Middle power AI agency: Preserving choice between the United States and China

Artificial intelligence is fast becoming part of the basic infrastructure of economic and geopolitical power.

人工智能正在迅速成为经济和地缘政治力量基础设施的一部分。

The countries that control leading AI assets will increasingly shape the terms on which others participate in the global economy and in global affairs.

控制领先人工智能资产的国家将越来越多地影响其他国家参与全球经济和全球事务的条件。

Europe, Japan, South Korea, and other middle powers therefore face a risk extending well beyond technological dependence.

因此，欧洲、日本、韩国和其他中等强国面临的风险远远超出了技术依赖的范围。

Reliance on American or Chinese AI could progressively constrain their choices across industry, defense, science, health, information, culture, and politics, leaving formal sovereignty superficially intact while weakening practical control over the systems on which their societies depend.

对美国或中国人工智能的依赖可能会逐渐限制他们在工业、国防、科学、健康、信息、文化和政治方面的选择，使形式主权表面上完好无损，同时削弱对其社会所依赖的系统的实际控制。

No middle power can match the United States or China across the entire AI stack.

在整个人工智能领域，没有哪个中等强国可以与美国或中国相媲美。

A collective middle-power effort is crucial, but should remain modest, seeking to preserve sufficient capacity, choice, portability, and bargaining power.

中等强国的集体努力至关重要，但应保持适度，力求保留足够的能力、选择、可移植性和议价能力。

The objective should not be autarky, rejection of valuable partnerships, or confrontation with either superpower, but an effort to ensure that dependence does not lead to subordination.

目标不应是自给自足、拒绝有价值的伙伴关系或与任一超级大国对抗，而应努力确保依赖不会导致从属。

The most realistic opening lies in a specific segment of physical and industrial AI.

最现实的机会在于物理和工业人工智能的特定领域。

While American platforms are less entrenched there, China is already formidable in robotics and industrial automation.

虽然美国的平台在中国的地位不那么稳固，但中国在机器人和工业自动化领域已经很强大。

Middle powers should therefore focus on critical and regulated segments, including critical infrastructure, transport, health care, telecommunications, and security, where jurisdiction, security, reliability, interoperability, and control matter more than cost.

因此，中等强国应重点关注关键和受监管的领域，包括关键基础设施、运输、医疗保健、电信和安全，其中管辖权、安全性、可靠性、互操作性和控制比成本更重要。

Those assets remain fragmented across national projects.

这些资产仍然分散在各个国家项目中。

A modular sovereignty strategy would pool capabilities requiring scale while preserving control over applications and deployment.

模块化主权战略将汇集需要规模的能力，同时保留对应用程序和部署的控制。

Binding and reciprocal procurement could leverage public purchasing into anchor customers, financeable revenue, and operational data.

约束性和互惠性采购可以利用公共采购来获取锚定客户、可融资收入和运营数据。

It could operate within U.S.-led initiatives such as Pax Silica where interests converge, and alongside them where independent capacity is necessary.

它可以在美国主导的倡议中运作，例如在利益交汇的“Pax Silica”倡议中运作，并在需要独立能力的情况下与这些倡议一起运作。

The window remains open, but long development timelines make delay especially dangerous.

窗口仍然敞开，但较长的开发时间使得延迟变得尤其危险。

Artificial intelligence (AI) is fast becoming part of the basic infrastructure of economic and geopolitical power.

人工智能（AI）正在迅速成为经济和地缘政治力量基础设施的一部分。

The countries that build the leading models, control the compute, own the platforms, and integrate AI into the physical economy will shape the terms on which others participate in the global economy and global affairs.

建立领先模型、控制计算、拥有平台并将人工智能融入实体经济的国家将决定其他国家参与全球经济和全球事务的条件。

That leaves the world’s middle powers, including Europe, Japan, and others, at high risk of falling irretrievably behind and becoming permanently dependent on the United States and China.

这使得包括欧洲、日本和其他国家在内的世界中等强国面临着不可挽回地落后并永久依赖美国和中国的高风险。

Middle powers need to rally around a common effort to preserve agency.

中等强国需要团结起来，共同努力维护代理权。

The goal of any common middle-power effort to alter this path should be modest and realistic, but it is crucial nonetheless.

任何中等强国共同努力改变这条道路的目标都应该是适度和现实的，但仍然至关重要。

Such an effort would not seek to match the United States or China across the entire AI stack, sever useful partnerships, or achieve technological autarky.

这样的努力不会寻求在整个人工智能堆栈上与美国或中国匹敌，也不会切断有用的合作伙伴关系，也不会实现技术自给自足。

It would be to preserve enough capacity, choice, and bargaining power to avoid dependence becoming subordination.

这将是保留足够的能力、选择和讨价还价的能力，以避免依赖变成从属。

The most realistic opening lies in a segment of physical and industrial AI.

最现实的空缺在于物理和工业人工智能领域。

U.S. suppliers are less dominant in robotics and industrial deployment than in general-purpose platforms.

与通用平台相比，美国供应商在机器人和工业部署方面的主导地位较小。

China, however, is already strong in robotics, industrial automation, and physical AI.

然而，中国在机器人、工业自动化和物理人工智能方面已经很强大。

A middle-power effort should therefore concentrate on critical and regulated deployments where jurisdiction, security, reliability, and control matter more than cost.

因此，中等国家的努力应该集中在关键和受监管的部署上，在这些部署中，管辖权、安全性、可靠性和控制比成本更重要。

These countries are already late.

这些国家已经晚了。

The scale gap is widening quickly.

规模差距正在迅速扩大。

The 2026 Stanford AI Index estimates that U.S. private AI investment approached $286 billion in 2025, more than 23 times China’s reported $12.4 billion, although the Chinese figure excludes much state-directed funding.

2026 年斯坦福人工智能指数估计，到 2025 年，美国私人人工智能投资将接近 2860 亿美元，是中国报告的 124 亿美元的 23 倍多，尽管中国的数字不包括大量国家指导的资金。

Capital spending by Amazon, Alphabet, Meta, Microsoft, and Oracle is expected to exceed $700 billion in 2026 , much of it for AI-related infrastructure.

亚马逊、Alphabet、Meta、微软和甲骨文的资本支出预计到 2026 年将超过 7000 亿美元，其中大部分用于人工智能相关基础设施。

No coalition of middle powers can hope to approach those levels dollar for dollar, but the numbers make clear why scattered national projects measured in the low billions are unlikely to change the strategic balance.

中等强国的联盟不可能希望以美元对美元的价格达到这些水平，但这些数字清楚地表明了为什么价值数十亿美元的分散的国家项目不太可能改变战略平衡。

The risk to middle powers from superpowers is not abstract.

超级大国给中等强国带来的风险并不是抽象的。

In 2025, the United States imposed a license requirement on Nvidia’s H20 chips for China, though it later reversed the decision.

2025年，美国对英伟达的H20芯片向中国施加了许可要求，但后来又撤销了这一决定。

In June 2026, a U.S. export-control directive required Anthropic to bar foreign nationals from accessing Fable 5 and Mythos 5, which, because Anthropic could not verify nationality in real time, led it to suspend the models for all users until the controls were lifted.

2026 年 6 月，美国出口管制指令要求 Anthropic 禁止外国人访问《神鬼寓言 5》和《神话 5》，由于 Anthropic 无法实时验证国籍，导致其暂停向所有用户提供这些模型，直到管制解除。

U.S. Commerce Department foreign direct product rules also reach some semiconductor equipment made abroad using American technology.

美国商务部的外国直接产品规则也适用于一些使用美国技术在国外制造的半导体设备。

Access can be restricted, licenses withdrawn, and companies pressured by governments.

准入可能会受到限制、许可证会被吊销、公司也会受到政府的压力。

A country that depends on foreign models, cloud platforms, data architecture, and industrial systems may retain formal sovereignty while losing practical control over infrastructure central to defense, science, health, information, and industry.

依赖外国模式、云平台、数据架构和工业系统的国家可能会保留形式主权，但会失去对国防、科学、卫生、信息和工业核心基础设施的实际控制。

The U.S.-led Pax Silica initiative to build secure and resilient AI supply chains spanning critical minerals, semiconductors, compute, infrastructure, and models underscores both the value and the limits of coordination.

美国主导的 Pax Silica 计划旨在建立涵盖关键矿产、半导体、计算、基础设施和模型的安全、有弹性的人工智能供应链，强调了协调的价值和局限性。

Japan, South Korea, and the European Union (EU) are already among its 24 signatories .

日本、韩国和欧盟 (EU) 已成为其 24 个签署国之一。

The EU joined in late June 2026 after France initially opposed participation—a disagreement that illustrates Europe’s fragmentation.

在法国最初反对加入之后，欧盟于 2026 年 6 月下旬加入——这种分歧说明了欧洲的分裂。

Japan’s and South Korea’s earlier participation also shows how, despite rapidly growing suspicions about American trustworthiness, alignment around a Washington-convened framework remains the default when middle powers have not built a complementary framework of their own.

日本和韩国的早期参与也表明，尽管对美国可信度的怀疑迅速增加，但当中等强国尚未建立自己的补充框架时，围绕华盛顿召集的框架的联盟仍然是默认的。

Pax Silica should be recognized for what it is under the current U.S. administration.

Pax Silica 在美国现任政府的领导下应该得到认可。

It can provide useful resilience against Chinese pressure and improve cooperation on semiconductors, critical minerals, energy, and supply chain security.

它可以提供有用的抵御中国压力的能力，并改善半导体、关键矿产、能源和供应链安全方面的合作。

But it is also shaped by a highly transactional administration and by U.S. national interests in America’s strategic competition with China.

但它也是由高度交易性的政府以及美国在与中国的战略竞争中的国家利益所塑造的。

A draft State Department letter reported by Reuters on August 14 illustrates the point more clearly than any characterization of intent.

路透社 8 月 14 日报道的国务院信函草案比任何意图描述都更清楚地说明了这一点。

The draft is addressed to the 35 signatories of the U.S. AI Opportunity Statement of June, a wider group than the Pax Silica signatories themselves.

该草案面向 6 月份《美国人工智能机会声明》的 35 个签署者，其范围比 Pax Silica 签署者本身还要广泛。

It tells recipients that signing the Pax Silica Declaration is a commitment rather than a membership subscription and cannot be held alongside membership in “duplicative initiatives whose expectations conflict with our own.” The proximate target is China’s World Artificial Intelligence Cooperation Organization, launched in July with 29 founding members, which Kazakhstan joined while also signing Pax Silica.

它告诉接受者，签署 Pax Silica 宣言是一种承诺，而不是会员资格，并且不能与“与我们的期望相冲突的重复倡议”的会员资格同时举行。最接近的目标是中国的世界人工智能合作组织，该组织于 7 月成立，拥有 29 个创始成员，哈萨克斯坦也加入了该组织，同时还签署了 Pax Silica。

The draft is undated, Reuters could not determine when or whether it would be sent, and the State Department declined to comment on the reporting.

该草案未注明日期，路透社无法确定何时或是否发送该草案，国务院拒绝对该报道发表评论。

The draft’s notable feature is that it never names China.

该草案的显着特点是它从未点名中国。

The exclusivity it asserts extends to “duplicative” initiatives whose expectations conflict with Washington’s, a formulation broad enough to reach parallel efforts having nothing to do with Beijing.

它所声称的排他性延伸到了与华盛顿的期望相冲突的“重复”举措，这一表述足够广泛，可以实现与北京无关的平行努力。

Middle powers reading that language have to ask whether membership in Pax Silica is compatible with building any independent collective capacity at all.

读到这种语言的中等强国不得不问，加入“二氧化硅和平”是否与建立任何独立的集体能力相兼容。

That question, more than the choice between Washington and Beijing, is what should concentrate minds in Tokyo, Seoul, Berlin, and Brussels.

这个问题，不仅仅是华盛顿和北京之间的选择，更应该引起东京、首尔、柏林和布鲁塞尔的关注。

A recent Brookings report makes the underlying problem clear: “Full-stack AI sovereignty is structurally infeasible for almost any country because AI is a transnational stack with concentrated chokepoints across minerals, energy, compute hardware, networks, digital infrastructure, data assets, models, applications, and the crosscutting enablers of talent and governance.” The report calls for “managed interdependence” through alliances that diversify risk and preserve the benefits of open markets.

布鲁金斯学会最近的一份报告明确了根本问题：“全栈人工智能主权在结构上对几乎任何国家来说都是不可行的，因为人工智能是一个跨国堆栈，其瓶颈集中在矿产、能源、计算硬件、网络、数字基础设施、数据资产、模型、应用程序以及人才和治理的跨领域推动因素上。”该报告呼吁通过联盟来“管理相互依存”，以分散风险并维护开放市场的利益。

A middle-power effort should consider a nuanced modular sovereignty approach: preserving agency, choice, and bargaining power at strategically important layers of the AI stack while managing unavoidable interdependence at others.

中等强国的努力应该考虑一种细致入微的模块化主权方法：在人工智能堆栈的战略重要层保留代理权、选择权和讨价还价能力，同时管理其他层不可避免的相互依赖。

Such an approach would neither compete with Pax Silica across the board nor simply sit inside it.

这种方法既不会与 Pax Silica 全面竞争，也不会简单地坐在其中。

Middle powers could continue to work within Pax Silica where interests converge, including supply chain resilience and protection against Chinese coercion.

中等强国可以继续在利益交汇的 Pax Silica 内部合作，包括供应链弹性和针对中国胁迫的保护。

They should also work alongside it where separate capabilities are needed to preserve their own agency, particularly in models, data, cloud portability, industrial deployment, and procurement.

他们还应该在需要单独的能力来保留自己的机构的地方与之合作，特别是在模型、数据、云可移植性、工业部署和采购方面。

The balance will be delicate.

平衡将会很微妙。

But backing away from every independent initiative for fear that it would be seen as anti-American would leave middle powers with no meaningful strategy beyond accepting priorities set in Washington.

但由于担心被视为反美而放弃每一项独立倡议，将使中等强国除了接受华盛顿设定的优先事项之外没有任何有意义的战略。

Middle powers should combine complementary national assets and pool the capabilities that require scale, while preserving national and commercial control over applications, deployment, language, and sector-specific use.

中等强国应结合互补的国家资产并汇集需要规模的能力，同时保留对应用程序、部署、语言和特定部门使用的国家和商业控制。

Shared efforts could include major training runs, selected foundation-model research, compute infrastructure, testing, energy investment, and carefully governed datasets.

共同的努力可能包括主要的训练运行、选定的基础模型研究、计算基础设施、测试、能源投资和精心管理的数据集。

Companies, universities, and governments could then build models and applications on top of that common base.

然后，公司、大学和政府可以在这个共同基础上构建模型和应用程序。

The objective would be resilience and choice.

目标是韧性和选择。

A middle-power effort would continue to rely on American suppliers and partners, and cheaper open-weight Chinese technology would remain important in many markets.

中等强国的努力将继续依赖美国供应商和合作伙伴，而更便宜的开放式中国技术在许多市场上仍然很重要。

Modular sovereignty would not make those dependencies disappear.

模块化主权不会使这些依赖性消失。

It would, however, create alternative capacity, portability, and bargaining power at enough layers that a single dependency does not result in political subordination.

然而，它将在足够多的层次上创造替代能力、可移植性和讨价还价能力，使得单一依赖不会导致政治从属。

Even a carefully framed middle-power effort would likely invite a U.S. reaction.

即使中等强国精心策划的努力也可能会引起美国的反应。

Washington could threaten to apply license conditions to advanced GPUs, tighten end-use requirements in cloud contracts, use security relationships to discourage participation, or invoke the Section 232 framework covering semiconductors and semiconductor manufacturing equipment.

华盛顿可能威胁对先进 GPU 应用许可条件，收紧云合同中的最终使用要求，利用安全关系阻止参与，或援引涵盖半导体和半导体制造设备的第 232 条框架。

The coalition should anticipate that response and make clear that it is reinforcing supply chain resilience rather than dismantling cooperation with the United States.

该联盟应该预见到这种反应，并明确表示它正在增强供应链的弹性，而不是取消与美国的合作。

It would also need to be robust enough to withstand pressure through diversified procurement, strategic inventories, portable workloads, reciprocal commitments, and investment in alternative capacity.

它还需要足够强大，能够承受多元化采购、战略库存、可移动工作负载、互惠承诺和替代产能投资带来​​的压力。

The interdependence at issue runs in both directions.

所讨论的相互依存关系是双向的。

Europe, Japan, and South Korea supply lithography systems, optics, metrology, semiconductor materials, wafers, high-bandwidth memory (HBM), memory, and production equipment on which the U.S. technology ecosystem depends, just as they depend on American processors, models, and cloud services.

欧洲、日本和韩国供应美国技术生态系统所依赖的光刻系统、光学、计量、半导体材料、晶圆、高带宽存储器（HBM）、内存和生产设备，就像它们依赖美国的处理器、模型和云服务一样。

Those positions should not be treated as instruments of pressure, and framing them that way would invite exactly the confrontation a sensible middle-power strategy is designed to avoid.

这些立场不应被视为施压工具，而以这种方式制定这些立场恰恰会引发明智的中等强国战略旨在避免的对抗。

But the relationship’s mutual character would be a reason for restraint on all sides.

但这种关系的共同特征将成为各方保持克制的一个原因。

Modular sovereignty should aim to make that interdependence more visible, better organized, and less vulnerable to unilateral disruption.

模块化主权的目标应该是使这种相互依存更加明显、组织得更好并且不易受到单方面破坏。

China presents a different challenge.

中国提出了不同的挑战。

Near-frontier Chinese open-weight models can be obtained at very low marginal cost, which weakens the commercial case for spending heavily to reproduce another general-purpose foundation model.

近前沿的中国开放权重模型可以以非常低的边际成本获得，这削弱了花费巨资复制另一个通用基础模型的商业理由。

But China is also already formidable in robotics and industrial automation.

但中国在机器人和工业自动化方面也已经很强大。

According to the International Federation of Robotics , China accounted for 54% of worldwide industrial-robot installations in 2024 and had an operational stock of roughly 2 million robots, about 4.5 times Japan’s.

根据国际机器人联合会的数据，到 2024 年，中国占全球工业机器人安装量的 54%，机器人保有量约为 200 万台，约为日本的 4.5 倍。

Its current five-year plan places AI-powered robotics at the center of its industrial strategy.

其当前的五年计划将人工智能驱动的机器人技术置于其产业战略的中心。

Middle powers may be early relative to American platforms in parts of physical AI, but they are late relative to China.

在物理人工智能的某些领域，中等强国可能相对于美国平台较早，但相对于中国却较晚。

That means competing on scale or price would be a losing strategy for middle powers.

这意味着规模或价格竞争对于中等国家来说将是一种失败的策略。

A middle-power coalition should instead compete in areas where the identity and legal jurisdiction of the system operator are themselves requirements: hospital and health-system infrastructure, electricity grids, water systems, rail networks, ports, telecommunications, defense sustainment, and dual-use manufacturing.

相反，中等实力联盟应该在系统运营商的身份和法律管辖权本身就是要求的领域进行竞争：医院和卫生系统基础设施、电网、供水系统、铁路网络、港口、电信、国防保障和军民两用制造。

Regulators, security services, and insurers may regard a Chinese controller embedded in a critical process as unacceptable regardless of price.

监管机构、安全部门和保险公司可能认为，无论价格如何，嵌入关键流程的中国控制者都是不可接受的。

In these critical areas, the value would be in proprietary operational data, integration, reliability, safety, portability, and control, not in raw model quality alone.

在这些关键领域，价值在于专有的操作数据、集成、可靠性、安全性、可移植性和控制，而不仅仅是原始模型质量。

Where an American, Chinese, or other open-weight model can be adapted securely and cheaply, the coalition should remain open to using it rather than duplicating it for symbolic reasons.

如果美国、中国或其他开放重量模型可以安全且廉价地进行改造，联盟应该保持开放的态度使用它，而不是出于象征性原因复制它。

Japan’s recent Noetra initiative offers a promising starting point.

日本最近的 Noetra 倡议提供了一个充满希望的起点。

Selected by Japan’s New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization, Noetra has attracted investment from 44 companies and organizations, including MUFG Bank.

Noetra经日本新能源产业技术综合开发机构评选，已吸引三菱日联银行等44家企业和机构投资。

Its research effort includes Japan’s National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, Preferred Networks, and industrial participants like Sony, SoftBank, NEC, Honda, and others.

其研究工作包括日本国家先进工业科学技术研究所、Preferred Networks 以及索尼、软银、NEC、本田等行业参与者。

Noetra is developing Japanese multimodal foundation models for robotics and physical AI.

Noetra 正在开发日本的机器人和物理人工智能多模式基础模型。

Crucially, its ambitions extend beyond another national chatbot to manufacturing, logistics, transport, health care, energy systems, infrastructure, and other sectors where machines must interpret and interact with the physical world.

至关重要的是，它的野心超越了另一个国家聊天机器人，扩展到制造、物流、运输、医疗保健、能源系统、基础设施以及机器必须解释物理世界并与物理世界交互的其他领域。

Noetra does not enter an uncontested field.

诺伊特拉并没有进入一个没有争议的领域。

Japan’s opportunity lies less in commodity automation than in high-reliability and security-sensitive areas where its engineering, operational data, and trusted legal jurisdiction can command value beyond the lowest available price,

日本的机会不在于商品自动化，而在于高可靠性和安全敏感领域，在这些领域，其工程、运营数据和可信的法律管辖权可以带来超出最低可用价格的价值，

Japan brings unusual strengths to that task.

日本为这项任务带来了不同寻常的优势。

It has world-class manufacturing companies, advanced robotics, precision engineering, industrial expertise, and decades of experience deploying technology in physical production.

它拥有世界一流的制造公司、先进的机器人技术、精密工程、工业专业知识以及数十年在物理生产中部署技术的经验。

The operational data produced on factory floors and inside machines is a strategic asset that cannot be easily replicated elsewhere.

工厂车间和机器内部产生的操作数据是一种战略资产，无法在其他地方轻易复制。

Pooling it does not require moving it.

合并它不需要移动它。

Federated training and secure access arrangements can allow shared models to improve without raw data leaving the plant, which is what makes cooperation among competing industrial firms both commercially and legally feasible.

联合培训和安全访问安排可以允许共享模型在原始数据不离开工厂的情况下得到改进，这使得竞争工业公司之间的合作在商业和法律上都可行。

But Noetra also exposes a weakness in the modular sovereignty approach, as its planned compute cluster will use approximately 27,500 Nvidia Rubin GPUs and therefore remain exposed to U.S. jurisdiction at the compute layer.

但 Noetra 也暴露了模块化主权方法的弱点，因为其计划的计算集群将使用大约 27,500 个 Nvidia Rubin GPU，因此在计算层仍然受到美国管辖。

Japan’s data, robotics, and application strengths create leverage, not compute sovereignty.

日本的数据、机器人和应用程序优势创造了影响力，而不是计算主权。

A middle-power coalition could reduce that exposure at the margin through several measures.

中等强国联盟可以通过多项措施减少这种风险。

These could include jointly procuring and maintaining strategic inventories of advanced accelerators; supporting Japan’s Rapidus, South Korea’s Samsung, and other regional capacity where technically and commercially realistic; developing inference-optimized domestic silicon for industrial deployment; investing in training efficiency and smaller specialized models; and maintaining open-weight models as a fallback when access to proprietary systems is restricted.

其中可能包括联合采购和维护先进加速器的战略库存；支持日本的Rapidus、韩国的三星以及技术和商业上可行的其他区域产能；开发用于工业部署的推理优化国产芯片；投资于培训效率和小型专业模型；当对专有系统的访问受到限制时，维护开放权重模型作为后备。

None of these measures would close the frontier compute gap.

这些措施都无法缩小前沿计算差距。

But together, they could reduce the ability of any single supplier or government to halt the coalition’s most important deployments.

但综合起来，它们可能会削弱任何单一供应商或政府阻止联盟最重要部署的能力。

South Korea could be a coanchor of the effort.

韩国可以成为这一努力的协调者。

Seoul’s Sovereign AI Foundation Model project already combines public support with competition among domestic consortia.

首尔的主权人工智能基础模型项目已经将公众支持与国内财团之间的竞争结合起来。

According to South Korea’s Ministry of Science and ICT , four Korean models developed in the first half of 2026 were added to Epoch AI’s list of notable models.

据韩国科学技术信息通信部称，2026 年上半年开发的四个韩国模型已被添加到 Epoch AI 的著名模型列表中。

The ministry reports that the United States produced 59 such models in 2025, China 35, and South Korea eight.

该部报告称，美国到 2025 年生产了 59 辆此类车型，中国生产了 35 辆，韩国生产了 8 辆。

Korean models are not on par with the best American and Chinese systems, but South Korea’s results are striking given the difference in resources.

韩国的模式无法与美国和中国最好的系统相提并论，但考虑到资源的差异，韩国的结果是惊人的。

South Korea also brings leading positions in HBM and other memory chips, electronics, telecommunications, batteries, shipbuilding, automobiles, and industrial machinery.

韩国还在 HBM 和其他存储芯片、电子、电信、电池、造船、汽车和工业机械领域占据领先地位。

A middle-power coalition could see Europe joining Japan and South Korea where their capabilities are complementary: manufacturing, robotics, transport, health, logistics, energy systems, and infrastructure.

中等强国联盟可能会看到欧洲加入日本和韩国的行列，两国的能力具有互补性：制造、机器人、运输、卫生、物流、能源系统和基础设施。

Japan can contribute Noetra, industrial expertise, robotics, sensors, vehicles, materials, and precision engineering.

日本可以贡献Noetra、工业专业知识、机器人、传感器、车辆、材料和精密工程。

South Korea can contribute semiconductors, memory, telecommunications, electronics, competitive models, and an ability to move from policy to execution.

韩国可以贡献半导体、内存、电信、电子、竞争模式以及从政策转向执行的能力。

Europe can add financing at scale, a continental market, large industrial customers, research institutions, and globally competitive companies in aerospace, automotive manufacturing, pharmaceuticals, energy, transport, and engineering.

欧洲可以大规模增加融资、大陆市场、大型工业客户、研究机构以及航空航天、汽车制造、制药、能源、运输和工程领域具有全球竞争力的公司。

Their strength and leverage would derive from a common market for critical and regulated systems where national security, resilience, and control are paramount and integral to purchasing requirements, rather than simply preferences.

它们的优势和影响力将源自关键和受监管系统的共同市场，在该市场中，国家安全、弹性和控制对于采购要求至关重要且不可或缺，而不仅仅是偏好。

The efforts by Japan and South Korea make the contrast with Europe uncomfortable.

日本和韩国的努力与欧洲的对比让人感到不舒服。

Mistral’s recent expansion into regional inference, third-party model hosting, and European compute is France’s most consequential contribution, but its growing reliance on Nvidia hardware, Microsoft financing and customers , and the sale of regional capacity illustrate the structural pressure on a stand-alone European model champion.

Mistral 最近向区域推理、第三方模型托管和欧洲计算领域的扩张是法国最重要的贡献，但其对 Nvidia 硬件、微软融资和客户的日益依赖，以及区域产能的出售，说明了独立的欧洲模型冠军面临的结构性压力。

Mistral has not stopped developing models, but its small size and trajectory hardly validate a strategy of fragmented national efforts.

米斯特拉尔并没有停止开发模型，但其规模小、轨迹小，很难验证分散的国家努力战略。

European officials are aware of the dynamics of AI sovereignty .

欧洲官员意识到人工智能主权的动态。

The phrase now appears in various European speeches , strategies , and funding announcements .

该短语现在出现在各种欧洲演讲、战略和融资公告中。

But rhetorical recognition has not produced sufficient action on the necessary scale or timetable and remains consistent with a familiar tendency to confuse announcements and regulation with capability.

但口头上的承认并没有在必要的规模或时间表上产生足够的行动，并且仍然符合将公告和监管与能力相混淆的常见趋势。

Regulation matters, and access to the European market has changed the behavior of large U.S. technology companies.

监管很重要，进入欧洲市场已经改变了美国大型科技公司的行为。

But regulation without independent capability is dependence management.

但没有独立能力的监管就是依赖管理。

Europe has relied far too heavily on the former while failing to build enough of the latter.

欧洲过于依赖前者，而未能建立足够的后者。

The EU’s gigafactory program illustrates the gap.

欧盟的超级工厂计划说明了这一差距。

InvestAI was announced in February 2025 as an effort to mobilize 200 billion euros (approximately $233 billion), including an ambition of 20 billion euros for AI gigafactories.

InvestAI 于 2025 年 2 月宣布，旨在筹集 2000 亿欧元（约合 2330 亿美元），其中包括为人工智能超级工厂筹集 200 亿欧元的雄心。

On July 30, 2026, the European Commission opened a tender for up to seven gigafactories, backed by up to 10 billion euros in EU and national funding, roughly half of that from Brussels, and intended to attract at least 20 billion euros in private investment.

2026 年 7 月 30 日，欧盟委员会对最多 7 个超级工厂进行了招标，并获得了高达 100 亿欧元的欧盟和国家资金支持，其中大约一半来自布鲁塞尔，并打算吸引至少 200 亿欧元的私人投资。

The public commitment has moved down rather than up over 18 months, and even the full 30-billion-euro headline remains small compared with the more than $700 billion that five U.S. companies may spend in 2026 alone.

18 个月来，公开承诺不仅没有增加，反而有所下降，而且与 5 家美国公司仅在 2026 年可能支出的超过 7000 亿美元相比，即使是 300 亿欧元的整体支出也仍然很小。

Europe’s deeper problem remains nationalist fragmentation.

欧洲更深层次的问题仍然是民族主义分裂。

Member states still compete over where compute will be hosted, whose champion will lead, who will pay, whose data will be shared, and which country will capture the jobs and commercial returns.

成员国仍在争夺计算的托管地点、谁的冠军将领先、谁将支付费用、谁的数据将被共享以及哪个国家将获得就业和商业回报。

The result is a familiar European pattern of ambitious announcements followed by slow implementation, overlapping national programs, and inadequate scale.

其结果是欧洲出现了一种熟悉的模式：雄心勃勃的宣布，随后实施缓慢、国家计划重叠和规模不足。

Europe could spend several more years debating the distribution of an AI initiative only to find that American and Chinese platforms have become embedded too deeply to dislodge.

欧洲可能会再花几年时间讨论人工智能计划的分配，结果却发现美国和中国的平台已经根深蒂固，无法摆脱。

Financing will play a key role in determining whether middle-power collective capabilities can move from aspiration to scale.

融资将在决定中等强国集体能力能否从愿望走向规模化方面发挥关键作用。

A credible effort focused on physical and industrial AI would likely require several hundred billion dollars over several years.

专注于物理和工业人工智能的可信努力可能需要几年内数千亿美元。

The funding would need to cover compute, energy, semiconductors, models, deployment, and industrial adaptation, consistent with the scale of the EU’s stated InvestAI ambitions, but still far below what U.S. hyperscalers are likely to spend over the same period.

资金需要涵盖计算、能源、半导体、模型、部署和工业适应，与欧盟宣称的 InvestAI 雄心规模一致，但仍远低于美国超大规模企业同期可能的支出。

Those hundreds of billions are also far above the tens of billions that the most plausible European and national instruments can now provide.

这数千亿也远远高于目前最可信的欧洲和国家文书所能提供的数百亿。

The gap should be acknowledged rather than glossed over.

应该承认这一差距，而不是掩盖这一差距。

Europe has the economic capacity to make a larger contribution.

欧洲有经济能力做出更大的贡献。

A European Strategic AI Bond could help finance a broader middle-power initiative, including compute clusters, secure cloud capacity, electricity infrastructure, semiconductor supply chains, model development, cybersecurity, and deployment.

欧洲战略人工智能债券可以帮助资助更广泛的中等实力计划，包括计算集群、安全云容量、电力基础设施、半导体供应链、模型开发、网络安全和部署。

But financial capacity is not the same as an agreed fiscal instrument to deploy it.

但财政能力并不等同于商定的财政工具来部署它。

A 2023 International Monetary Fund staff working paper argued that demand for a common European safe asset could support substantial issuance without an aggregate increase in borrowing costs, which suggests that the convenience-yield benefits of a common liquid euro-denominated instrument would provide ample headroom to borrow for strategically important goals.

国际货币基金组织 2023 年工作人员的一份工作文件认为，对欧洲共同安全资产的需求可以支持大量发行，而不会导致借贷成本总体增加，这表明共同流动性欧元计价工具的便利收益优势将为实现具有重要战略意义的目标提供充足的借贷空间。

The obstacles are political and legal rather than financial, and they are familiar.

这些障碍是政治和法律方面的，而不是经济方面的，而且这些障碍是我们所熟悉的。

The EU’s Multiannual Financial Framework and changes to the own-resources system require EU member unanimity, with national ratification required for revenue changes.

欧盟的多年期金融框架和自有资源体系的变化需要欧盟成员国的一致同意，收入变化需要国家批准。

The EU still lacks an agreed new own resource sufficient for another large borrowing program.

欧盟仍然缺乏商定的新资源，足以支持另一项大型借贷计划。

Repayment of NextGenerationEU borrowing is likely to be rolled over, but it technically begins in 2028 and will weigh directly on the 2028 to 2034 budget.

下一代欧盟借款的偿还可能会延期，但从技术上讲，它会在 2028 年开始，并将直接影响 2028 年至 2034 年的预算。

The legal basis for common borrowing for a new strategic purpose would also likely be contested and litigated.

为新的战略目的共同借款的法律依据也可能会受到争议和诉讼。

Those are genuine constraints, not procedural details that can simply be wished away.

这些都是真正的限制，而不是可以简单地希望消除的程序细节。

But they should not become an alibi for paralysis.

但它们不应该成为瘫痪的借口。

The risk of future AI subordination is too great to allow familiar process-driven impediments to determine the outcome by default.

未来人工智能从属的风险太大，不能让熟悉的流程驱动障碍默认决定结果。

A strategic bond could be one instrument among several.

战略债券可能是多种工具中的一种。

National vehicles, institutional investors, industrial firms, guaranteed procurement, and private project finance would also be required.

还需要国家工具、机构投资者、工业企业、担保采购和私人项目融资。

Common funding should be reserved for genuinely shared assets, while national funding supports complementary capabilities and domestic deployment.

共同资金应保留给真正共享的资产，而国家资金则支持互补能力和国内部署。

Financing issues seek to address the supply side, but governments are not only suppliers of capital; they are also major customers.

融资问题寻求解决供给侧问题，但政府不仅是资本的提供者，也是资本的提供者。他们也是主要客户。

Each year, EU public authorities purchase roughly 2 trillion euros of services, works, and supplies —equal to about 13.6% of EU GDP.

每年，欧盟公共当局购买约 2 万亿欧元的服务、工程和物资，相当于欧盟 GDP 的 13.6% 左右。

And that is before adding Japanese and South Korean public purchasing power.

这还是在加上日本和韩国的公共购买力之前的情况。

Contrasted with the 10 billion euros in public financing targeted for the EU gigafactory tender , the difference in scale is clear.

与欧盟超级工厂招标目标为100亿欧元的公共融资相比，规模差异显而易见。

That difference between what governments can appropriate and invest and what they are already spending as “buyers” represents a significant potential opportunity for middle-powers in the future direction of AI.

政府可以拨款和投资的资金与他们作为“买家”已经支出的资金之间的差异代表着中等强国在人工智能未来方向上的巨大潜在机会。

Governments that make binding demand commitments could solve several problems more efficiently than by providing more capital or through subsidies.

做出具有约束力的需求承诺的政府可以比提供更多资本或补贴更有效地解决一些问题。

Similar to Airbus launch orders, committed contracted revenue can be financed and would give companies reasons to invest well before market scale has been achieved.

与空中客车公司的发射订单类似，承诺的合同收入可以进行融资，并且可以让公司有理由在实现市场规模之前进行投资。

Early deployment would also generate the proprietary operational data on which physical AI advantages can build upon.

早期部署还将生成专有的操作数据，可以在此基础上构建人工智能的物理优势。

Procurement can potentially redirect spending that has already been budgeted for public services, without the need for time-consuming and politically problematic new EU own resources, common borrowing, or national ratification.

采购有可能重新调整公共服务预算中的支出，而无需耗时且存在政治问题的欧盟新资源、共同借款或国家批准。

Europe has already proposed an initial element of this approach.

欧洲已经提出了这一方法的初步内容。

The Cloud and AI Development Act (CADA), proposed on June 3, 2026, would establish a range of non-price criteria to be applied to public bodies as inputs into their procurement decisions on innovative cloud and AI systems.

2026 年 6 月 3 日提出的《云和人工智能发展法案》(CADA) 将建立一系列适用于公共机构的非价格标准，作为其创新云和人工智能系统采购决策的输入。

This is a step, though a small one, in the right direction.

这是朝着正确方向迈出的一步，虽然很小。

However, CADA remains at the proposal stage and is not drafted in a way that will necessarily materially alter purchasing decisions.

然而，CADA 仍处于提案阶段，其起草方式不一定会实质性改变采购决策。

A comprehensive middle-power-coalition approach should be more specific, ambitious, and binding.

全面的中等强国联盟方法应该更加具体、雄心勃勃和具有约束力。

Participating governments should commit a defined share of purchasing in specific categories over a defined period.

参与政府应承诺在规定期限内对特定类别进行规定份额的采购。

Critical infrastructure, telecommunications, defense, and robotics would be good places to start.

关键基础设施、电信、国防和机器人技术将是不错的起点。

Reciprocal access would allow Japanese and South Korean suppliers to compete in European tenders and European suppliers to compete in theirs, advancing market scale that they do not possess on their own.

互惠准入将使日本和韩国供应商能够在欧洲招标中竞争，欧洲供应商也能在自己的招标中竞争，从而扩大他们自己不具备的市场规模。

This approach faces some real legal constraints.

这种方法面临一些实际的法律限制。

The World Trade Organization Agreement on Government Procurement and the EU’s procurement rules limit discrimination against some foreign suppliers.

世界贸易组织政府采购协议和欧盟采购规则限制了对某些外国供应商的歧视。

But security exceptions exist and should be aggressively explored here.

但安全例外是存在的，应该在这里积极探索。

While they are not blanket permissions for protectionism, they could provide a means of resisting U.S. and Chinese pushback if the effort was based on security, performance, and reciprocity rather than on nationality alone.

虽然它们并不是对保护主义的全面许可，但如果这种努力是基于安全、绩效和互惠而不仅仅是基于国籍，那么它们可以提供一种抵制美国和中国抵制的手段。

Governance of a middle-power effort would be difficult, and the model chosen would likely determine whether the coalition can happen at all and, if it does, whether it holds together.

治理中等强国的努力将会很困难，而所选择的模式可能会决定联盟是否能够实现，如果能够实现，也将决定它是否能够团结在一起。

Participation should follow a contribution-for-access principle: countries and companies that provide financing, technology, energy, data, procurement commitments, or market access receive corresponding rights to shared infrastructure and intellectual property.

参与应遵循贡献换取准入的原则：提供融资、技术、能源、数据、采购承诺或市场准入的国家和公司将获得共享基础设施和知识产权的相应权利。

A supermajority approval structure for major allocations would be needed so that no single member could dominate or hold out, while technical decisions would be delegated to professionals.

主要拨款需要一个绝对多数批准结构，以便没有任何一个成员能够主导或坚持，而技术决策将委托给专业人员。

Common standards would need to guarantee interoperability and data portability.

通用标准需要保证互操作性和数据可移植性。

Binding long-term procurement commitments from governments, health systems, utilities, transport networks, and defense establishments should provide incentives against defection and provide shared projects early customers and commercial scale.

政府、卫生系统、公用事业、运输网络和国防机构做出具有约束力的长期采购承诺，应能激励人们防止叛逃，并为共享项目提供早期客户和商业规模。

Access to subsidized compute, common models, and reciprocal procurement commitments should depend on continued contributions and reciprocal market access.

获得补贴计算、通用模型和互惠采购承诺应取决于持续的贡献和互惠的市场准入。

Participants should retain the right to pursue national projects and partnerships with U.S. or Chinese firms, but not to divert shared assets or accept arrangements that undermine the coalition’s security.

参与者应保留与美国或中国公司开展国家项目和建立伙伴关系的权利，但不得转移共享资产或接受破坏联盟安全的安排。

Europe’s Airbus experience proves that cross-border industrial policy can create a globally competitive enterprise when national capabilities are insufficient.

欧洲空客的经验证明，在国家能力不足的情况下，跨境产业政策可以打造具有全球竞争力的企业。

It also shows how hard that is.

这也表明了这是多么困难。

Airbus had a corporate vehicle, a balance sheet, responsibility for delivery, and launch customers placing binding orders.

空中客车公司拥有公司车辆、资产负债表、交付责任以及下达具有约束力订单的客户。

By contrast, the Gaia-X initiative had a standards association, diffuse governance, little capital, and no product for which a single party was responsible.

相比之下，Gaia-X 计划有一个标准协会、分散的治理、很少的资本，并且没有由单一方负责的产品。

Its ambition to create a federated European data and cloud infrastructure was directionally right, but years of standards work, national agendas, and pilot projects never produced a European competitor to the U.S. hyperscalers.

它创建欧洲联合数据和云基础设施的雄心在方向上是正确的，但多年的标准工作、国家议程和试点项目从未产生出能够与美国超大规模企业竞争的欧洲竞争对手。

That is the operational lesson.

这就是操作课。

A middle-power AI effort must become more than a declaration or working group.

中等实力的人工智能努力必须不仅仅是一份宣言或工作组。

It would need defined products, funded infrastructure, binding procurement commitments, clear responsibility for delivery, and milestones tied to deployment.

它需要明确的产品、资助的基础设施、具有约束力的采购承诺、明确的交付责任以及与部署相关的里程碑。

Whether that ultimately requires a new incorporated entity, a consortium built around existing institutions, or several linked project vehicles can remain open.

无论这最终需要一个新的法人实体、一个围绕现有机构建立的联盟，还是几个相互关联的项目工具，都可以保持开放。

Leaving responsibility and capital permanently diffuse cannot.

让责任和资本永远分散是不可能的。

A practical beginning would be a small group of governments and industrial firms capitalizing a first joint project around Noetra’s existing physical-AI work, with committed procurement from participating governments and companies, and membership widening from there.

一个实际的开始是一小群政府和工业公司围绕 Noetra 现有的物理人工智能工作开展第一个联合项目，并从参与的政府和公司承诺采购，并从此扩大成员范围。

Political obstacles will be difficult to overcome.

政治障碍将很难克服。

Europe’s internal divisions have led to repeated failures in cross-border initiatives.

欧洲的内部分歧导致跨境举措屡屡失败。

Japan and South Korea have unresolved technology-transfer and trust concerns.

日本和韩国尚未解决技术转让和信任问题。

These are reasons multinational coordination has not happened, but they are not reasons it is unnecessary.

这些是跨国协调尚未发生的原因，但并不是没有必要的原因。

As U.S. alliances become more transactional and the U.S.-China technology contest accelerates, middle powers are already making compromises with partners they once considered unacceptable.

随着美国的联盟变得更加交易化以及中美技术竞赛的加速，中等强国已经开始与他们曾经认为不可接受的合作伙伴做出妥协。

AI should be one of the areas where the risk of future subordination becomes sufficient to overcome old obstacles.

人工智能应该是未来从属风险足以克服旧障碍的领域之一。

Over time, other middle-power countries could join.

随着时间的推移，其他中等强国也可能加入。

Canada, India, the United Kingdom, Australia, and the Nordic countries each bring some combination of energy, research capacity, critical minerals, capital markets, and deployment scale.

加拿大、印度、英国、澳大利亚和北欧国家各自带来了能源、研究能力、关键矿产、资本市场和部署规模的组合。

A modular coalition would not require every participant to contribute to every layer.

模块化联盟不需要每个参与者都为每一层做出贡献。

Its strength would come from a structure in which no single member controls the whole system and new members can join without accepting permanent subordination to any other national champion.

它的力量来自于一种结构，在这种结构中，没有任何一个成员控制整个系统，新成员可以加入而无需接受永久服从于任何其他国家冠军。

The window will not remain open indefinitely, but it should not be reduced to a claim that success must be achieved within months.

这个窗口不会无限期地保持开放，但也不应简化为必须在几个月内取得成功的主张。

Noetra’s published roadmap targets an omni-modal model around fiscal year 2028 and a robotics-oriented, real-world native model around fiscal year 2030.

Noetra 发布的路线图目标是在 2028 财年左右建立全模式模型，并在 2030 财年左右建立面向机器人的现实世界原生模型。

The EU’s first gigafactories are not expected to operate until roughly mid-2028.

欧盟第一座超级工厂预计要到 2028 年中期左右才会投入运营。

Those timelines show that building capacity will take years.

这些时间表表明能力建设需要数年时间。

They also make it important to begin now, set intermediate deployment goals, and prevent long timetables from becoming excuses for delay.

他们还强调，现在就开始，设定中期部署目标，并防止过长的时间表成为拖延的借口。

General-purpose platforms are already becoming embedded in companies, governments, hospitals, and research institutions.

通用平台已经嵌入到公司、政府、医院和研究机构中。

In physical and industrial AI, American platforms are less entrenched, providing middle powers with a narrow opening even as Chinese suppliers expand their presence.

在物理和工业人工智能领域，美国平台的地位不那么稳固，即使中国供应商扩大影响力，也为中等强国提供了狭窄的开放空间。

Middle powers should focus on critical and regulated deployments in which legal jurisdiction, operational control, interoperability, and security can be made conditions of public and private procurement.

中等强国应重点关注关键且受监管的部署，其中法律管辖权、操作控制、互操作性和安全性可以成为公共和私人采购的条件。

As foreign platforms move from the office into factories, infrastructure, and machines, switching will become more expensive and politically difficult.

随着外国平台从办公室转移到工厂、基础设施和机器，转换成本将变得更加昂贵，政治上也变得更加困难。

Data will accumulate inside proprietary systems, workers will acquire platform-specific skills, and governments will become reluctant to disrupt the services on which citizens and businesses depend.

数据将在专有系统内积累，工作人员将获得特定于平台的技能，政府将不愿意破坏公民和企业所依赖的服务。

No middle power can individually match the full spectrum of U.S. or Chinese AI capabilities.

没有哪个中等强国能够单独与美国或中国的人工智能能力相媲美。

But collectively, they have enough capital, technology, talent, industrial data, and market scale to preserve meaningful technological agency.

但总的来说，它们拥有足够的资本、技术、人才、工业数据和市场规模来保留有意义的技术机构。

Japan’s Noetra and South Korea’s progress in models, HBM, and advanced manufacturing offer places to begin.

日本的 Noetra 和韩国在模型、HBM 和先进制造方面的进步提供了起点。

Europe has the resources and the industrial base to turn those efforts into something larger, but only if it moves beyond announcements, overcomes nationalist fragmentation, and treats AI capacity as an urgent common strategic priority.

欧洲拥有资源和工业基础，可以将这些努力转化为更大的成果，但前提是它超越公告，克服民族主义分裂，并将人工智能能力视为紧迫的共同战略优先事项。