When President Trump announced on Friday that the United States would move ahead with a long-debated project to build a stealthy next-generation fighter jet, the message to China was clear: The United States plans to spend tens of billions of dollars over the next decade, probably far longer, to contain Beijing’s ability to dominate the skies over the Pacific.

特朗普总统上周五宣布，美国将推进争论已久的下一代隐形战斗机项目，这是向中国发出的明确信息：美国计划在未来10年乃至更长时间里花费数百亿美元遏制北京掌控太平洋空域的能力。

But here on earth, the reality has been very different.

但在我们脚踏的土地上，现实却截然不同。

As the Department of Government Efficiency roars through agencies across government, its targets have included some of the organizations that Beijing worried about most, or actively sought to subvert. And, as with much that Elon Musk’s DOGE has dismembered, there has been no published study of the costs and benefits of losing those capabilities — and no discussion of how the roles, arguably as important as a manned fighter, might be replaced.

政府效率部在政府各机构采取轰轰烈烈的行动，其目标包括了一些北京最担心或积极寻求破坏的组织。而且，就像埃隆·马斯克的政府效率部肢解的许多东西一样，目前还没有关于失去这些能力的成本和收益的公开研究报告，也没有人讨论如何取代这些可以说与载人战斗机同样重要的角色。

On the list of capabilities on life support is Radio Free Asia, a 29-year-old nonprofit that estimates its news broadcasts reach 60 million people in Asia each week, from China to Myanmar, and across the Pacific islands where the United States has been struggling to counter China’s narratives about the world. It furloughed all but 75 of its Washington staff members on Friday, trying to stay on the air while court cases develop on Trump officials’ moves to defund U.S. government-supported media.

自由亚洲电台是一家有29年历史的非营利性机构，据估计，其新闻广播每周覆盖亚洲从中国到缅甸乃至太平洋诸岛的6000万人口，美国一直在这些地方努力反驳中国关于世界的叙事。周五，该电视台大部分工作人员被强制休假，只有75名华盛顿员工仍然在岗，努力保持节目播出，与此同时，特朗普官员停止向美国政府支持媒体拨发经费的行动所引起的诉讼仍在继续。

At the Pentagon, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth eliminated the Office of Net Assessment, an internal think-tank. With an annual budget that accounted for a few seconds of Pentagon spending each year, the office tried to think ahead about the challenges the United States would face a decade or two in the future — such as the new capabilities of artificial intelligence, autonomous weapons and the hidden vulnerabilities of supply chains for military contractors.

在五角大楼，国防部长皮特·海格塞斯裁撤了内部智库“网络评估办公室”。这个办公室的年度预算在五角大楼支出中显得微不足道，但它试图就美国在未来10年或20年将面临的挑战做出前瞻性的思考——比如人工智能和自主武器带来的新能力，以及军事承包商供应链的隐患。

It was a revered institution, what a Wall Street Journal editorial this past week called “The Office that Won the Cold War.” Mr. Hegseth said in a statement that it would be reconstituted in some unspecified way “in alignment with the Department’s strategic priorities,” though its value was that it challenged conventional thinking about those priorities.

这是一个受人尊敬的机构，被《华尔街日报》上周的一篇社论称为“赢得冷战的办公室”。海格塞斯在一份声明中说，它将以某种“与国防部的战略重点保持一致”的未指明方式进行重组，尽管该机构的价值在于挑战了关于这些重点的传统思维。

Over at the Department of Homeland Security, a series of cyberdefenses have been stripped away, at a moment when China’s state-backed hackers have been more successful than at any time in recent memory.

在国土安全部，一系列网络防御措施被裁撤，而此时，中国政府支持的黑客正取得空前的成果。

Among those dissolved, at least for the time being, is the Cyber Safety Review Board, created on the model of the National Transportation Safety Board, which examines aircraft accidents and tries to extract lessons learned. The cybersecurity board was just beginning to take testimony on how Chinese intelligence bored deep inside America’s largest telecommunications firms, including the system the Justice Department uses to monitor its “lawful intercept” system, which places wiretaps on people suspected of committing crimes or spying — including Chinese spies.

至少目前已被解散的机构还有网络安全审查委员会。该委员会是以负责调查飞机事故并试图从中吸取教训的美国国家运输安全委员会为模版成立的。网络安全委员会刚刚开始听取有关中国情报机构如何深入美国最大电信公司的证词，包括司法部用于监控其“合法拦截”系统的系统，“合法拦截”对涉嫌犯罪或从事间谍活动的人进行窃听，包括中国间谍在内。

Now the board has been disbanded. No one at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency seems able to say what has happened to the investigation into one of the most successful penetrations of American networks, or who is now responsible for figuring out why American telecommunications firms were caught unawares, for more than a year, by China’s Ministry of State Security.

现在委员会已经解散。美国网络安全和基础设施安全局似乎没有人能够说得清，对美国网络最成功入侵事件之一的调查进展如何，也没有人能够说得清，现在是谁负责查明，为何美国电信公司在一年多的时间里毫无防备被中国国家安全部入侵。

The list goes on, more evidence that in its first two months the new administration has been devastatingly efficient in tearing things down, but painfully slow to explain how their actions fit into their broader strategy.

这样的例子还有很多，更多证据表明，新政府上任的前两个月里，在拆除现有机构方面表现得极其高效，但在解释他们的行动如何符合更广泛的战略方面却慢得令人痛苦。

All this has the Chinese celebrating. As the Voice of America was being dismantled and fell silent, The Global Times, a mouthpiece of the Chinese Communist Party, wrote that “the so-called beacon of freedom, VOA, has now been discarded by its own government like a dirty rag.”

所有这一切都让中国人欢欣鼓舞。在美国之音被裁撤并陷入沉寂之际，中国共产党的喉舌媒体《环球时报》写道，“美国之音这块所谓‘自由灯塔’的招牌，如今已被本国政府嫌弃得像块脏抹布。”

China is still trying to take its measure of the new administration, which is putting new sanctions on Chinese entities that buy Iranian oil, but is also talking about wiping out the CHIPS and Science Act. The law not only provided federal funding to jump-start the production of advanced semiconductors in the United States, but provided billions for advanced work in a range of key technologies, from batteries to quantum computing, that China is subsidizing.

中国仍在试图对美国的这届新政府做出评估，新政府在对购买伊朗石油的中国实体实施新的制裁，同时又在考虑废除《芯片与科学法案》。该法案不仅为启动美国先进半导体的生产提供联邦资金，还为从电池到量子计算等一系列关键技术的先进研究提供了数十亿美元的资金，而中国正在为这些研究提供补贴。

“It’s a contradiction, as the Chinese say, that we are cutting back on our instruments of national power while saying that we are stepping up our competition with Beijing,” said Michael J. Green, chief executive of the United States Study Center at the University of Sydney in Australia. “When we reveal human rights abuses or Chinese misinformation, it’s another form of competition with China. And getting rid of it only creates a vacuum that Beijing is going to try to fill. And we are already seeing that happening.”

“一方面说我们要削减国家力量的工具，另一方面又在说我们要加强与北京的竞争，用中国人的话说，这是矛盾的，”澳大利亚悉尼大学美国研究中心的首席执行官迈克尔·格林说。“揭露侵犯人权的行为或中国的错误信息，是我们与中国竞争的另一种形式。裁掉它只会造成一个真空，北京将试图填补这个真空。我们已经看到这种情况在发生。”

The speed of the dismantlement has left many Asia experts a bit stunned, because they know the new aircraft — which Mr. Trump said would be called the F-47, clearly in homage to his own second term — will not contribute to American deterrence for a decade, if it is on time.

美国拆除机构的速度让许多亚洲问题专家感到有些震惊，因为他们知道，这种新飞机——特朗普说它将被命名为F-47，显然是向他的第二任期致敬——即使按时交付，也不会在10年内为美国的威慑力做出贡献。

“The charge for the United States is to deter war with China without capitulation and to compete effectively across all the areas of soft power,” Richard Fontaine, the chief executive of the Center for a New American Security and a former Republican aide to John McCain in the Senate, said on Friday. “The United States has an array of tools to do this, including humanitarian aid, development assistance, support for democracy abroad, and strategic communications efforts. Strangely, these are the efforts most under threat by the new cost-cutting teams.”

“美国的责任在不退让的前提下通过威慑防止与中国的战争，并在所有软实力领域进行有效竞争，”新美国安全中心首席执行官理查德·方丹周五表示，他曾在参议院担任约翰·麦凯恩的共和党助手。“美国有一系列的手段来做到这一点，包括人道主义援助、发展援助、对海外民主的支持以及战略沟通努力。奇怪的是，这些努力正受到新的成本削减团队的最大威胁。”

“If it goes too far,” he warned, “it will amount to unilateral disarmament in the world’s most important contest.”

“如果做得太过火，”他警告说，“就等于在世界上最重要的较量中单方面裁军。”

It is hard to find an understandable theme to the cuts; some are based on perceived acts of disloyalty, or old grudges, or a sense that even state-financed media or think tanks are inhabited by anti-Trump liberals.

很难为这些削减找到一个可以理解的主题；有些是基于被认为的不忠行为，也有些是旧怨，还有些是基于一种感觉——即使是国家资助的媒体或智库中也充斥着反特朗普的自由派。

Sometimes it is especially mystifying. The Office of Net Assessment, for example, was mostly staffed by career civilians or uniformed military, who are asked to think outside the box: How would a prolonged economic downturn in China affect its leaders’ thinking about Taiwan? What happens to warfighting when manned aircraft — like the newly announced jet fighter — can be regularly outmaneuvered by autonomous weapons?

有些地方尤其显得令人费解。例如，网络评估办公室的工作人员大多是职业文职人员或穿制服的军人，他们被要求跳出固有思维定式考虑问题：中国长期的经济低迷将如何影响其领导人对台湾的看法？当有人驾驶飞机——比如新发布的喷气式战斗机——的机动能力被自主武器轻松超越时，战争会怎样发展？

The cuts at Radio Free Asia, which broke many of the biggest stories about the internment camps China has built to “re-educate” Uyghurs in Xinjiang, are among the most mystifying. Its broadcasts have been attacked by Beijing, which has gone to great lengths to censor the reports and broadcast their own narrative, often on YouTube and X.

自由亚洲电台曾报道过许多关于中国在新疆为“再教育”维吾尔人建立拘禁营的重大新闻，它的裁员是最令人费解的事件之一。它的广播受到了北京的攻击，后者不遗余力地审查这些报道，并经常在YouTube和X上宣传自己的叙事。

Bay Fang, the president of Radio Free Asia, a nonprofit that gets its $60 million budget from a congressionally approved disbursement, said in an interview that she doubted the organization was specifically targeted.

自由亚洲电台是一家非营利组织，其6000万美元的预算来自国会批准的拨款。台长方贝在采访中说，她怀疑该电台是否被特别针对。

DOGE and the White House were gunning for Voice of America, which has hundreds of millions of listeners and readers, and which Mr. Trump has denounced as “the Voice of Radical America.” In one of his executive orders, he said he would “ensure taxpayers are no longer on the hook for radical propaganda.” (Almost all of Voice of America’s staff of 1,300 journalists have been put on paid leave.)

政府效率部和白宫对美国之音发起了攻击，拥有数亿听众和读者的美国之音被特朗普谴责为“激进美国之音”。在他的一项行政命令中，他说他将“确保纳税人不再为激进的宣传埋单。”（美国之音的1300名记者员工几乎都被要求带薪休假。）

自由亚洲电台办事处称，资助该电台的联邦拨款已终止。

“You have only to look at the way dictators in the region are celebrating our defunding,” Ms. Fang said in an interview. “We provide a voice that counters their propaganda and shines a light into dark corners they’d rather leave untouched.” The result, she said, is that “we are an essential way that America wins trust among the people living in these authoritarian countries. Shuttering RFA is not only their loss, but America’s.”

“你只要看看该地区的独裁者如何庆祝我们的资金被取消就知道了，”方贝在接受采访时说。“我们发出的声音反击他们的宣传，照亮他们不愿触及的黑暗角落。”她说，“我们是美国赢得这些专制国家人民信任的重要途径。关闭亚洲自由电台不仅是这些人民的损失，也是美国的损失。”

Winning trust, however, is hard to quantify. It takes years, and the results are not as easy to demonstrate as showing off a new fighter jet and, in the case of the new F-47, the semiautonomous attack drones that fly alongside.

然而，信任的赢得是很难被量化的。这需要花费数年的时间，而且结果并不像展示一架新型战斗机那样容易，就新型F-47而言，还包括展示与其协同飞行的半自主攻击无人机。

Radio Free Asia’s budget is so small that Ms. Fang said she was pretty certain the nonprofit was “collateral damage” as the administration moved to defund the U.S. Agency for Global Media, which also supports Voice of America, Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty.

自由亚洲电台的预算非常少，因此方贝说，她非常确定该非营利组织是美国政府削减美国全球媒体机构资金的“附带损害”，美国全球媒体机构还支持美国之音、自由欧洲电台和自由电台。

The defunding is taking place even before the Senate has confirmed Mr. Trump’s choice to head the global media agency, L. Brent Bozell III, a conservative political activist. He has picked Kari Lake, the pro-MAGA former journalist who lost a Senate race in Arizona, as the new head of Voice of America, but for now she is only a “special adviser” because Mr. Trump fired the board members that could have replaced the current leader.

在参议院确认特朗普选择的全球媒体机构负责人、保守派政治活动家布伦特·博泽尔三世的任命之前，裁撤就已经开始。他选择了支持“让美国恢复伟大荣光”的前记者、曾在亚利桑那州的参议员竞选中失利的卡里·莱克担任美国之音的新负责人，但目前她只是一名“特别顾问”，因为特朗普解雇了本可以取代现任领导人的董事会成员。

This administration clearly regards “soft power” as a largely irrelevant concept. But the lack of it leaves a vacuum that Beijing will happily fill.

本届政府显然认为，“软实力”在很大程度上是一个无关紧要的概念。但这种实力的缺失会留下一个北京乐于填补的真空。

“It seems self-defeating that while China mounts unrelenting cyberattacks, builds a Navy to defeat the U.S. Pacific fleet, sends ‘wolf-warrior’ diplomats far afield, and created alternatives to the dollar that America pulls inward and closes off avenues of information to the Chinese people,” said Paul Kolbe, a career C.I.A. officer who spent much of his career countering Soviet propaganda and covert operations.

“中国发动无情的网络攻击，建立一支能击败美国太平洋舰队的海军，派遣‘战狼’式的外交官到遥远的海外，创造美元的替代品，而美国却向内收缩，并关闭了中国人民获得信息的渠道，这似乎是在自取灭亡，”中情局职业官员保罗·科尔比说。他职业生涯的大部分时间都在打击苏联的宣传和秘密行动。

Speaking from Jakarta, Mr. Kolbe answered his own question: “We affirm Chinese beliefs that they are ascendant, and that our decline is accelerating.”

在雅加达接受采访的科尔比说：“我们是在巩固中国人的信念——他们正在崛起，而我们正在加速衰落。”