In Northern Virginia’s Data Center Alley, windowless buildings the size of aircraft hangars are powering America’s artificial intelligence industry, which is locked in a race against China.

在北弗吉尼亚的“数据中心走廊”，一座座没有窗户、大小如飞机库般的建筑正为美国的人工智能产业提供动力，后者正与中国展开竞赛。

Yet, these data centers are increasingly reliant on China, America’s geopolitical rival, for a vital technology: batteries.

然而，这些数据中心日益依赖美国的地缘政治对手中国提供一项关键技术：电池。

These facilities can use as much electricity as a small city, straining local power grids. Even flickers can have cascading effects, corrupting sensitive A.I. computer coding.

这些设施的耗电量堪比一座小型城市，给当地电网带来巨大压力。即使是瞬时电压波动也可能引发连锁反应，损坏敏感的人工智能程序代码。

To cope, tech giants are looking to buy billions of dollars of large lithium-ion batteries, a field in which “China is leading in almost every industrial component,” said Dan Wang, an expert on China’s technology sector at Stanford’s Hoover Institution. “They’re ahead, both technologically and in terms of scale.”

为应对这一问题，科技巨头们正寻求购买价值数十亿美元的大型锂离子电池。在这个领域，“中国几乎在每一个产业环节上都处于领先地位”，斯坦福大学胡佛研究所研究中国科技的专家王丹指出。“无论是技术还是规模，他们都走在前列。”

A short drive from the data centers, at the Pentagon, military officials are sounding similar warnings, for different reasons. Military strategists, watching as modern warfare is reinvented in Ukraine, say the armed forces will need millions of batteries to power drones, lasers and countless other weapons of the future.

距离这些数据中心不远处的五角大楼内，军方官员基于不同理由发出了类似警告。目睹乌克兰战场如何重塑现代战争的军事战略家们表示，未来军队将需要数以百万计的电池来驱动无人机、激光武器及无数其他新型装备。

Many of those batteries, too, come from China.

而这些电池同样多来自中国。

Chinese battery dominance has long been a problem for industries like auto manufacturing, but now is increasingly being viewed as a national security threat. Currently, U.S. military forces rely on Chinese supply chains for some 6,000 individual battery components across weapons programs, according to Govini, a defense analytics firm.

长期以来，中国在电池领域的主导地位一直是汽车制造等行业所面临的问题，但现在这日益被视为国家安全威胁。根据国防分析公司Govini的数据，目前美军各类武器项目依赖中国供应链的电池零部件约达6000种。

“The reality is very stark,” Tara Murphy Dougherty, Govini’s chief executive, told a recent gathering of top defense and industry officials in California. “There are foreign parts in 100 percent of our weapon systems and military platforms.”

Govini首席执行官塔拉·墨菲·多尔蒂在近日于加州举行的国防和产业高层会议上表示：“现实非常严峻。我们所有的武器系统和军事平台中都含有外国零部件。”

China understands the importance of these batteries. On Oct. 9, amid growing trade disputes, China threatened to limit exports of some of its most advanced lithium-ion technologies, including fundamental components like graphite anodes and cathodes.

中国深知这些电池的重要性。10月9日，在贸易摩擦不断升级之际，中国威胁将限制部分最先进锂离子技术的出口，其中包括石墨负极和正极等关键基础部件。

The Trump administration is facing a dilemma.

特朗普政府正面临两难境地。

When President Trump came to office, his administration initially froze billions of dollars in Biden-era federal grants for battery manufacturing, lumping batteries in with electric vehicles, solar farms, wind turbines and other clean energy technologies Mr. Trump had sought to de-emphasize. Mr. Trump has been scornful of electric cars, calling them a “scam.”

特朗普总统上任之初，其政府曾冻结数十亿美元拜登时期用于电池制造的联邦拨款，将电池与电动汽车、太阳能农场、风力涡轮机等清洁能源技术一并归为他试图弱化的领域。特朗普一直对电动车嗤之以鼻，称其为“骗局”。

Yet more recently, the administration has come to see battery technology as pivotal for many of the things it cares most about, including A.I. and defense. In interviews, more than a dozen battery-industry executives, lobbyists, military experts and others close to the administration said the White House had taken a growing interest in fostering a domestic battery industry disentangled from China.

但近期，政府逐渐认识到，电池技术对其最为关注的诸多领域至关重要，包括人工智能和国防。在采访中，十多位电池行业高管、游说人士、军事专家以及接近政府的人士均表示，白宫对培育一个摆脱中国的本土电池产业的兴趣正在不断上升。

一组磷酸铁锂电池装置的内部，中国在该领域占据着主导地位。

In recent weeks the White House has held high-level meetings on the battery supply chain, according to three people familiar with the matter. The National Energy Dominance Council, which Mr. Trump established to coordinate energy policy, has been meeting with battery companies. The Energy Department has quietly allowed many Biden-era grants for battery makers to proceed. It also recently announced up to $500 million for battery materials and recycling projects.

据三位知情人士透露，在最近几周里，白宫已就电池供应链召开了高级别会议。特朗普设立的负责协调能源政策的国家能源主导委员会正在与电池企业会面。能源部已悄然允许多项拜登时期面向电池制造商的拨款继续推进，并且近期还宣布将为电池材料与回收项目提供最高达5亿美元的资金支持。

The administration has started investing in companies that develop battery components or critical minerals, including Eos, a next-generation battery company. As part of a trade deal, officials prodded Japan to promise to invest billions of dollars in U.S. battery manufacturing. And the National Defense Authorization Act, passed this month, includes Pentagon restrictions on battery purchases from “foreign entities of concern,” primarily China.

政府已开始向从事电池组件或关键矿物开发的公司投资，其中包括下一代电池企业Eos。作为贸易协议的一部分，官员们还敦促日本承诺向美国电池制造领域投资数十亿美元。本月通过的《国防授权法》更是规定五角大楼不得采购“受关注外国实体”的电池，这主要针对的是中国。

The administration is saying “we don’t like electric vehicles, but we do need batteries for drones and data centers and A.I.,” said Samm Gillard, executive director and co-founder of the Battery Advocacy for Technology Transformation Coalition, a trade group. “They’re recognizing that China’s stranglehold on the battery supply chain is undermining our national security.”

行业组织电池技术转型联盟的执行董事、联合创始人萨姆·吉拉德表示，政府的立场是“我们不喜欢电动车，但确实需要为无人机、数据中心和人工智能配备电池”。他说，“他们意识到中国对电池供应链的控制正在削弱我们的国家安全。”

Taylor Rogers, a White House spokeswoman, said President Trump was “deploying all aspects of the government to work closely together” to “ensure the U.S. is the global leader in critical mineral and battery production.”

白宫发言人泰勒·罗杰斯则表示，特朗普总统正在“调动政府各部门协同发力”，以“确保美国在关键矿产与电池生产领域成为全球领导者”。

Experts say that building an industry not dependent on China will be enormously difficult. China is dominant in lithium iron phosphate batteries, or LFP, preferred for both E.V.s and for stationary storage.

专家指出，建立一个不依赖中国的产业将极其困难。中国在磷酸铁锂电池领域占据主导地位，这种电池既是电动汽车的首选，也广泛用于固定式储能。

中国在电池供应链的主导地位：在储能领域最常用的磷酸铁锂电池的每个生产环节，中国的占比。

In 2024, China made 99 percent of the world’s LFP cells and more than 90 percent of the main components, according to the International Energy Agency. That dominance extends to the refining of raw materials like lithium and graphite, as well as to fundamental components like cathodes and anodes that drive the movement of electrons within batteries.

国际能源署数据显示，2024年全球99%的磷酸铁锂电池电芯和90%以上核心部件产自中国。这种主导地位贯穿锂、石墨等原材料精炼，以及决定电池内部电子运动的阴极、阳极等基础组件。

The United States has its own lithium deposits and battery start-ups. But experts say it may take a coordinated effort and government support to compete against heavily subsidized Chinese competitors. Refining critical minerals can also be a hazardous process and American environmental standards could make the process much more expensive than in China.

尽管美国拥有锂矿资源和电池初创企业，但专家认为，要与获得了大量补贴的中国企业竞争，仍需协同推进并获得政府支持。此外，关键矿物的精炼过程属高危工序，而美国更严格的环保标准可能使成本远高于中国。

Analysts estimate it would take at least half a decade for U.S. manufacturers to produce enough LFP cells to meet domestic demand, and much longer to create supply chains for underlying components.

分析人士估计，美国制造商至少需要五年才能实现磷酸铁锂电池自给自足，而构建基础组件供应链则需更长时间。

Fatih Birol, the I.E.A.’s executive director, likened the world’s reliance on China to Europe’s dependence on Russian natural gas. After Russia attacked Ukraine, there were concerns that Moscow would cut supplies.

国际能源署执行干事法提赫·比罗尔将世界对中国的依赖比作欧洲对俄罗斯天然气的依赖。俄罗斯入侵乌克兰后，人们曾担心莫斯科会切断供应。

“Reliance for a strategic commodity or a technology on one single country, one single trade route,” Mr. Birol said, “is always risky.”

比罗尔说，“一种战略性商品或技术依赖于单一国家、单一贸易通道始终会存在风险。”

夜视镜等装备对电池依赖度极高，一名普通士兵执行标准巡逻任务时，携带的电池重量可达约11.3公斤。

The dilemma represents a shift in the A.I. race, which increasingly hinges on a nation’s electrical infrastructure — its ability to reliably deliver vast amounts of electricity to power-hungry data centers — as much as on computing chips.

这一困境标志着人工智能竞争的格局正在转变：角逐不仅仅取决于计算芯片，也日益取决于一国的电力基础设施，即为耗电量巨大的数据中心稳定输送海量电力的能力。

“Electricity is not simply a utility,” the A.I. giant OpenAI said in an October letter. “It’s a strategic asset that will secure our leadership on the most consequential technology since electricity itself.”

人工智能巨头OpenAI在去年10月的一封信中指出：“电力已不仅仅是一项公用事业，还是确保我们在继电力革命后最具颠覆性的技术领域保持主导地位的战略资产。”

Battery dominance is a big part of China’s growing lead in power generation overall, including renewable energy. China has long seen batteries as an industrial and military priority, according to Mr. Wang, the Hoover Institution expert.

电池领域的主导地位是中国在整体发电能力（包括可再生能源）上不断拉开领先优势的重要一环。胡佛研究所的王丹表示，中国长期以来将电池视为工业和军事发展的优先事项。

A.I. experts say U.S. companies still lead in computing capacity. Yet there is a rising concern that China’s advantage in energy infrastructure could help the country pass the United States.

人工智能专家表示，美国企业在算力方面仍处于领先地位。但人们越来越担心，中国在能源基础设施方面的优势可能帮助其超越美国。

“I’ve called A.I. ‘Manhattan Project 2,’” Chris Wright, the energy secretary, said in September, referring to America’s effort in the 1940s to make nuclear weapons. If “China got meaningfully ahead of us in A.I., we’d become the secondary nation of the planet,” he added.

能源部长克里斯·赖特在9月表示，“我将人工智能称为‘曼哈顿计划2.0’”，“曼哈顿计划”指的是美国在上世纪40年代研制核武器的计划。他补充道，如果“中国在人工智能领域实质性地超越我们，美国将沦为地球上的次等国家”。

Why data centers want batteries

数据中心为何需要电池

The engineers who keep data centers humming refer to the “five nines” of reliability. That is, they strive to keep the facilities online 99.999 percent of the time.

维持数据中心运转的工程师常提到“五个九”的可靠性标准，即力求确保设施99.999%的时间保持在线。

Doing so demands reliable power. Tech giants have been scrambling for energy from natural gas or existing nuclear plants, which can run at all hours, and are making bets on nascent technologies like smaller reactors or advanced geothermal plants.

要做到这一点，离不开可靠的电力供应。科技巨头们一直在争抢天然气或现有核电站的能源，因为它们可以全天候运行；同时也在押注一些新兴技术，比如小型反应堆或先进的地热电站。

“It’s get what you can get,” said Justin Gruetzner, an executive with Burns & McDonnell, a data center engineering firm.

数据中心工程公司Burns & McDonnell的高管贾斯汀·格鲁茨纳坦言：“现在是能争取到什么资源就用什么。”

Batteries are increasingly critical: Most data centers rely on them for backup. Batteries can provide instantaneous power in an outage while generators fueled by natural gas or diesel fire up, helping ensure that data isn’t lost.

电池正变得日益关键：大多数数据中心依赖电池进行备份。在断电时，电池能提供瞬时电力，为天然气或柴油发电机的启动争取时间，从而确保数据不丢失。

A.I. has particularly immense energy needs. An A.I. query can require about 10 times the electricity of traditional internet searches, the Electric Power Research Institute estimates. And the vast computing power can cause significant fluctuations in energy demand.

人工智能对能源的需求尤为巨大。据电力研究院估计，一次人工智能查询所需电力可能是传统互联网搜索的十倍。而庞大的算力还会导致能源需求出现显著波动。

《国防授权法》包含对五角大楼从“受关注外国实体”采购电池的限制条款。

Power “can fluctuate dramatically multiple times a minute,” said Chris Brown, chief technical officer at the Uptime Institute, a data-center advisory body. At scale, these swings can amount to tens or hundreds of megawatts and even damage power grid infrastructure, Microsoft researchers have warned.

数据中心咨询机构Uptime Institute的首席技术官克里斯·布朗指出，电力“负载每分钟都可能多次剧烈波动”。微软研究人员警告称，在大规模运行下，这种波动可能达到数十甚至上百兆瓦，甚至会损坏电网基础设施。

Even minor disruptions can lead to what’s known as “silent data corruption,” an emerging concern where A.I. hardware produces calculation errors. During one experiment, “a silent data corruption error actually broke the model,” said Jeffrey J. Ma, lead author of a paper on the phenomenon.

即使轻微的中断也可能引发所谓的“静默数据损坏”，即人工智能硬件在未被察觉的情况下产生计算错误，这一现象正日益引发关注。相关论文的第一作者杰弗里·J·马表示，在一次实验中，静默数据损坏错误直接导致了模型的损坏。

The lithium-ion batteries that China dominates are becoming increasingly prevalent. In February Google said that it had installed more than 100 million cells across its data centers and had started to replace diesel generators with batteries. Microsoft said it aimed for its data centers to eliminate diesel fuel for backup by 2030 to meet environmental goals.

中国占据主导地位的锂离子电池正变得越来越普及。今年2月，谷歌表示已在它的数据中心部署了超过1亿个电池单元，并开始用电池替代柴油发电机。微软表示，为达成环保目标，计划在2030年前彻底淘汰数据中心备用柴油发电机。

Batteries and the realities of war

电池与战争的现实

去年9月，一名乌克兰士兵正在练习操作无人机。小巧灵活的无人机武器正在改变战争形态。

Among the lessons from the horrors of Ukraine is a daunting realization: The future of military power rests with batteries.

乌克兰战场的惨痛教训之一令人警醒：未来的军事力量建立在电池之上。

Many battlefield drones are powered with lithium batteries that rely on materials and technology from China. Within Ukraine, Chinese export controls have slowed production and tripled the prices for some components, according to defense analysts.

许多战场无人机使用锂电池供电，而这些电池依赖来自中国的材料和技术。国防分析人士称，在乌克兰境内，中国的出口管制已拖慢了生产速度，并使部分零部件价格上涨了三倍。

“Every Chinese export restriction since 2022 has reverberated directly onto the battlefield,” said Catarina Buchatskiy, a defense expert at the Snake Island Institute, which focuses on military technology. The U.S. could soon face the problem, she said, adding that the kinds of components Ukraine has struggled to secure “are embedded across Western defense programs.”

专门从事军事技术研究的蛇岛研究所防务专家卡塔琳娜·布哈茨基指出：“自2022年以来，中国的每一次出口限制都直接影响了战场态势。”她还说，美国可能很快面临同样问题，并强调乌克兰难以获得的这类零部件“已广泛应用于西方的防务项目”。

俄罗斯与乌克兰使用的大部分电池购自中国：2023年可充电电池进口情况

Lasers, hand-held radios, night vision goggles, satellites and drones use advanced batteries. The average soldier carries as much as 25 pounds of batteries for a standard 72-hour patrol.

激光武器、手持无线电、夜视仪、卫星和无人机都依赖先进电池。一名普通士兵执行72小时标准巡逻任务，携带的电池重量可达约11.3公斤。

And the shift toward stealthier vehicles, unmanned systems, electronic warfare and constellations of small satellites have swelled demand, said Jeffrey Nadaner, who was deputy assistant defense secretary for industrial policy during the first Trump administration. Shoring up America’s battery industry, he said, merits an effort on par with “the Apollo space program.”

曾在特朗普首个任期内担任国防部工业政策副助理部长的杰弗里·纳达纳表示，随着隐形能力更强的载具、无人系统、电子战和小型卫星的发展，相关电池需求急剧增长。他强调，巩固美国电池产业需要与“阿波罗登月计划”相当的投入力度。

The Pentagon is paying attention. The 2025 National Defense Authorization Act mandated a new battery strategy, and in a white paper published this year, the Defense Logistics Agency said the department should treat battery technology as mission-critical.

五角大楼已经开始重视这一问题。《2025国防授权法》明确要求制定新的电池战略，而国防后勤局今年发布的一份白皮书也指出，国防部应将电池技术视为关乎任务成败的关键能力。

Elaine K. Dezenski, an expert on geopolitical risk and supply-chain security at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said, “When we think about the future of manufacturing and defense, and how we should be protecting critical supply chains, the chips are the brain, and batteries are the heart.”

保卫民主基金会的地缘政治风险与供应链安全专家伊莱恩·K·德曾斯基指出：“当我们思考制造业和国防的未来，以及该如何保护关键供应链时，芯片是大脑，电池是心脏。”

Battery companies go to Washington

电池企业涌向华盛顿

密歇根州的初创企业Our Next Energy正在进行磷酸铁锂电池组的测试。

In 2024, the start-up Group14 Technologies won a $200 million Biden administration grant to build a factory in Moses Lake, Wash., to produce a substitute for graphite, a key material that today mostly comes from China. But after Mr. Trump took office, Group14’s grant got tied up in a broader effort by the administration to freeze clean energy funding.

2024年，初创企业Group14 Technologies曾获得拜登政府2亿美元资助，计划在华盛顿州摩西湖建厂，生产目前主要依赖中国进口的关键材料——石墨——的替代品。但特朗普执政后，这笔拨款被纳入政府冻结清洁能源资金的整体行动，导致项目一度受挫。

After an extensive review, the Energy Department allowed many battery grants to move forward “because the administration recognized that this isn’t about left versus right or green versus not green,” Rick Luebbe, Group14’s chief executive, said.

经过全面审查，能源部最终允许包括电池项目在内的多项资助继续推进。Group14首席执行官里克·吕贝表示：“政府意识到这无关左右立场或环保争议。”

Still, he said, the factories that Group14 is building will be able to displace only a fraction of Chinese materials. To compete with China’s industrial subsidies, Washington would need to do more. “I see more tolerance for battery projects. What I don’t see is investment,” he said.

尽管如此，他也指出，Group14正在建设的工厂只能替代一小部分中国材料。若要与中国的产业补贴竞争，华盛顿还需要加大力度。“我看到的是对电池项目的容忍度提高了，但尚未见到实质性投资，”他说。

Other battery companies have noticed the administration’s new receptiveness. “The Biden administration liked our sustainability story,” said Judy Brown, head of external affairs at South32, a company that has received federal support to develop an Arizona mine for manganese, a key battery material. “The Trump administration likes the national-security story.”

其他电池企业也注意到政府态度的转变。获得联邦资助在亚利桑那州开发关键电池材料锰矿的South32公司对外事务负责人朱迪·布朗表示：“拜登政府青睐我们的可持续发展故事，而特朗普政府更关注国家安全叙事。”

One question, experts say, is whether the United States can sustain a domestic industry, even as sales of electric vehicles slow, undermined by Mr. Trump’s policies.

专家们指出，一个问题在于：电动车受特朗普的政策拖累销量放缓的背景下，美国本土电池产业能否获得持续发展。

Trump officials have “softened their tone on batteries,” said Noah Gordon, an expert on sustainability and geopolitics at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “But the policy is still incoherent” because of its hostility toward E.V.s, he said. “They’re trying to boost battery manufacturing while also undermining the biggest sources of demand.”

卡内基国际和平基金会可持续发展与地缘政治专家诺亚·戈登分析称，特朗普官员对电池的态度“已有所软化”，但由于对电动车的抵触情绪，“政策仍缺乏连贯性。”他指出：“他们试图在提振电池制造业的同时，又一直在削弱其最大的需求来源。”