纽约时报中文网 - 中英对照版-中英担忧中国窃取技术美国会议员要求政府调查AI巨头G42

A U.S. congressional committee has asked the Commerce Department to look into whether a giant technology company controlled by the ruling family of the United Arab Emirates should be put under trade restrictions because of its ties to China.

美国国会的一个委员会要求商务部对一家由阿拉伯联合酋长国掌权家族控制的大型科技公司展开调查，以确定该公司是否应该因其与中国的关系而受到贸易限制。

The company, G42, specializes in artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies, and is overseen by Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed, the national security adviser of the Emirates and a younger brother of the country’s ruler.

这家名为G42的公司专门从事人工智能和其他新兴技术的研发，由阿联酋国家安全顾问谢赫塔农·本·扎耶德控制，他是阿联酋统治者的弟弟。

It has signed recent agreements with prominent American technology companies, including Microsoft, Dell and OpenAI. A Silicon Valley chip firm, Cerebras, is building a supercomputer for G42 to create and power A.I. products.

该公司最近与微软、戴尔和OpenAI等美国知名科技企业签署了协议。硅谷芯片公司Cerebras正在为G42打造一台能够生成并驱动人工智能产品的超级计算机。

But in a letter sent to the Commerce Department on Wednesday, the bipartisan House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party said the company works extensively with China’s “military, intelligence services and state-owned entities,” according to a copy obtained by The New York Times. The letter was signed by the chairman of the committee, Representative Mike Gallagher, Republican of Wisconsin.

但《纽约时报》获得的副本显示，在周三发给商务部的信函中，由两党议员组成的众议院美中战略竞争特设委员会表示，该公司与中国“军事、情报部门和国有实体”存在广泛合作。该信函由委员会主席、威斯康星州共和党众议员迈克·加拉格尔签署。

Officials in the Biden administration have privately expressed similar concerns about the company, which they fear could be a conduit by which advanced American technology is siphoned to Chinese companies or the government, The New York Times reported in November.

据《纽约时报》去年11月报道，拜登政府官员曾私下表达过类似担忧，即该公司可能成为中国企业或政府从美国窃取先进技术的渠道。

Although the Emirates is a U.S. partner and one of the biggest buyers of American weapons, it has increasingly sought military and economic cooperation with China. That has stoked worries among U.S. officials, who often visit the small Persian Gulf nation to discuss security issues. On Monday, Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken met in Abu Dhabi with Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed, the leader of the Emirates, while on a regional tour focused on the Israel-Gaza war, and the two “underscored the importance of the strategic partnership,” the State Department said.

虽然阿联酋是美国的伙伴国，也是美国军火最大的主顾之一，但它越来越多地寻求与中国在军事和经济上的合作。这引发了美国官员的担忧，他们经常访问这个波斯湾小国讨论安全问题。周一，在为处理巴以冲突而前往该地区访问期间，国务卿布林肯在阿布扎比会见了阿联酋领导人穆罕默德·本·扎耶德，国务院称他们“强调了战略伙伴关系的重要性”。

The congressional committee said it had reviewed documents showing that the chief executive of G42, Peng Xiao, “operates and is affiliated with an expansive network of companies that materially support” the Chinese military’s technological advancement as well as human rights abuses.

国会委员会则表示，其审查的文件显示，G42首席执行官肖鹏“经营并隶属于一个庞大的企业网络，该网络实质上支持了”中国军方的技术进步，助长了侵犯人权的行为。

The committee asked the Commerce Department to consider imposing export controls on G42 and 13 companies, most of them based in China, that are owned by it or linked to it.

该委员会要求商务部考虑对G42以及13家由其拥有或与之关联的企业（大部分总部位于中国）实施出口管制。

The controls would prohibit U.S. businesses from selling products to the Emirati and Chinese firms without a department-issued license. The committee said it was giving the Commerce Department until Feb. 2 to act or explain to lawmakers why it was not doing so.

此种管制措施将禁止未获得商务部许可证的美国企业向这些阿联酋和中国企业销售产品。该委员会表示，它要求商务部在2月2日之前采取行动，或向议员解释没有行动的原因。

Five of the companies in China, the committee said, are affiliated with the Emirati firm DarkMatter, which has developed spyware and surveillance tools. The letter did not say exactly how the Chinese affiliates, also called DarkMatter, were tied to the Emirati firm.

该委员会表示，其中五家中国企业隶属于阿联酋公司“暗物质”，后者研发了间谍软件和监视工具。该信函没有对这些与“暗物质”同名的中国子公司与这家阿联酋公司的具体关联进行说明。

The C.I.A. has a classified profile of Mr. Xiao. He was born in China and attended college and graduate school in the United States before working at a Virginia technology company, MicroStrategy, which he left in 2014, according to public documents and reports. At some point, he gained U.S. citizenship but renounced it in favor of Emirati citizenship. A G42 representative confirmed his Chinese name is 肖鹏, which appears on the website of the Chinese Embassy in the Emirates.

中情局掌握了肖鹏的秘密档案。根据公开文件和报道，他出生于中国，在美国读完大学和研究生，之后去了弗吉尼亚州的科技公司MicroStrategy工作，2014年离职。他曾获得美国公民身份，但为取得阿联酋公民身份而放弃。G42的一名代表确认他的中文名叫“肖鹏”，这个名字曾出现在中国驻阿联酋大使馆的网站上。

A spokesperson for the committee declined to disclose the documents it had reviewed.

该委员会的发言人拒绝披露经过审查的文件。

In a statement, a Commerce Department spokesperson said “we have received the letter and will respond through the appropriate channels.”

商务部发言人在声明中表示，“我们已收到信函，并将透过适当渠道作出回应。”

G42 representatives did not answer emails requesting comment.

G42公司代表没有回复请求置评的电子邮件。

American intelligence officials had raised concerns about the company’s relationship with China in a series of classified assessments, according to the Times investigation. The report also said top Biden administration officials had pressed their Emirati counterparts to sever the company’s ties to China.

据《纽约时报》的调查报道，美国情报官员曾在一系列机密评估中对该公司与中国的关系提出关切。该报道还透露，拜登政府高级官员已敦促阿联酋政府切断该公司与中国的关联。

Those ties include partnerships with Huawei, the Chinese telecommunications giant under U.S. government sanctions, and BGI Genomics, which owns companies that the Commerce Department put on restricted lists last March. Some U.S. officials say they worry G42 is helping BGI try to collect genomic data on millions of Americans and others worldwide.

这些关联包括与中国电信巨头华为和华大基因的合作，前者受到美国政府制裁，后者的子公司在去年3月被商务部列入了限制名单。一些美国官员称，他们担心G42正在帮助华大基因尝试收集数以百万计的美国人和世界各地其他民众的基因组数据。

G42 invested $100 million last year in ByteDance, the Chinese parent company of TikTok, and has investments in other Chinese firms. Its $10 billion investment fund, 42X, has a Shanghai office whose new head is Jason Hu, a former executive of JD.com, a large Chinese e-commerce company.

去年，G42向TikTok的中国母公司字节跳动投资了1亿美元，并对其他中国公司进行了投资。其价值100亿美元的投资基金42X在上海设有办事处，新任负责人是中国大型电子商务公司京东的前高管胡士泰。

The Biden administration has enacted trade policies to try to keep China from acquiring advanced chips and other tools that would help it surpass the United States in developing emerging technologies, including A.I. and quantum computing.

拜登政府制定了贸易政策，试图阻止中国获得先进的芯片，以及有助于中国在开发人工智能和量子计算等新兴技术方面超越美国的其他工具。

When The Times contacted G42 for the November article about the administration’s concerns, a senior executive, Talal Al Kaissi, said the company sought to “remain in full compliance” with U.S. government regulations. He added that the company had been talking to American companies about replacing its technology infrastructure, which includes Chinese hardware.

当时报就去年11月那篇有关政府担忧的文章联系G42时，该公司高管塔拉勒·凯西表示，该公司力求“完全遵守”美国政府的规定。他还说，该公司一直在与美国公司讨论更换其技术基础设施事宜，其中包括来自中国的硬件设备。

After the article was published, Mr. Gallagher said in a briefing with reporters on Nov. 29 that “the trend line of where the U.A.E. is headed in its natural relationship with China is rapidly moving in the wrong direction.”

文章发表后，加拉格尔在11月29日的新闻发布会上对记者说，“阿联酋与中国自然关系的趋势线正在迅速向错误的方向发展。”

G42 has investments from Mubadala, an Emirati sovereign wealth fund, and Silver Lake, an American private equity firm.

G42的投资来自阿联酋主权财富基金穆巴达拉和美国私募股权公司银湖。

G42 has declined multiple requests from The Times to interview Mr. Xiao. The Financial Times published an interview with Mr. Xiao on Dec. 7 in which he said that G42 was moving to cut ties with Chinese hardware suppliers like Huawei in favor of U.S. firms.

G42多次拒绝了时报采访肖鹏的请求。英国《金融时报》12月7日发表了对肖鹏的采访，他在采访中说，G42正采取行动，切断与华为等中国硬件供应商的联系，转而与美国公司合作。

But G42 is tightly intertwined with Chinese business figures and companies. The Wire China reported last month that corporate records show G42’s chief investment officer, Zhang Xiaoping, was also the chief operating officer of Yitu Technology, a Chinese company. The Biden administration put Yitu on a sanctions list in 2021 for developing surveillance technology used by Chinese officials in the repression of ethnic Uyghur Muslims.

但G42与中国商界人士和企业紧密相连。上个月，《连线中国》报道称，公司记录显示，G42的首席投资官张小平同时也是中国公司依图科技的首席运营官。拜登政府于2021年将依图科技列入制裁名单，原因是该公司开发了中国官员用于镇压维吾尔穆斯林的监控技术。

Mr. Zhang runs two G42 companies in China: G42 Shanghai Investment and Beijing Qingzi Future Network Technology.

张小平在中国经营两家G42公司：G42上海投资和北京青子未来网络科技有限公司。

In addition, the report said the Beijing firm’s general manager, Li Xiaoxu, is also the supervisor of Pegasus Technology China, which was started in 2015 by Pegasus, an Emirati firm where Mr. Xiao was chief executive before he was named to the same role at G42.

此外，报道称，这家北京公司的总经理李骁谞也是天马科技的主管，该公司于2015年由阿联酋公司天马创办，肖鹏在被任命为G42的首席执行官之前，曾担任该公司的首席执行官。

All three of those Chinese companies are among the 13 flagged by the congressional committee.

这三家中国公司都在国会委员会点名的13家公司之列。

In 2019, an Emirati firm Mr. Xiao led was involved in the launch and operation of a social media app, ToTok, that U.S. intelligence agencies assessed was a spy tool used by the Emirati government to track the conversations of its users. The data harvested from the app, according to an American intelligence assessment, was stored by an Emirati firm called Pax AI, run by Mr. Xiao.

2019年，肖鹏领导的一家阿联酋公司参与了社交媒体应用ToTok的推出和运营，美国情报机构评估认为，该应用是阿联酋政府用来跟踪其用户对话的间谍工具。根据美国的一份情报评估，从这款应用获取的数据由肖鹏经营的一家名为Pax AI的阿联酋公司存储。

Chinese engineers helped create the app, and a forensic researcher who examined the app in 2019 told The Times it appeared to be a copy of a Chinese messaging app offering free video calls, YeeCall, that was slightly customized for English- and Arabic-speaking audiences.

中国工程师帮助开发了这款应用，一名法律证据研究人员在2019年对这款应用进行了检查，他告诉《纽约时报》，它似乎是一款提供免费视频通话的中国即时通讯应用YeeCall的复制品，只是针对英语和阿拉伯语用户进行了一些定制。

The congressional letter named YeeCall as one of the companies that the Commerce Department should scrutinize.

国会的信函将YeeCall列为商务部应该审查的公司之一。

And regarding the DarkMatter firms tied to G42 and Mr. Peng, the letter said the network collaborates with Song-Chun Zhu, a lead researcher at the Beijing Institute for General Artificial Intelligence, a top state-supported scientific institution.

至于与G42和肖鹏有关的“暗物质”公司，信中说，该网络与北京通用人工智能研究所的首席研究员朱松纯合作，该研究所是国家支持的顶级科学机构。

One Emirates-based company owned by G42 and named in the congressional letter is Presight AI, which sells surveillance technology to police companies worldwide. In March 2023, a New York Times reporter examined its display at a police conference in Dubai and found signs of close ties to China.

国会信函中提到G42旗下一家总部位于阿联酋的公司Presight AI，该公司向世界各地的警察公司出售监控技术。2023年3月，《纽约时报》的一名记者在迪拜的一次警察会议上查看了该公司的展示，发现了与中国关系密切的迹象。

The company advertised itself as a sort of Emirati version of the U.S. data company Palantir. A video display offered a glorified version of the company’s capabilities, in which big data analytics foiled a drone attack on an office tower. A separate demonstration showed off the company’s physical surveillance capabilities: A software platform used cameras and facial recognition technology to track people at the conference.

该公司宣传自己是阿联酋版的美国数据公司Palantir。一个视频对该公司的能力进行了夸张的宣传，其中大数据分析挫败了对一座办公大楼的无人机袭击。另一个演示展示了该公司的物理监控能力：一个软件平台使用摄像头和面部识别技术来跟踪与会者。

The software, which loaded in Chinese before being translated into English, carried a number of hallmarks of Chinese police software. Although a company representative insisted it was built in the Emirates, it had a number of features specifically catered to the China market, like internet cafe monitoring and specialized labels for phone tracking not often seen outside China.

这款软件在被翻译成英文之前先加载了中文，带有许多中国警用软件的特征。尽管一名公司代表坚称它是在阿联酋制造的，但它有许多专门迎合中国市场的功能，比如网吧监控，以及在中国以外不常见的电话跟踪专用标签。

A Presight AI representative at the police conference said the surveillance software had already been sold to a number of countries in Africa and the Middle East, and that it was being used by the Emirati government as well.

一位出席警察会议的Presight AI代表表示，该监控软件已出售给非洲和中东的一些国家，阿联酋政府也在使用该软件。