DUSTIN VOLZ2026年9月9日上周，游客们从北京的故宫走出来。 Wang Zhao/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThe United States is engaging in a broader range of espionage against China, including Chinese companies, to address the country’s status as both a military and an economic threat, the deputy C.I.A. director, Michael Ellis, said on Tuesday.中央情报局副局长迈克尔·埃利斯周二表示，美国正在对中国——包括中国企业——开展更广泛的间谍活动，以应对该国作为军事和经济双重威胁的地位。During a rare public speaking appearance, Mr. Ellis said the nature of intelligence collection by the C.I.A. and other intelligence agencies had evolved considerably since they were created during the Cold War to spy on the Soviet Union.在一次罕见的公开演讲中，埃利斯表示，自中情局和其他情报机构在冷战期间为监视苏联而建立以来，情报收集的性质已经发生了巨大变化。Unlike past geopolitical rivals, China “poses a fundamentally different kind of threat to us because the competition is economic,” Mr. Ellis said at a cybersecurity conference in Washington.埃利斯在华盛顿举行的一场网络安全会议上说，与过去的地缘政治对手不同，中国“对我们构成了一种截然不同的威胁，因为这种竞争是经济上的”。Western officials say that under Communist Party rule, China does not have an independent business community akin to the United States or much of Europe. Mr. Ellis said that makes Chinese companies a legitimate target for espionage in areas like artificial intelligence, semiconductors and biotechnology.西方官员表示，在共产党统治下，中国没有像美国或欧洲大部分地区那样的独立商界。埃利斯说，这使得中国企业在人工智能、半导体和生物技术等领域成为间谍活动的正当目标。The C.I.A. has needed to broaden its spying mandate because valuable intelligence about those technologies is “not found in the same places that political or military foreign intelligence is found,” Mr. Ellis said. Such information, he added, is “resident in the private sector — or in which China has to come as close as you might describe as a private sector.”埃利斯表示，中情局需要扩大其间谍行动授权，因为关于这些技术的宝贵情报“无法在获取政治或军事情报的那些渠道中找到”。他还说，这些信息“存在于私营部门中——或者存在于中国那些可以说最接近私营部门的实体之中”。Mr. Ellis’s remarks are a subtle departure from a precedent established by previous administrations, which generally sought to draw a line between espionage that the United States considers permissible, such as intelligence gathering conducted for the purposes of national defense and foreign policy, and spying that is economically motivated.埃利斯的言论与历届政府所确立的先例有着微妙的不同，历届政府通常会区分美国认为可接受的间谍活动（例如为国防和外交政策目的而进行的情报收集）与出于经济动机的间谍活动。The Obama administration, for example, routinely called out Chinese hacking of intellectual property from American companies, ultimately signing an accord with Beijing in 2015 in which both sides agreed not to engage in economic espionage. The United States later accused China of violating the agreement.例如，奥巴马政府经常公开指责中国通过黑客手段窃取美国企业的知识产权，最终在2015年与北京签署了一项协议，双方均同意不从事经济间谍活动。美国后来指责中国违反了该协议。U.S. officials, however, have long privately acknowledged that it can be difficult to define what constitutes legitimate espionage. But they have traditionally not said so publicly.然而，美国官员长期以来在私下承认，很难界定什么是合法的间谍活动。但他们传统上不会在公开场合如此表态。“We’ve always collected intelligence in some way, shape or form,” Mr. Ellis said in a short interview after his public comments. “What’s different now is it’s not just about tanks, missiles and submarines.”“我们一直以某种方式、形式或形态在收集情报，”埃利斯在公开演讲后的一次简短采访中说。“现在的不同之处在于，这不仅仅关乎坦克、导弹和潜艇了。”The timing of Mr. Ellis’s remarks is also significant. President Trump is scheduled to host the Chinese leader, Xi Jinping, this month for a state visit. Competition around A.I. and trade is expected to be among the topics discussed during the summit.埃利斯发表此番言论的时机也颇具深意。特朗普总统定于本月接待中国领导人习近平进行国事访问。围绕人工智能和贸易的竞争预计将成为峰会期间讨论的议题之一。Mr. Ellis’s remarks came on the same day the Trump administration issued a public advisory warning that Chinese artificial intelligence companies were engaging in “industrial scale” theft of trade secrets from their U.S. counterparts.在埃利斯发表讲话的同一天，特朗普政府发布了一份公开咨询警告，指出中国的人工智能公司正对美国同行进行“工业级规模”的商业机密窃取。The alert, issued by the National Security Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, listed several leading Chinese A.I. companies that it said were engaged in the practice, which is known as distillation, since at least 2024.这份由国家安全局、联邦调查局以及网络安全和基础设施安全局发布的警报列出了几家领先的中国人工智能公司，并称自至少2024年以来，它们就参与了这种被称为“蒸馏”的做法。“The sheer scale of these campaigns and their sophistication indicate that distillation is not a supplement to these companies’ A.I. model development, but the critical core of it,” the advisory said, echoing earlier accusations from Trump administration officials.“这些活动的庞大规模及其复杂性表明，‘蒸馏’并不是这些公司人工智能模型开发的补充手段，而是其关键核心，”该咨询报告指出，这与特朗普政府官员早先的指控相呼应。In his remarks, Mr. Ellis praised recent overhauls at the C.I.A., including the elevation of a cybermission center last year, that he said allowed the agency to achieve the Trump administration’s national security objectives. Among the successes, he said, was the U.S. raid in Venezuela in January that led to the capture of Nicolás Maduro.埃利斯在讲话中赞扬了中情局最近的改革，包括去年将一个网络任务中心升级为更高层级，他说这使得该机构能够实现特朗普政府的国家安全目标。他提到，其中一项成功案例是今年1月美国在委内瑞拉发动的突袭行动，该行动导致尼古拉斯·马杜罗被捕。“That operation was only made possible by a flawless intelligence picture, and that flawless intelligence picture was built on cyberoperations” at the C.I.A., Mr. Ellis said. “Without that kind of operational picture, being driven by cyber, we wouldn’t have been able to help enable U.S. Special Forces to identify the location of Nicolás Maduro and apprehend him within four minutes of landing on the ground.”“那次行动之所以能够实现，得益于无懈可击的情报图景，而那无懈可击的情报图景是建立在（中情局的）网络行动基础之上的，”埃利斯说。“如果没有那种由网络驱动的行动图景，我们就不可能协助美国特种部队在着陆后四分钟内确定尼古拉斯·马杜罗的位置，并将其逮捕。”Mr. Ellis also briefly spoke about threats to U.S. critical infrastructure posed by foreign nation-state hackers. He said that a compromise of U.S. telecommunications networks known as Salt Typhoon and linked to China remains “a very critical threat” nearly two years after it was discovered. That operation and recent attacks on other targets, including municipal water systems that officials believe were carried out by Iran, highlight the need for the government to do more to protect the United States, he added.埃利斯还简短地谈到了外国国家黑客对美国关键基础设施构成的威胁。他表示，被称为“盐台风”并与中国有关联的对美国电信网络的入侵活动在被发现近两年后，仍然是“一个非常关键的威胁”。他补充说，那次行动以及最近对其他目标的攻击——包括官员们认为由伊朗实施的对市政供水系统的攻击——凸显出政府需要采取更多措施来保护美国。“There is a whole host of threats to our critical infrastructure, and it’s an area where the government needs to also do a better job of helping the private sector to protect itself against these threat actors,” Mr. Ellis said.“我们的关键基础设施面临着许许多多的威胁，在这一领域，政府也需要做得更好，帮助私营部门抵御这些威胁行为者，”埃利斯说。Dustin Volz为时报撰写网络安全和情报方面的文章，他常驻华盛顿。翻译：纽约时报中文网点击查看本文英文版。