The Biden administration has taken its first step to retaliate for China’s broad hack of American telecommunications firms, moving to ban the few remaining operations of China Telecom in the United States.

针对中国向美国电信公司的大规模黑客攻击，拜登政府已迈出反制的第一步，开始采取措施封禁中国电信在美国仅存的一些业务。

In a notice issued last week to China Telecom Americas — the U.S. subsidiary of one of China’s largest communications firms — the Commerce Department detailed a preliminary finding that the company’s presence in American networks and its provision of cloud services posed a national security risk to the United States.

商务部上周向中国电信美洲公司（中国最大通信公司之一的美国子公司）发出通知，其中详细列出了一项初步调查结果，即该公司在美国网络中的存在以及该公司提供的云服务，对美国构成了国家安全风险。

It gave the firm 30 days to respond, meaning that the decision on a final ban will almost certainly be up to the Trump administration.

商务部给予该公司30天的时间做出回应，这意味着最终是否作出禁令的决定基本取决于特朗普政府。

The action was a response to China’s incursion deep into U.S. telecommunications networks, providing Beijing access to data and conversations and giving it insight into spies the United States might be pursuing.

此举是对中国深度入侵美国电信网络的回应，北京方面因此能够获取各种数据和对话，并了解美国可能正在追捕的间谍。

The ban on China Telecom would have more symbolic than financial impact. Even before the latest turn in the cyberconfrontation between the world’s two largest economies, the United States had moved to shrink China Telecom’s presence.

对中国电信的禁令象征意义远大于经济影响。在世界两大经济体之间的网络对抗出现最新转折之前，美国就已经开始缩减中国电信的存在。

In October 2021, nine months into Mr. Biden’s term, the Federal Communications Commission revoked all licenses for China Telecom Americas to provide ordinary phone services in the United States, saying it was “subject to exploitation, influence and control by the Chinese government.”

2021年10月，拜登上任九个月后，美国联邦通信委员会(FCC)吊销了中国电信美洲公司在美国提供普通电话服务的所有许可证，称该公司“受到中国政府的利用、影响和控制”。

But that left in place China Telecom’s nodes on American networks and the power to “peer in” to internet and phone traffic. That ability would be stripped under the Commerce Department order, assuming that the Trump administration went along. China Telecom Americas did not respond to messages left at its office in Herndon, Va.

但中国电信在美国网络上的节点以及“窥视”互联网和电话流量的能力得以保留。假设特朗普政府同意该措施，商务部此次发出的命令将剥夺这一能力。中国电信美洲公司没有回复留言给该公司位于弗吉尼亚州赫恩登办公室的信息。

“We’ve been taking a hard look at where Chinese technologies are in the United States and asking ourselves the question of, is this an acceptable level of risk?” Anne Neuberger, the deputy national security adviser for cyber and emerging technologies, said in an interview on Monday. “For a number of years, these companies have operated networks and cloud service businesses in the U.S., which involved network equipment that’s co-located with our internet infrastructure. And while in the past we may have viewed this as an acceptable level of risk, that is no longer the case.”

“我们一直在认真研究中国技术在美国的具体部署，并问自己一个问题，这是可接受的风险水平吗？”负责网络和新兴技术的副国家安全顾问安·纽伯格周一在接受采访时表示。“多年来，这些公司一直在美国运营网络和云服务业务，其中涉及与我们的互联网基础设施共置的网络设备。虽然过去我们可能认为这是可接受的风险水平，但现在情况已不再如此。”

As a deterrent to China’s intelligence services, the move — which administration officials said might be followed by others actions before Mr. Biden leaves office in 35 days — may not amount to much.

作为对中国情报部门的威慑，此举可能作用不大（政府官员表示，在拜登离任前这35天里可能还会采取其他行动）。

The F.C.C. action to block China Telecom from most of its business in the United States did not prevent Volt Typhoon — China’s placement of malicious code in the electric grid and water and gas pipeline networks — or Salt Typhoon, the surveillance effort that was uncovered over the summer. Taken together, officials say, they amount to the most significant assault on American critical infrastructure in the digital age.

FCC阻止中国电信在美国大部分业务的行动没能阻止“伏特台风”（Volt Typhoon，中国在电、水、天然气供应网络中放置恶意代码的行动）或盐台风（Salt Typhoon，今年夏天被发现的监视行动）。官员们表示，这些合起来，形成了数字时代对美国关键基础设施的最严重攻击。

Speaking last week at the Paley Center for Media in Manhattan, Gen. Timothy D. Haugh, the director of the National Security Agency and commander of U.S. Cyber Command, said, “If I look at today, the PRC is not deterred,’’ using the initials for the People’s Republic of China.

国家安全局局长兼美国网络司令部司令蒂莫西·D·霍夫将军上周在曼哈顿佩利媒体中心发表讲话时表示，“如果去看今天的情况，中华人民共和国并没有被吓阻。”

He declined to say whether his forces were conducting offensive operations against China in retaliation for any of its recent incursions into American networks.

​​他拒绝透露他的部队是否正在对中国进行攻击行动，以报复中国最近对美国网络的任何入侵。

On Sunday, President-elect Donald J. Trump’s incoming national security adviser, Representative Mike Waltz, a Florida Republican, suggested on CBS’s “Face the Nation” that the new administration would be much more tempted to use offensive cyberactions against China.

周日，即将被候任总统特朗普任命为国家安全顾问的佛罗里达州共和党众议员迈克·沃尔兹在CBS“面向全国”节目中表示，新政府将更倾向于对中国采取攻击性网络行动。

“We need to start going on offense and start imposing, I think, higher costs and consequences to private actors and nation-state actors that continue to steal our data, that continue to spy on us and that, even worse, with the Volt Typhoon penetration, that are literally putting cyber time bombs on our infrastructure, our water systems, our grids, even our ports,” he said.

“我认为，我们需要开始进攻，让私人行为者和民族国家行为者面临更高的代价和后果，他们不断窃取我们的数据，不断监视我们，更糟糕的是，随着伏特台风的渗透，他们实际上是在我们的基础设施、供水系统、我们的电网甚至我们的港口放置网络定时炸弹，”他说。

He added: “We need to start changing behaviors on the other side, rather than just constantly having this kind of escalation of their offense and our defense.”

他还说：“我们需要开始改变对方的行为，而不是坐视他们的进攻和我们的防御不断升级。”

Mr. Biden said similar things during his transition four years ago, right after Russia had been caught altering code in vital software used by both the government and private companies. He also vowed at that time to make Russia pay a price.

四年前，拜登在过渡期间也说过类似的话，当时俄罗斯被发现修改了政府和私营公司使用的重要软件的代码。他当时还发誓要让俄罗斯付出代价。

Yet four years later, in the last weeks of his presidency, Mr. Biden has never talked publicly about the most recently discovered Chinese hack, even though the effects have been so widespread that the F.B.I. recently urged Americans to move their conversations and texts to encrypted apps like Signal or WhatsApp.

然而四年后，在他总统任期的最后几周，拜登从未公开谈论最近发现的中国黑客攻击，尽管影响如此广泛，以至于联邦调查局最近敦促美国人将他们的对话和短信转移到Signal或WhatsApp等加密应用程序上。

Officials have said they do not believe that the Chinese hackers have been ousted from the networks of at least eight telecommunications firms, including the nation’s two largest, Verizon and AT&T. That suggests that China’s hackers retain the capability to escalate.

官员们表示，他们不相信中国黑客已被逐出至少八家电信公司的网络，其中包括美国最大的两家电信公司威瑞森和AT&T。这表明中国黑客仍有升级的能力。

Since Microsoft first alerted the telecommunications firms over the summer that they had found evidence of hackers deep in their systems, the Biden administration has struggled to come up with a response. It created a task force inside the White House, and the issue is considered so serious that the group meets almost daily. Chief executives of the affected firms have been summoned to the Situation Room to come up with a joint plan of action.

自从微软今年夏天首次警告电信公司，他们发现黑客深入其系统的证据以来，拜登政府一直苦于难以找到应对之法。白宫内部成立了一个特别工作组，问题严重到该小组几乎每天都开会。受影响公司的首席执行官已被召集到战情室，制定联合行动计划。

But the move against China Telecom was the first time the administration had announced any response to Salt Typhoon, and officials conceded that they had no evidence that China Telecom’s operations in the United States were involved.

但针对中国电信的行动是政府首次宣布对盐台风行动作出回应，官员们承认，他们没有证据表明中国电信在美国的业务参与其中。

The hack was linked to China’s Ministry of State Security. In the interim months, officials have learned that the Chinese hackers got a nearly complete list of phone numbers the Justice Department monitors in its “lawful intercept” system, which places wiretaps on people suspected of committing crimes or spying, usually after a warrant is issued.

此次黑客攻击与中国国家安全部有关。在这几个月里，官员们了解到，司法部在其“合法拦截”系统中监控的电话号码几乎完全被中国黑客获取，该系统通常会在法院授权后对涉嫌犯罪或从事间谍活动的人进行窃听。

While officials do not believe that the Chinese listened to those calls, the hackers were probably able to combine the phone numbers with geolocation data to create a detailed intelligence picture of who was being surveilled.

虽然官员们不认为中国人监听了这些电话，但黑客可能能够将电话号码与地理位置数据结合起来，从而创建出一幅详细的情报画面，显示谁在被监视。

As a result, officials said, the penetration almost certainly gave China a road map to discover which of China’s spies the United States has identified and which it has missed. The spies did hack parts of the phone network that would have given them access to some voice calls, made over unencrypted lines, by Mr. Trump and Vice President-elect JD Vance. It is not clear to investigators, however, whether the Chinese exploited that access to hear the calls.

因此，官员们表示，此次入侵几乎肯定为中国提供了路线图，以发现美国识别出了哪些中国间谍，哪些还没被识别。这些间谍确实入侵了部分电话网络，使他们能够窃听特朗普和候任副总统JD·万斯通过未加密线路拨打的一些语音通话。然而，调查人员并不清楚中国人是否利用了这种访问权限来窃听通话。

The hack was discovered over the summer, but at first the Biden administration said nothing. Officials did not want to alert the Chinese hackers that their actions were being tracked. Mr. Biden reportedly raised the hack during his meeting with President Xi Jinping of China in November, but his aides said nothing about what kind of warning was given — or whether there was a warning at all.

这次黑客攻击是在今年夏天发现的，但拜登政府起初没有发表任何声明。官员们不想提醒中国黑客他们的行动正在被跟踪。据报道，拜登在11月与中国国家主席习近平会晤时提到了这次黑客攻击，但他的助手没有透露发出了什么样的警告——或者是否有警告。

Because the United States also conducts spying operations that exploit weaknesses in China’s telecommunications systems — some described in documents released by the former N.S.A. contractor Edward J. Snowden a decade ago — it is not clear that Salt Typhoon was off-limits as an espionage operation.

由于美国也会开展利用中国电信系统弱点的间谍活动——其中一些活动在十年前美国国家安全部承包商爱德华·斯诺登公布的文件中有所描述，因此尚不清楚盐台风行动是否属于间谍行动的禁区。

One senior administration official noted recently that the scope and scale of the Chinese operation, and the inability of the telecommunications firms to detect it, were highly embarrassing to the administration, and that therefore no one wanted to send the president out to make statements on it.

一位高级政府官员最近指出，中国行动的范围、规模以及电信公司无法检测到它的事实让政府非常尴尬，因此没有人愿意让总统出来就此事发表声明。

The administration still has other steps it could take before Mr. Biden leaves office. It could ban Chinese companies and individuals from using cloud services in the United States, or it could restrict the sale of Chinese-made routers and other telecommunications hardware.

在拜登离任前，政府还可以采取其他措施。它可以禁止中国公司和个人在美国使用云服务，也可以限制中国制造的路由器和其他电信硬件的销售。

But so much of that equipment, and the chips inside them, are produced in China that officials have questioned whether those would be useful steps.

但这些设备及其内部的芯片相当一部分是在中国生产的，因此官员们质疑这些措施是否有用。