I stopped using my cellphone for regular calls and text messages last fall and switched to Signal. I wasn’t being paranoid—or at least I don’t think I was. I worked in the National Security Council, and we were told that China had compromised all major U.S. telecommunications companies and burrowed deep inside their networks. Beijing had gathered information on more than a million Americans, mainly in the Washington, D.C., area. The Chinese government could listen in to phone calls and read text messages. Experts call the Chinese state-backed group responsible Salt Typhoon, and the vulnerabilities it exploited have not been fixed. China is still there.
去年秋天，我停止使用手机进行常规电话和短信，并切换到信号。我不是偏执的，或者至少我不认为自己是偏执的。我曾在国家安全委员会工作，我们被告知中国妥协了美国所有主要的电信公司，并在其网络内深处。北京收集了有关超过一百万美国人的信息，主要是华盛顿特区地区。中国政府可以听电话并阅读短信。专家称中国支持的团体负责的盐台风及其利用的脆弱性尚未解决。中国仍然在那里。
Telecommunications systems aren’t the only ones compromised. China has accessed enormous quantities of data on Americans for more than a decade. It has hacked into health-insurance companies and hotel chains, as well as security-clearance information held by the Office of Personnel Management.
电信系统并不是唯一受到损害的系统。十多年来，中国已经获得了有关美国人的大量数据。它已入侵了健康保险公司和酒店连锁店，以及人事管理办公室持有的安全清除信息。
The jaded response here is All countries spy. So what? But the spectacular surprise attacks that Ukraine and Israel have pulled off against their enemies suggest just how serious such penetration can become. In Operation Spiderweb, Ukraine smuggled attack drones on trucks with unwitting drivers deep inside of Russia, and then used artificial intelligence to simultaneously attack four military bases and destroy a significant number of strategic bombers, which are part of Russia’s nuclear triad. Israel created a real pager-production company in Hungary to infiltrate Hezbollah’s global supply chains and booby-trap its communication devices, killing or maiming much of the group’s leadership in one go. Last week, in Operation Rising Lion, Israel assassinated many top Iranian military leaders simultaneously and attacked the country’s nuclear facilities, thanks in part to a drone base it built inside Iran.
这里的疲惫的回应是所有国家间谍。所以呢？但是，乌克兰和以色列对敌人进行了壮观的惊喜攻击表明，这种渗透会变得多么严重。在蜘蛛网行动中，乌克兰走私攻击无人机，俄罗斯内部深处的驾驶员对卡车进行了攻击，然后使用人工智能同时攻击四个军事基地，并摧毁了俄罗斯核三合会的一部分。以色列在匈牙利创建了一家真正的Pager生产公司，以渗透真主党的全球供应链，并诱骗其通信设备，杀死或弄乱该组织的大部分领导能力。上周，在上升狮子行动中，以色列同时暗杀了许多伊朗顶级军事领导人，并袭击了该国的核设施，这在一定程度上要归功于IT建造的无人机基地。
Read: Ukraine’s warning to the world’s other military forces
阅读：乌克兰警告世界其他军事力量
In each case, a resourceful, determined, and imaginative state used new technologies and data to do what was hitherto deemed impossible. America’s adversaries are also resourceful, determined, and imaginative.
在每种情况下，一个足智多谋，确定和富有想象力的状态都使用新技术和数据来完成迄今认为是不可能的事情。美国的对手也足智多谋，坚定和富有想象力。
Just think about what might happen if a U.S.-China war broke out over Taiwan.
试想一下，如果美国 - 中国战争在台湾爆发，可能会发生什么。
A Chinese state-backed group called Volt Typhoon has been preparing plans to attack crucial infrastructure in the United States should the two countries ever be at war. As Jen Easterly put it in 2024 when she was head of the Cyber and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), China is planning to “launch destructive cyber-attacks in the event of a major crisis or conflict with the United States,” including “the disruption of our gas pipelines; the pollution of our water facilities; the severing of our telecommunications; the crippling of our transportation systems.”
一个名为“ Volt Typhoon”的中国国家支持的团体正在准备攻击美国至关重要的基础设施的计划。正如詹（Jen）在2024年担任网络和基础设施安全局（CISA）的负责人时，中国正计划“在发生重大危机或与美国发生冲突的情况下发动破坏性的网络攻击，包括“我们的气体管道的破坏”；我们的水设备的污染；我们的电视连接严重；我们的cripp cripp;
The Biden administration took measures to fight off these cyberattacks and harden the infrastructure. Joe Biden also imposed some sanctions on China and took some specific measures to limit America’s exposure; he cut off imports of Chinese electric vehicles because of national-security concerns. Biden additionally signed a bill to ban TikTok, but President Donald Trump has issued rolling extensions to keep the platform functioning in the U.S. America and its allies will need to think hard about where to draw the line in the era of the Internet of Things, which connects nearly everything and could allow much of it—including robots, drones, and cloud computing—to be weaponized.
拜登政府采取了措施来抵抗这些网络攻击并加强基础设施。乔·拜登（Joe Biden）还对中国实施了一些制裁，并采取了一些具体的措施来限制美国的接触；由于国家安全问题，他切断了中国电动汽车的进口。拜登还签署了一项法案，以抗议蒂克托克（Ban Tiktok），但唐纳德·特朗普（Donald Trump）总统发布了滚动扩展，以使该平台在美国及其盟友的运作中保持正常运行，需要考虑在物联网时代在几乎所有事物时代划定的界限，这几乎可以连接到一切，并可以允许许多它允许机器人，无人机和云计算。
China isn’t the only problem. According to the U.S. Intelligence Community’s Annual Threat Assessment for this year, Russia is developing a new device to detonate a nuclear weapon in space with potentially “devastating” consequences. A Pentagon official last year said the weapon could pose “a threat to satellites operated by countries and companies around the globe, as well as to the vital communications, scientific, meteorological, agricultural, commercial, and national security services we all depend upon. Make no mistake, even if detonating a nuclear weapon in space does not directly kill people, the indirect impact could be catastrophic to the entire world.” The device could also render Trump’s proposed “Golden Dome” missile shield largely ineffective.
中国不是唯一的问题。根据美国情报界对今年的年度威胁评估的说法，俄罗斯正在开发一种新的装置，以引起可能“毁灭性”后果的太空中的核武器。五角大楼官员去年表示，该武器可以“对全球各国和公司运营的卫星以及对我们都没有依靠的重要通信，科学，气象，农业，商业和国家安全服务的重要卫星构成威胁。即使在太空中引爆核武器也不会直接杀人，也不会杀死人们，也可能会造成无与伦比的影响。该设备还可以使特朗普提出的“金穹顶”导弹盾在很大程度上无效。
Americans can expect a major adversary to use drones and AI to go after targets deep inside the United States or allied countries. There is no reason to believe that an enemy wouldn’t take a page out of the Israeli playbook and go after leadership. New technologies reward acting preemptively, catching the adversary by surprise—so the United States may not get much notice. A determined adversary could even cut the undersea cables that allow the internet to function. Last year, vessels linked to Russia and China appeared to have severed those cables in Europe on a number of occasions, supposedly by accident. In a concerted hostile action, Moscow could cut or destroy these cables at scale.
美国人可以期望一个主要的对手使用无人机和人工智能追求美国或盟国内部深处的目标。没有理由相信敌人不会从以色列剧本中删除页面并追随领导。新技术促进行动的奖励，使对手感到惊讶 - 因此，美国可能不会引起太多注意。确定的对手甚至可以切断允许互联网运行的海底电缆。去年，与俄罗斯和中国有关的船只似乎在多次偶然地在欧洲切断了这些电缆。在一致的敌对行动中，莫斯科可以大规模切割或破坏这些电缆。
Read: How Israel executed its surprise assault on Iran
阅读：以色列如何对伊朗进行惊喜攻击
Terrorist groups are less capable than state actors—they are unlikely to destroy most of the civilian satellites in space, for example, or collapse essential infrastructure—but new technologies could expand their reach too. In their book The Coming Wave, Mustafa Suleyman and Michael Bhaskar described some potential attacks that terrorists could undertake: unleashing hundreds or thousands of drones equipped with automatic weapons and facial recognition on multiple cities simultaneously, say, or even one drone to spray a lethal pathogen on a crowd.
恐怖组织的能力不如州行为者，例如，他们不太可能破坏太空中的大多数平民卫星，或者崩溃的基础设施，但新技术也可以扩大其影响力。穆斯塔法·苏莱曼（Mustafa Suleyman）和迈克尔·巴斯卡（Michael Bhaskar）在他们的《即将来临的浪潮》中描述了一些恐怖分子可以进行的潜在攻击：释放了数百或数千架配备自动武器的无人机，并在多个城市上同时在多个城市上释放了一个无人机，甚至是一个无人驾驶飞机，甚至是一个无人驾驶飞机，甚至在人群上喷了一个致命的病原体。
A good deal of American infrastructure is owned by private companies with little incentive to undertake the difficult and costly fixes that might defend against Chinese infiltration. Certainly this is true of telecommunications companies, as well as those providing utilities such as water and electricity. Making American systems resilient could require a major public outlay. But it could cost less than the $150 billion (one estimate has that figure at an eye-popping $185 billion) that the House of Representatives is proposing to appropriate this year to strictly enforce immigration law.
私营公司拥有大量的美国基础设施，几乎没有动力来进行难以抵御中国渗透的困难和昂贵的修复。当然，电信公司以及提供水和电力等公用事业的公司都是如此。使美国系统的弹性可能需要大量的公众支出。但是，众议院众议院今年提议应对严格执行移民法的规定，它的成本可能少于1500亿美元（一个估计的这一数字，以高达1,850亿美元的价格）。
Instead, the Trump administration proposed slashing funding for CISA, the agency responsible for protecting much of our infrastructure against foreign attacks, by $495 million, or approximately 20 percent of its budget. That cut will make the United States more vulnerable to attack.
取而代之的是，特朗普政府提议为CISA削减资金，该机构负责保护我们的许多基础设施免受外国袭击的侵害，约合4.95亿美元，约占其预算的20％。这种削减将使美国更容易受到攻击。
The response to the drone threat has been no better. Some in Congress have tried to pass legislation expanding government authority to detect and destroy drones over certain kinds of locations, but the most recent effort failed. Senator Rand Paul, who was then the ranking member of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs and is now the chair, said there was no imminent threat and warned against giving the government sweeping surveillance powers, although the legislation entailed nothing of the sort. Senators from both parties have resisted other legislative measures to counter drones.
对无人机威胁的反应并没有更好。国会中的一些人试图通过扩大政府权力的立法，以检测和销毁某些地点的无人机，但最近的努力失败了。参议员兰德·保罗（Rand Paul）当时是参议院国土安全和政府事务委员会的排名成员，现在担任主席，他说，迫在眉睫的威胁，并警告不要赋予政府范围内的监视权，尽管该立法没有任何意义。来自双方的参议员都抵制了其他立法措施来反无人机。
The United States could learn a lot from Ukraine on how to counter drones, as well as how to use them, but the administration has displayed little interest in doing this. The massively expensive Golden Dome project is solely focused on defending against the most advanced missiles but should be tasked with dealing with the drone threat as well.
美国可以从乌克兰学到很多关于如何对抗无人机以及如何使用它们的知识，但是政府对此几乎没有兴趣。昂贵的黄金圆顶项目完全专注于防御最先进的导弹，但也应承担应对无人机威胁的任务。
Meanwhile, key questions go unasked and unanswered. What infrastructure most needs to be protected? Should aircraft be kept in the open? Where should the United States locate a counter-drone capability?
同时，关键问题未解决，没有解决。最需要保护哪些基础设施？是否应该将飞机敞开？美国应该在哪里找到反无人机能力？
After 9/11, the United States built a far-reaching homeland-security apparatus focused on counterterrorism. The Trump administration is refocusing it on border security and immigration. But the biggest threat we face is not terrorism, let alone immigration. Those responsible for homeland security should not be chasing laborers on farms and busboys in restaurants in order to meet quotas imposed by the White House.
在9/11之后，美国建立了一个专注于反恐的国土安全设备。特朗普政府将其重新集中在边境安全和移民上。但是我们面临的最大威胁不是恐怖主义，更不用说移民了。负责国土安全部的人不应在餐馆里追逐农场和班子的劳动者，以满足白宫施加的配额。
The wars in Ukraine and the Middle East are giving Americans a glimpse into the battles of the future—and a warning. It is time to prepare.
乌克兰和中东的战争使美国人瞥见了未来的战斗，并警告了。是时候准备了。
