為什么要對科技巨頭嚴(yán)加監(jiān)管？

Two eye-popping revelations have tumbled out of America’s tech world this month. The first was the news that Equifax, the credit agency, suffered a huge cyber hack that the company woefully mishandled, putting the data of 143m Americans at risk.

本月，美國科技界爆出了兩起令人瞠目的丑聞。第一起是消費者信用報告機構(gòu)Equifax遭到了一次大規(guī)模的網(wǎng)絡(luò)攻擊，而該公司處理不當(dāng)，致使1.43億美國人的個人數(shù)據(jù)面臨風(fēng)險。

The second is the admission by Facebook that it has uncovered at least $100,000-worth of advertisements placed on its platform by Russian-backed groups meddling in American elections. It comes after news of widespread manipulation by malevolent actors in the social media space.

第二起是Facebook承認(rèn)，發(fā)現(xiàn)了俄羅斯背景的組織在其平臺上投放了至少價值10萬美元的廣告，目的是插手美國大選。此前就有消息稱，社交媒體領(lǐng)域存在惡意行為者的大量操縱。

These scandals may force American politicians in Congress and state legislatures to focus, finally, on what is happening in the weeds of the internet.

這些丑聞或許會迫使美國國會和各州立法機構(gòu)的政客們終于開始關(guān)注互聯(lián)網(wǎng)雜草叢中的糟糕現(xiàn)實。

Such scrutiny is desperately overdue. In recent years America’s tech titans, such as Facebook, Google and Amazon have exploded in size, profitability and power. What is almost as startling as this ascent is how little debate it prompts inside Congress.

他們早就該管一管了。近年來，F(xiàn)acebook、谷歌(Google)、亞馬遜(Amazon)等美國科技巨頭在規(guī)模、盈利能力和影響力方面都出現(xiàn)了爆炸式增長。與這種地位躥升幾乎同樣令人吃驚的是，其在國會內(nèi)部引發(fā)的辯論少之又少。

True, some leftwing American politicians (such as Bernie Sanders) bemoan the low levels of tax paid by tech groups; rightwing voices complain that social media platforms have been slow to remove extremist Islamist material. But Congress has not held big inquiries into the quasi-monopoly powers that companies such as Facebook and Google hold within their own technology niches, or discussed how tech companies harvest consumer data, curate content or even manage cyber security.

沒錯，一些美國左翼政客——如伯尼•桑德斯(Bernie Sanders)——埋怨科技集團(tuán)交稅太少;右翼人士則抱怨稱，社交媒體平臺在清除極端伊斯蘭主義內(nèi)容方面行動遲緩。但國會并未就Facebook、谷歌這類公司在自身技術(shù)領(lǐng)域擁有的準(zhǔn)壟斷力量展開大規(guī)模調(diào)查，也沒有圍繞科技公司如何大量獲取消費者數(shù)據(jù)、安排內(nèi)容或者管理網(wǎng)絡(luò)安全進(jìn)行討論。

The Equifax scandal revealed that the US lacks any overarching federal framework to set standards for disclosure of cyber hacks, and until now that state of affairs was barely discussed by politicians. Why? Lobbying is part of the tale. A decade ago, the dominant lobbyists in Washington were the banks and other financial groups. But today tech is eclipsing the banks, with companies such as Google near the top of the list of the largest corporate donors. The biggest five tech companies spent around $49m on lobbying last year, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, twice what the biggest five banks spent. Tech groups have also hired an army of former government officials, and poured money into academic foundations.

Equifax丑聞暴露出美國缺乏一個全面的聯(lián)邦框架，為披露網(wǎng)絡(luò)攻擊行為設(shè)定標(biāo)準(zhǔn)，而政客們至今幾乎沒有討論過這方面的事態(tài)。為什么呢?游說是原因之一。10年前，華盛頓的主要游說者是銀行等金融集團(tuán)。但如今，科技行業(yè)正在超越銀行，谷歌等公司在大型企業(yè)捐贈者名單中升至前列。根據(jù)響應(yīng)政治中心(Center for Responsive Politics)的數(shù)據(jù)，美國最大五家科技公司去年在游說上支出約4900萬美元，是最大五家銀行支出的兩倍。科技集團(tuán)還聘請了一大批前政府官員，并向各種學(xué)術(shù)基金會投入大量資金。

That has helped the tech world to deftly play all sides of the political spectrum. Democrats admire Silicon Valley for its progressive stance on issues such as gay rights and immigration reform. Many Republicans like the tech sector’s libertarian ideals and business savvy. Meanwhile, almost all politicians tend to view the innovative success of Silicon Valley as a point of national pride. Thus when European regulators criticise Facebook, Amazon or Google, it is often cast as a competitive attack.

這有助于科技界巧妙地在政治光譜中左右逢源。民主黨人贊賞硅谷在同性戀權(quán)利、移民改革等問題上的進(jìn)步立場。許多共和黨人喜歡科技行業(yè)的自由意志主義理想和商業(yè)頭腦。與此同時，幾乎所有政客都傾向于把硅谷的創(chuàng)新成功看作民族自豪感的一個來源。因此，歐洲監(jiān)管機構(gòu)對Facebook、亞馬遜或谷歌的批評，往往被描述為競爭者發(fā)起的攻擊。

There is another way to make sense of this political silence: take an anthropological look at some of the cultural labels attached to tech. If you do that, it is possible to see some powerful parallels with the state of finance a decade ago.

還有一種理解這種政治沉默的方式：從人類學(xué)角度看待貼在科技行業(yè)上的一些文化標(biāo)簽。如果你這樣做的話，有可能看到與10年前金融行業(yè)的一些驚人相似之處。

In the early years of this century it was clear that finance in general — and complex products like credit derivatives in particular — were exploding in scale. But politicians in American and Europe were uninterested in peering into the financial undergrowth. This partly reflected deft lobbying by banks, and deliberate opacity. But the simpler problem was that credit derivatives were swathed in technical language and acronyms and perceived by non-bankers to be utterly boring and dull.

本世紀(jì)頭幾年，很明顯的是，金融領(lǐng)域總體呈現(xiàn)爆炸式增長，尤其是信貸衍生品等復(fù)雜產(chǎn)品。但美歐政客對研究金融業(yè)涌動的暗潮沒有興趣。這部分反映了銀行的巧妙游說以及刻意的不透明。但更簡單的問題是，信用衍生品被包裹在技術(shù)性語言和縮略詞中;不是銀行家的人認(rèn)為實在太過枯燥乏味。

As a result, it felt natural for politicians, journalists and voters to avert their eyes and leave this sector to the geeks. After all, consumers were enjoying a bonanza of cheap mortgages; nobody felt much need to challenge the status quo. It was an area of “social silence”, to use the concept developed by Pierre Bourdieu, the French sociologist and intellectual; everything was hidden in plain sight.

其結(jié)果是，政客、記者、選民自然而然地把目光投向其他地方，把這個行業(yè)留給了“極客”。畢竟，消費者享受著廉價抵押貸款的盛宴;沒人覺得有什么必要挑戰(zhàn)現(xiàn)狀。借用法國社會學(xué)家、知識分子皮埃爾•布爾迪厄(Pierre Bourdieu)提出的概念，這造就了一個“社會沉默”領(lǐng)域;一切都在眼前，卻被人視若不見。

Of course, the titans of Silicon Valley insist they are saving the world, not sparking a systemic crisis. But the key point is that consumers are hooked on cheap (or quasi “free”) tech services, as they were hooked on cheap mortgages a decade ago. But few have any idea about how the internet works, or even care to ask. Once again, we have placed blind trust in geeks.

當(dāng)然，硅谷的巨頭們堅稱，他們正在拯救世界，而非要引發(fā)一場系統(tǒng)性危機。但關(guān)鍵的是，消費者癡迷于廉價(或者貌似“免費”)的技術(shù)服務(wù)，就像他們在10年前被廉價抵押貸款吸引住一樣。但很少有人了解互聯(lián)網(wǎng)如何運作，甚至沒人操心去問。我們再一次盲目地相信了“極客”。

Let us all hope that Congress now does its job with Facebook and Equifax and organises full-blown hearings and commissions about what went wrong. Let us also hope the politicians scramble, belatedly, to improve their technical knowledge about the internet. But consumers also need to do what they failed to do a decade ago: ask hard questions about what is being hidden in plain sight by the aura of complexity. And then force politicians to act.

讓我們希望美國國會現(xiàn)在能針對Facebook和Equifax履行自己的職能，圍繞問題出在哪里舉行全面的聽證會，并成立相關(guān)調(diào)查委員會。讓我們也希望政客們努力提高自身的互聯(lián)網(wǎng)技術(shù)知識——雖然遲了一些。而消費者也需要做10年前未能做到之事：圍繞復(fù)雜性光環(huán)之下隱藏的種種弊病提出尖銳的問題，然后迫使政客們采取行動。