年说道。如今改名为Meta的Facebook实际上正与安杜里尔合作开展一个数十亿美元的项目，向美军出售虚拟现实头戴设备。The arc of Silicon Valley’s moral universe doesn’t seem to last longer than the next presidential election. In the end, it’s not bombs that Silicon Valley loves, but profits.硅谷道德宇宙的弧线似乎总是止于下一届总统大选。归根结底，硅谷热爱的不是炸弹，而是利润。Sharon Weinberger是《原子科学家公报》主编。翻译：经雷点击查看本文英文版。获取更多RSS：https://feedx.net https://feedx.site