The French government said this year that it would replace Zoom and other American videoconference software with a French-developed alternative. Germany is building a homegrown platform for artificial intelligence. Companies in both countries are teaming up to build A.I. chips to rival those of the United States and China.

法国政府今年表示，将以自主研发的替代方案取代Zoom等美国视频会议软件。德国则正在打造本土人工智能平台。与此同时，两国企业正联手开发人工智能芯片，希望与美国和中国的产品展开竞争。

These are modest steps in Europe’s high-stakes race to catch up to America and China in the global sprint for digital independence. Without it, Europe’s political and business leaders worry, they will be vulnerable to sudden losses of access to critical technologies, as after President Trump’s recent decision to cut off foreigners from some of Anthropic’s latest artificial intelligence models. They will also miss out on revenues from a booming industry.

在全球争夺数字自主权的竞赛中，欧洲正在奋力追赶美国和中国，而上述措施不过是初步尝试。这场竞争关系重大。欧洲政商界担心，如果不能掌握数字自主权，他们获取关键技术的能力可能随时受制于人——正如特朗普总统最近决定切断外国用户对Anthropic部分最新人工智能模型的访问权限一样。此外，欧洲还可能错失这一蓬勃发展的产业所带来的巨大收益。

Yet interviews with industry leaders, public officials, entrepreneurs and economists suggest there is currently little question about whether Europe can wean itself off tech dependence anytime soon.

然而，采访了行业领袖、政府官员、企业家和经济学家之后，欧洲能否在短期内摆脱对外国技术的依赖，答案已毋庸置疑。

It cannot.

不能。

Instead, political and business leaders across the continent are wrestling with a more limited, but still daunting, question. If full independence is impossible, where should Europe focus its digital efforts, in pursuit of at least partial autonomy?

因此，欧洲政界和商界如今面对的已不再是能否实现完全独立，而是一个范围更窄却依然艰巨的问题。既然完全独立做不到，那么欧洲应把有限的资源集中在哪些数字技术领域，争取实现至少部分自主？

“One hundred percent autonomy in digital services is not at this stage something that is feasible,” said Anne Le Hénanff, France’s minister for artificial intelligence and digital affairs. “We just need to decide what we don’t want to be dependent on.”

“数字服务的百分之百自主在现阶段并不可行，”法国人工智能和数字事务部长安妮·勒埃纳夫表示。“我们真正需要决定的是，哪些领域我们不能依赖别人。”

Europe’s consumers and businesses rely heavily on American and Chinese imports for their digital lives, including social media, national security systems and artificial intelligence. They store data with American companies, like Amazon, despite European concerns over the comparative laxness of American data protection rules. European-based multinational companies, like Mercedes-Benz, hone some of their most important new technology in Chinese labs.

如今，欧洲消费者和企业在数字生活的方方面面都高度依赖美国和中国，包括社交媒体、国家安全系统以及人工智能。尽管欧洲一直担心美国的数据保护制度不够严格，但许多数据仍存放在亚马逊等美国公司的服务器上。而像梅赛德斯-奔驰这样的欧洲跨国企业则把部分最重要的新技术研发工作放在了中国的实验室。

Mistral位于巴黎圣马丁运河边的办公地点，摄于2024年。Mistral AI是欧洲唯一本土开发的大语言模型。

Europe has one homegrown large language model, Mistral A.I., a three-year-old start-up that is France’s national champion in artificial intelligence and is now valued at $14 billion. Mistral’s three founders worked for Google and Meta before starting the company.

欧洲目前只有一家本土大语言模型企业——成立仅三年的法国初创公司Mistral AI。它被视为法国人工智能领域的国家队企业，目前估值已达140亿美元。公司的三位创始人在创业前都曾供职于谷歌和Meta。

Technology executives acknowledge that France does not yet have a financing culture, like that of Silicon Valley, to incubate promising start-ups. In France and across much of Europe, business leaders complain that companies must move to America to scale up.

科技行业高管坦承，法国目前尚不具备硅谷那种孵化有潜力初创企业的融资文化。在法国乃至欧洲大部分地区，商界领袖抱怨说，公司必须迁往美国才能实现规模化发展。

Continental leaders have begun to call that reliance dangerous, strategically and economically, as Washington and Beijing more boldly wield raw power to bend other countries to their will. They say it leaves them more vulnerable to cyberattacks, and to economic and diplomatic pressure by powerful governments that may not share Europe’s democratic values.

欧洲大陆的领导人越来越认为，这种依赖无论在战略还是经济层面都存在风险，因为华盛顿和北京正越来越频繁地动用强权迫使其他国家屈从于自己的意志。他们认为，这不仅会让欧洲更容易遭受网络攻击，也会使其更容易受到那些未必认同欧洲民主价值观的大国施加的经济和外交压力。

“We need nothing more and nothing less than technological sovereignty in Europe, and therefore also in Germany, at least wherever it is attainable,” Friedrich Merz, the German chancellor, said last fall. Europe’s technological dependencies, he warned, were “being exploited for power politics.”

“欧洲需要的恰恰就是技术主权，当然也包括德国，至少在力所能及的范围内，”德国总理默茨去年秋天说。他警告，欧洲在技术上的依赖性正在被人“用作权力政治的筹码”。

Last week, the Netherlands announced plans to create government-controlled data centers to prevent sensitive information from falling into the hands of foreign companies.

上周，荷兰宣布计划建设由政府控制的数据中心，以防止敏感信息落入外国企业手中。

Last month, France’s prime minister, Sébastien Lecornu, said his country’s domestic intelligence service would stop using A.I. data tools from Palantir, an American tech company, in favor of those from a French company, ChapsVision.

上月，法国总理勒科尔尼宣布，法国国内情报部门将停止使用美国科技公司Palantir的AI数据工具，转而采用法国公司ChapsVision的产品。

“Just as we would not agree to transfer our national archives to California, we must use our own A.I. tools,” Mr. Lecornu said in a video posted on social media.

勒科尔尼在社交媒体发布的视频中说：“正如我们不会同意把国家档案馆搬到加州一样，我们也必须使用自己的AI工具。”

德国总理默茨周四在议会发表讲话。他呼吁欧洲建立对外国公司的技术独立。

Relying on foreign technology can be dangerous for the private sector, too. Many European companies depend on Chinese products for data storage and cannot guarantee that their data will not be shared with Chinese intelligence, said Sebastian Kurz, a former chancellor of Austria. He is now the president of Dream, a company that sells A.I. security systems that exist entirely within one country to Western clients, including governments.

对于私营企业而言，依赖外国技术同样存在风险。奥地利前总理库尔茨表示，许多欧洲企业依赖中国的数据存储产品，且无法保证其数据不会共享给中国情报机构。如今，他担任Dream公司总裁，该公司向包括政府在内的西方客户提供完全在单一国家内部运行的AI安全系统。

That dependence, Mr. Kurz said in an interview, is problematic if it affects “sensitive data in sectors like health care, where people feel a need that their data is protected.”

库尔茨在接受采访时表示，如果这种依赖影响到“医疗等领域的敏感数据——人们觉得自己的这些数据需要得到保护”，就会成为一个严重问题。

Governments across Europe are spending billions of euros to try to shake those dependencies for themselves and their companies — at least in select areas.

欧洲各国政府正斥资数十亿欧元，试图为自己和本国企业摆脱这种依赖——至少是在某些关键领域。

The French government has committed to spending roughly $5.3 billion to buy digital tools from French companies.

法国政府已承诺投入约53亿美元，采购法国企业开发的数字工具。

The German government plans to spend more than $20 billion over the next several years in six key tech sectors, including artificial intelligence and biotechnology. It has contracted with the German companies Deutsche Telekom and SAP to build a government A.I. platform that can be entirely disconnected from rivals like China and America.

德国政府计划在未来数年内，在包括人工智能和生物技术在内的六大关键科技领域投入逾200亿美元。它已与德国电信和SAP签约，合作构建一个可完全切断与中美竞争对手连接的政府AI平台。

A German government agency for innovation has started a fund worth roughly $140 million to catalyze investment in European start-up companies in areas like A.I. At a conference the agency sponsored this spring, officials said they were hoping less to fully supplant American and Chinese tech companies than to work with them — and to become indispensable in their operations.

德国一个政府创新机构已启动一个约1.4亿美元的基金，以催化对AI等领域的欧洲初创公司的投资。在该机构今年春天主办的一次会议上，官员们表示，他们的目标与其说是全面取代美国和中国的科技公司，不如说是与之合作——并成为其运营中不可或缺的角色。

安妮·勒埃纳夫在去年11月于柏林举行的欧洲数字主权会议上发言。

Dorothee Bär, Germany’s federal minister for research, technology and space, noted in an interview at the conference that German start-ups had played a role in the launch of NASA’s Artemis II rocket.

德国德国联邦研究、技术与航天部部长多萝西·贝尔在会议期间接受采访时指出，德国初创企业曾参与美国航空航天局“阿耳忒弥斯2号”火箭项目。

“These mutual dependencies are also important, and the Americans in particular see that we have our own strengths,” Ms. Bär said. America in the Trump era, she added, “reacts exclusively to strength.”

“这种相互依存同样重要，尤其是美国人也认识到，我们拥有自己的优势，”贝尔说。她补充道，特朗普时代的美国"只对实力做出反应"。

German tech leaders are particularly enthusiastic about their chances of building on the country’s legacy strength, manufacturing, to pioneer exportable high-tech products like advanced versions of toolmaking equipment for factories.

德国科技界人士尤其相信，德国可以在制造业这一传统优势的基础上，率先推出面向国际市场的高科技产品，例如更先进的精密制造装备。

“There are certain areas where Europe has an edge, actually,” said Antonio Krüger, the chief executive of the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence. “This is an asset that I think the U.S. and China currently don’t have at that level of quality and amount.”

德国人工智能研究中心首席执行官安东尼奥·克吕格表示：“在某些领域，欧洲实际上是有优势的。我认为，相关优势在质量和数量上是美国和中国目前都无法匹敌的。”

Europe’s technological strengths also include basic research, said Anne Bouverot, a chairwoman of a government committee for generative artificial intelligence. She pointed to a collaboration between the Fraunhofer labs in Germany and the French research lab CEA in developing next-generation chips for A.I.

法国政府生成式人工智能委员会主席安妮·布沃罗认为，欧洲的技术优势还包括基础研究。她举例说，德国弗劳恩霍夫研究所与法国原子能委员会实验室正合作开发下一代人工智能芯片。

安妮·布沃罗布沃罗是法国人工智能委员会主席。她表示，欧洲需要更好地为科技初创企业提供资金支持。

Europe, however, remains weak in generating capital to fund tech companies as they grow larger, Ms. Bouverot said. Mistral raised $1.5 billion by selling a stake to a Dutch company. But that remains an exceptional case.

然而，布沃罗表示，欧洲依然缺乏支持科技企业成长壮大的资本市场。Mistral通过将股份出售给一家荷兰公司筹集了15亿美元。但这仍属个案，难以复制。

“We need to be able to finance start-ups better in Europe,” Ms. Bouverot said. “There’s lots of savings in Europe. Today, those savings are not used enough for start-ups. They either go to the U.S. or they stay in nonrisky investments.”

“我们需要在欧洲更好地为初创企业融资，”布沃罗说。“欧洲其实拥有大量储蓄。但如今，这些资金并没有充分流向初创企业。它们要么流向美国，要么停留在低风险投资中。”

Ms. Bouverot said Europe would never cast itself off completely from Silicon Valley. She said the idea was for European countries to carve out autonomy in strategic digital areas — making them less vulnerable, for example, to an interruption of service or a breach of sensitive data.

布沃罗表示，欧洲永远不可能完全摆脱硅谷。她说，真正的目标是在一些具有战略意义的数字领域建立自主能力，从而降低因服务中断或敏感数据泄露而受到冲击的风险。

That’s very different from the full vision of digital independence some leaders are promising. And it is not enough for those who say that Europe needs to break free of America and China for a purely economic reason — to profit from the next wave of booming technology sales.

这与一些领导人所描绘的数字完全独立的宏大愿景相去甚远。而对于那些出于纯粹经济逻辑——以便从下一波科技销售热潮中获利——而主张欧洲必须摆脱对美中依赖的人来说，这也远远不够。

“The whole point of sovereignty for me is not security and resilience,” said Cristina Caffarra, chair of the EuroStack Initiative Foundation, which works to strengthen Europe’s digital industries.

“对我而言，主权的全部意义并不在于安全与韧性，”欧洲数字产业振兴倡议基金会主席克里斯蒂娜·卡法拉说。

“It’s not democracy and all that,” she said. “It’s value capture.”

“也不是什么民主之类的大道理，”她说。“而是价值获取。”