2026-02-15 19:45:00
Kosmos出版社的一名员工正在玩《卡坦岛》这款桌游。| Marijan Murat/picture alliance 通过 Getty Images 提供图片。通常，游戏被视为无足轻重的事物，人们可能认为它们只是分散注意力的消遣。最糟糕的情况下，游戏甚至会被看作浪费时间的荒谬行为。哲学家C. Thi Nguyen认为，这种看法是一个巨大的错误。在他的著作《The Score》中，Nguyen指出，游戏是我们理解人类行为方式最清晰的窗口之一。游戏展示了我们如何设定目标、接受限制，并对那些看似不重要的事物投入深切关注。一旦你理解了游戏的运作方式，就会发现现代生活的许多方面其实也像游戏一样被结构化了。分数、指标、排名和绩效评估等工具承诺带来清晰性、公平性和效率。但Nguyen担心，它们也在重塑我们所重视的事物、我们如何看待自己，以及我们所认为值得关心的东西。他认为，危险并非在于游戏本身，而在于“价值捕获”：即简化指标逐渐取代了更丰富、更人性化的判断方式。我邀请Nguyen参加《The Gray Area》节目，探讨游戏的本质，以及为何将游戏机制应用于工作、教育和社会生活时常常出错。正如往常一样，完整播客内容更丰富，每周一更新，欢迎在Apple Podcasts、Spotify、Pandora等平台收听和订阅。本次访谈内容已进行删减和整理。
那么，游戏在最根本的层面上是什么？最美丽且有用的游戏定义来自加拿大哲学家Bernard Suits，他在1970年代出版了《The Grasshopper》一书。Suits认为，玩游戏就是自愿地去克服不必要的障碍，以体验克服它们的挣扎过程。这是一种更复杂的说法，但核心思想是：当你玩游戏时，你所追求的目标与你所接受的限制紧密交织在一起。比如马拉松，目标是到达终点，但你不会选择最有效的方式，比如坐车或走捷径，因为那样就不是在“玩”马拉松了。完成马拉松不仅是到达终点，更是在特定的限制下，沿着特定的路径，用双脚完成的。Suits的观点让我深受启发，他认为游戏的价值在于其过程和障碍，而不是结果本身。我们之所以喜欢游戏，是因为它们让我们沉浸在过程中，感受到挑战和克服的快感。这种体验在每种游戏中都有所不同，有些是为了娱乐，有些是为了思考，有些是为了锻炼身体。比如我爬岩壁，是因为我喜欢那种身体微妙动作的体验，也因为只有通过这种高强度的活动，我的大脑才能安静下来。我之所以喜欢钓鱼，是因为它让我能够专注于水流表面，这种专注感对我的灵魂有净化作用。虽然我并不是天生的冥想者，但游戏让我能够专注于目标，从而获得一种全新的自由感。
你是否认为像钓鱼这样的活动也属于游戏？我住在犹他州，我发现这里有很多男性对钓鱼有着非常强烈的情感联系。他们需要这种活动，经常思考它。我曾认为他们其实需要的是冥想，但又不愿承认。钓鱼让他们可以假装在“钓鱼”，而实际上是在冥想。我最喜欢的钓鱼方式是“干钓”，即用漂浮的假昆虫诱使鳟鱼上钩。最纯粹的干钓方式是：你安静地沿着河流行走，观察水面的细微变化，寻找可能的停泊点。如果足够幸运和专注，你可能会看到鳟鱼浮出水面，然后你必须小心翼翼地将假昆虫投掷到鱼面前。如果一切顺利，鳟鱼会游过来，观察你的假虫，然后决定是否上钩。但真正重要的是，钓鱼并不是为了捕获鱼，而是为了培养一种高度专注的体验。我们通常会放生钓到的鱼，几乎所有的钓鱼者都是如此。钓鱼的真正价值在于你为了实现目标而投入的注意力。
你提到过“成就型游戏”和“奋斗型游戏”的区别，能解释一下吗？当然，这需要我戴上技术性的帽子。成就型游戏是为了赢得分数或胜利而进行的，胜利是其价值所在。而奋斗型游戏则是为了体验奋斗本身，过程比结果更重要。我钓鱼属于奋斗型游戏，我追求的是沉浸在河流中的体验，而不是捕获鱼。但如果没有目标，这种沉浸感就无法实现。我必须努力去钓到鱼，才能获得这种体验。我最喜欢的一个论点是关于“愚蠢游戏”的。所谓愚蠢游戏，就是那种乐趣在于失败的游戏，但只有当你真正试图赢的时候，这种失败才变得有趣。比如扭扭乐（Twister），如果你故意摔倒，那并不好笑，因为这不是失败。只有当你试图赢却失败时，才会觉得有趣。这就是奋斗型游戏，你必须瞄准胜利，但胜利并不是目的。
还有一个容易混淆的概念是内在价值与外在价值。内在价值是指你为了过程本身而进行游戏，外在价值则是你为了获得某种结果（如金钱、地位）而进行游戏。同样，奋斗型游戏可以是内在的，也可以是外在的。比如，我跑马拉松是为了健康，即使最后一名也能获得益处。游戏的奇妙之处在于，它们有规则和结构，但同时又创造了一个自由和玩耍的空间。为什么游戏能带来这种自由？我最初对这个问题着迷，是因为我有一个朋友热爱游戏却讨厌游戏本身。她问：“为什么我要限制自己，为什么我要遵守规则？” 我试图向她解释人们为何会这样做。其中一个早期的线索来自攀岩馆。攀岩馆会设置特定的路线，你只能使用特定颜色的支点。但有些人认为，不应限制自己，他们想自由地在墙上四处攀爬。然而，我想要说的是，你可能错过了某种特定的体验。我曾经笨拙，不知道如何控制身体的重心，只有通过解决特定的难题，我才能逐渐掌握技巧。这些限制促使我探索新的动作和平衡方式。我之前在瑜伽中也学到过类似的经验：如果你不设限，人们往往会重复习惯性的姿势。瑜伽老师告诉我，只有在特定的姿势限制下，才能发现新的姿势和动作方式。足球也是个好例子，你可能永远不知道自己的双脚能做什么，直到有人告诉你不能用手。这种限制迫使你发展出一种原本不会发现的自由。
因此，游戏就像瑜伽一样，规则迫使你以新的方式行动。它们甚至能让一个自私的人暂时成为完美的团队成员。但你不会永远停留在一个姿势中，你会在不同的姿势之间切换。自由来自于在各种限制中循环，每一种限制都会把你推向新的体验。如果瑜伽说：“你一生都要保持三角姿势”，那就不算自由了。同样，如果评分系统成为我们生活的主导因素，那就不像游戏了。为什么在日常生活中设置评分系统时，它们往往起到相反的作用？这有两个主要原因：一是设计目的不同。游戏是为了乐趣、愉悦和快乐而设计的，而机构评分系统通常是为了提高效率、生产力和责任感。它们并不是为了让人快乐地生活。二是选择权的问题。在游戏里，你可以自由选择是否参与，可以切换游戏，也可以停止。但你在教育、工作或社会地位方面很少有真正的选择权。还有一个关键点是：在真正的游戏中，分数并不重要。这听起来很显然，但却是基础。在研究生阶段，我学到了一个重要的区分：目标和目的不同。玩桌游的目标是赢得游戏，但目的则是享受乐趣。钓鱼的目标是捕获鱼，但目的并不是捕获鱼。你可能会一无所获，但你却对每一片树叶的颤动、每只昆虫的活动和每一道涟漪都更加敏感。这种分离使得你可以在与爱人竞争时，不会影响彼此的关系，因为胜利被限制在“游戏圈”内。但当分数与你的生活直接挂钩，比如成绩、工资、社会地位等，这种自由就会消失。评分系统不再是一个有趣的挑战，而成为主导价值。这就是为什么机构评分系统感觉如此不同，因为它们与你的生活紧密相连。请收听完整对话，并关注《The Gray Area》节目，可在Apple Podcasts、Spotify、Pandora等平台收听。
Games are often treated as trivial. They can be seen as mere distractions. At worst, they’re time-wasting indulgences.
The philosopher C. Thi Nguyen thinks that framing is a big mistake.
In his book The Score, Nguyen argues that games are one of the clearest windows we have into how human agency actually works. Games show us what it means to choose goals, submit to constraints, and care deeply about things that don’t obviously matter. And once you see how games function, it becomes much harder not to notice how the rest of modern life has been turned into something like a game, too.
Scores, metrics, rankings, performance indicators: These tools promise clarity, fairness, and efficiency. But Nguyen worries they also reshape what we value, how we see ourselves, and what we take to be worth caring about. The danger, he argues, is not play itself, but value capture: the slow process by which simplified metrics replace richer, more human forms of judgment.
I invited Nguyen onto The Gray Area to talk about what games really are and why the gamification of work, education, and social life so often goes wrong. As always, there’s much more in the full podcast, which drops every Monday, so listen to and follow us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pandora, or wherever you find podcasts.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
What is a game on the most fundamental level?
The most beautiful and useful definition of a game comes from Bernard Suits, who was this Canadian philosopher and kind of a cult figure. He wrote this book, The Grasshopper, in the 1970s, and his definition is that playing a game is voluntarily undertaking unnecessary obstacles in order to create the experience of struggling to overcome them.
There’s a more complicated way to put it, but that’s the core. When you’re playing a game, what you’re trying to do is intrinsically tangled up with the constraints you’ve taken on. Think about a marathon: The goal is to get to a particular point. But, you’re not trying to do it the most efficient way you can, because if you were, you’d take a lift, or you’d take a shortcut, or you’d just get in a car.
Finishing a marathon is not just getting to the finish line; it’s getting there in a particular way, under particular constraints, along a particular path, using your own legs. And Suits’ point, which I think is incredibly clarifying, is that whatever value a game has, it’s intrinsically tied up with that method and those obstacles. It’s not just about the output by itself.
And why do we love that so much? Why do we like having obstacles and then that feeling of navigating and conquering them?
There’s a weird sense in which I’ve gone so far down this rabbit hole that even asking that question seems strange to me now, because it’s like, why wouldn’t you want to do that?
But the real answer is that the reason you play games is different in every game. There are party games I play just to chill out with friends, to take the edge off. There are games I play because the thought process is so interesting, [like] figuring out the perfect move in Go or chess, reacting at just the right moment.
And there are physical games I play for very specific reasons. Rock climbing is the big one for me. There’s this narrow reason I climb, which is that I like the delicate little movements of my body, the micro adjustments, the way you get past something by shifting your hip by a millimeter. But there’s also a bigger reason I climb, which is that if I don’t climb I can’t get my brain to shut up. So, only the brutality and intensity of climbing is enough to make my brain be quiet for a second.
And I think the thing that unites everything I just said is that the pleasure, the value, the glory is in the process of acting, not the outcome. That’s what Suits’ definition revealed to me. Either you think being inside the process, doing it, feeling yourself doing it, pushing against other people, cooperating with other people — either you think that can be beautiful in and of itself, or you think games are useless and insane, and half the time what people are doing makes no sense.
And I kind of think if you reject that, you’re in a different rabbit hole: the rabbit hole where only outcomes, only products, only things you can hold in your hand count as valuable.
I imagine a lot of people wouldn’t think of rock climbing as a game. They’d think of it as an activity, a hobby, whatever. What makes it a game?
This is where Suits’ definition is so clarifying. For Suits, a game is anything where the constraints, the obstacles, are central to what you’re doing. In some sense, they’re the reason you’re doing it.
So, if you buy a puzzle game, and you hack it and jump to the end without going through the struggle, you haven’t done the thing. You haven’t played the game. If you get to the finish line of a marathon by taking a taxi, you haven’t played the game. And if you climb a ladder to get to the top of a rock climb, you haven’t done the thing that’s valuable.
And philosophers will argue forever about whether this definition is exactly right, and there’s a sense in which I don’t really care. I think it’s close to our ordinary concept, but that’s not the point. What I care about is that Suits pointed to this essential part of human life and gave us a perfectly useful category for it, the category of things where the obstacles are central to why we find it valuable.
Do you think of fly-fishing, something you also write about in the book, in the same way?
I live in Utah now, and one thing I noticed here is that there are a lot of dudes who have this really intense emotional relationship with fly-fishing. They need it; they think about it all the time. And I developed this theory that what a lot of these guys actually need is meditation, but they’re too masculine to admit that to themselves. Fly-fishing gives them this cover where they can be like, “I’m catching fish,” and really, they’re meditating.
The kind of fly-fishing I love is dry fly-fishing, where you try to trick a trout into taking a floating imitation insect off the surface of the water. And the extreme, pure version of this is: You quietly walk down the river searching the surface first. You look for subtle details in the moving water that indicate there might be a holding spot — some softer, slower water. And if you’re lucky and attentive enough, you can see a trout rise and sip insects.
Then, you have to cast this tiny fake insect delicately so it lands in front of the trout, and if you get it all right, you get this incredible moment where the trout swims up, sees your fly, kind of inspects it, and decides to go for it.
And what I’ve realized about this is that catching fish is not actually the point. We let the fish go. Almost all fly-fishers are catch and release. The point is that in order to do this, you have to cultivate an incredibly intense form of attention.
For me, fly-fishing cleans out my soul more than almost anything, because there’s nothing else I do that’s like staring with absolute attention at the surface of moving water for a day. And I’m not a natural meditator; I’m a total hyper weirdo. If you took me to a river and said “Clear your mind,” I’d last 30 seconds. If you asked me to stare at a candle, I’d last maybe 40 seconds. But, if you give me a game, if you give me a target, if you tell me “Try to catch a fish,” suddenly, that goal guides my attention. It transforms my entire spirit, the way I attend to the world.
You make this distinction between achievement play and striving play. Can you walk me through it?
This is where I have to put on the technical hat for a second, but it matters.
Achievement play is when you’re playing for the point of winning. Winning is what makes it valuable. Striving play is when you’re playing for the sake of the struggle, for the sake of the process. You don’t really care whether you win, but you do have to try to win in order to experience the absorption.
Fly-fishing is striving play for me. What I want is absorption, being lost in the river, having my mind poured out of my ego and sent somewhere else. But I can’t do that without a goal. I have to try intensely to catch a fish.
Here’s my favorite argument that striving play exists: Consider what I call stupid games. A stupid game is a game where the fun part is failing, but it’s only fun if you’re actually trying to win.
Twister is the classic example. If you play Twister, and you fall over on purpose, it’s not funny, because that’s not failure. It’s only funny if it’s failure. So you get this weird mental state where you know before the game starts the point is to fall over and laugh, but you also know that to have that experience you have to try to win.
That’s striving play. You have to aim at winning, even though winning isn’t the point.
And there’s another distinction that gets confused with this all the time, which is intrinsic versus extrinsic value. That’s not the same as achievement versus striving. You can be an achievement player intrinsically, caring only about winning for its own sake, or extrinsically, caring about what winning gets you, money, status, whatever. You can be a striving player intrinsically, loving the struggle itself. , or extrinsically, doing it for some benefit you get from the process, like running marathons for health. You still get the benefit even if you come in last.
The paradoxical thing about games is that they’re governed by rules and structure and scoring systems, and yet, they create this space for freedom and play. Why is that?
I originally got obsessed with this because I had a friend who loved to play but hated games. She was like, “Why would I ever restrain myself; why would I ever submit to rules?“ And I was trying to explain to her, and to myself, why people do it.
One early hint came from the climbing gym. A gym sets problems. You’re supposed to climb using only the holds of a certain color. That’s the route. Or, you can ignore that and just wander all over the wall and use whatever you want. And there’s a kind of person who thinks, don’t constrain me, I’ll do whatever I want. But what I want to say is: You’re missing a specific experience.
I was clumsy; I had no sense of where my hips were. I only found refinement in hip motion and subtle balance because I climbed specific hard problems. Some problems are set to force you into a new kind of movement, inching your hips over, staying a millimeter off the wall. The constraint is what pushes you to discover something new.
And I realized I’d learned this lesson before, through yoga. I had a great yoga teacher who said, “If you just let people move however they want, they tend to repeat habitual postures.” They do the same thing over and over. It’s the restriction and clarity of a pose description that forces you to find a new posture, a new way to move.
Soccer is another good example. You might never know what your feet can do until someone tells you you can’t use your hands. The restriction forces you to cultivate a freedom you wouldn’t have discovered otherwise.
So, games are like yoga; the rules force you into a new way of acting. They might even force a selfish person to be a perfect team player for a while. But you’re not stuck in one pose forever. You move between poses. Freedom comes from cycling through a variety of constraints, each one pushing you into a new place. If yoga said, “Stay in triangle pose your entire life,” that wouldn’t be freedom.
If constraints and scoring systems can create freedom in games, why is it that when we impose scoring systems on everyday life — socially, professionally, personally — they often do the opposite?
This is the most interesting question, and there are at least two big answers.
One is design. Games are designed for fun, pleasure, joy. Institutional scoring systems are usually designed for something else: productivity, efficiency, accountability. They’re not designed to be lived inside in a way that’s joyful.
The other is choice. With games, you have free range. You can move between games. You can stop. You can refuse. But, you rarely have meaningful choice over the scoring systems that govern your education, your job, your social reputation. And there’s something else that’s crucial here: In a real game, part of what makes it possible is that the points don’t matter. That sounds obvious, but it’s the foundation.
There’s this distinction I learned in graduate school that sounds trivial until you really sit with it: Goals and purposes are different. The goal of playing a board game is to win. The purpose is to have fun. The goal of fly-fishing is catching fish, but it’s not the purpose. You can have a day where you catch nothing, and as you walk back, you realize you’re sensitized to every leaf twitch, and every bug, and every ripple, and you remember catching fish was never the point.
That separation is why you can play competitively with someone you love. My spouse and I can spend the evening trying to destroy each other’s position in a game, and it doesn’t threaten the relationship, because the win is insulated. It’s inside the magic circle.
But when the score isn’t insulated, when the score is your grades, your salary, your status, your ability to pay rent, then the freedom collapses. The metric stops being a playful target and becomes a governing value.
That’s why institutional metrics feel so different: They’re attached to your life.
Listen to the rest of the conversation and be sure to follow The Gray Area on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pandora, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
2026-02-14 21:30:00
情人节快乐。不要让情人节期间日益猖獗的“爱情诈骗”伤了你的心。去年，这些诈骗案给美国人造成了30亿美元的损失，而由于受害者往往不愿报案，这个数字可能被低估了。许多爱情诈骗属于所谓的“养猪诈骗”，诈骗者通过长时间建立关系并赢得信任，逐步骗取受害者的钱财。2020年至2024年间，这类诈骗已在全球范围内骗取超过750亿美元。如今，人工智能正使这些诈骗变得更加容易、便宜和有利可图。过去，诈骗者需要精通英语才能有效欺骗美国人，但如今，借助AI翻译工具，这一障碍已被彻底消除，诈骗者可以接触到数百万潜在受害者。AI正在从根本上改变诈骗的规模，成为诈骗者的“倍增器”。以前一个人只能管理几个诈骗，现在借助这些工具，一个人可以同时运行20个或更多诈骗。克里斯·尼豪伊斯（Chris Nyhuis），网络安全公司Vigilant的创始人告诉我，AI辅助的诈骗比传统诈骗更具盈利性，而且运行起来更加便宜和简单。在暗网，诈骗者可以购买包含客户支持、用户评价和分级定价的“爱情诈骗工具包”。这些工具包包括预先构建的虚假身份、AI生成的照片集、针对诈骗各阶段的对话脚本，以及深度伪造视频工具。尼豪伊斯说：“进入诈骗的门槛几乎不存在了。”我曾怀疑爱情诈骗者是否会因AI而被自动化取代，但哈佛肯尼迪学院的弗雷德·海丁格（Fred Heiding）告诉我，“很多时候只是增强而非完全自动化。”许多诈骗者本身也是受害者，至少有22万人被困在东南亚的诈骗中心，被迫欺骗目标，否则将面临严重的虐待。利用AI意味着“这些诈骗集团的利润空间将更大”，海丁格说。目前，这些诈骗背后仍然有真人，即使他们只是启动了AI代理。但除此之外，整个过程可以完全自动化。海丁格表示，目前AI在欺骗方面并不比人类诈骗者强多少，但技术发展迅速。2016年，谷歌DeepMind的AlphaGo以压倒性优势击败了世界顶级围棋选手。人类预测者认为，AI很快就会远远超越我们预测未来的能力。“我不惊讶，在几年或几十年内，我们可能会看到AI诈骗者以完全不同于人类的思维方式运作，”海丁格说，“而且不幸的是，他们可能非常擅长说服我们。”爱情诈骗有其独特之处：它们针对人类对爱和联系的基本需求。你可能听说过，美国卫生部长在2023年正式宣布了“孤独症流行”，其健康风险可与每天抽15支烟相当。社会孤立与心脏病、痴呆症、抑郁甚至早逝的风险相关，据报道，全球有六分之一的人感到孤独。孤独的人往往是这些诈骗的高危目标。诈骗者会发送AI生成的初始信息，然后通过“爱轰炸”技巧让受害者相信他们建立了浪漫关系。一旦建立起信任，他们就会以难以追回的方式要求金钱，比如礼品卡、电汇或加密货币。他们可能会编造紧急情况以要求迅速转账。在达到目标后，他们可能会“消失”或继续诈骗以获取更多钱财。AI爱情诈骗利用深度伪造视频通话、“廉价假”社交媒体资料和语音克隆技术等手段吸引受害者。但尼豪伊斯指出，它们“特别危险，因为它们利用了人类的情感”。钓鱼诈骗利用紧迫感，技术支持诈骗利用恐惧，而爱情诈骗则利用爱，这可能让受害者做出非理性的决定，或忽视内心对事情不对劲的感觉。老年人往往面临社会孤立，因此成为爱情诈骗的主要目标。退休和失去亲人等情境，使诈骗者能够操纵受害者，让他们感到被关注和关心，即使他们正在窃取其全部积蓄和退休后打算居住的房产。但任何人都可能成为这些诈骗的受害者。尽管是数字原住民，Z世代由于在线时间较长，比其他世代更容易受到网络诈骗的影响，尽管他们通常损失的金额较少。令人难过的是，诈骗受害者更可能再次成为目标。诈骗者会创建受害者的档案，有时还会将他们加入“傻瓜名单”，在犯罪网络中共享。其他犯罪的受害者也更容易再次受害，而被爱情诈骗并不是受害者道德上的失败。但这是需要警惕的，因为大多数诈骗受害者都无法追回损失的钱财。约有15%的美国人曾因网络爱情诈骗而损失钱财，只有四分之一的人能够完全追回被盗资金。爱情诈骗在羞耻和秘密中蓬勃发展。受害者有时会被勒索，被告知如果向身边人倾诉，诈骗者会泄露他们的敏感信息。乔治梅森大学的助理教授兼AI研究员桑查里·达斯（Sanchari Das）和伦敦国王学院的计算机科学高级讲师鲁巴·阿布-萨尔马（Ruba Abu-Salma）获得了谷歌学术研究奖，研究AI驱动的爱情诈骗对13个国家老年人的影响。他们的研究探讨了AI工具如何放大传统诈骗手段，以及家庭和社区如何更好地支持受害者。研究人员正在与老年学协会建立联系，并计划开发教育工具来帮助AI爱情诈骗受害者。虽然已有大量关于预防的信息，但很少有指导受害者在被骗后该怎么做。在AI时代，爱情也面临挑战。像我这样的人，也是在网上认识了伴侣。我很庆幸我们是在2010年代后期开始约会的，那时AI生成的资料在交友软件和网站上还没有大规模出现。AI在欺骗方面越来越擅长，它在渲染手部动作方面取得了巨大进步，这曾是识别深度伪造的一个可靠线索，而且它会从错误中学习。“随着这些技术的改进，传统的识别操控信号已不再可靠，”达斯说，“同时，我们也在利用AI来对抗这些威胁，通过检测诈骗模式、预测新兴手法和加强防护措施。目标是建立与技术一样灵活的系统和社区。”社会对AI爱情的敏感度也在逐渐降低。一项研究发现，近三分之一的美国人与AI聊天机器人有过亲密或浪漫关系。2013年的电影《她》（Her）讲述了一名男子爱上由斯嘉丽·约翰逊配音的AI，故事背景设定在2025年，其实并不算太远。AI聊天机器人被刻意设计成让用户保持参与。许多采用“免费加付费”模式，基础服务免费，但更长的对话和更个性化的互动则需要付费。一些“伴侣机器人”被设计成让用户建立深层次的联系。尽管人们知道“另一半”是AI，但这些伴侣机器人应用仍然出售用户数据用于定向广告，并且不透明地处理隐私政策。这难道不是一种形式的亲密关系诈骗，一种让孤独者尽可能长时间地被剥削的方式吗？你可以采取一些措施来保护自己的心、钱包和心理安宁。看起来显而易见，但拒绝向未曾谋面的人转账可以阻止爱情诈骗。你可以要求进行即兴视频通话，并让对方做些随机的事情；深度伪造仍然难以处理“即兴”行为。“对任何你从未见过面的人保持怀疑，这是数字世界中越来越常见的诈骗情况下的唯一安全方法，”免费VPN服务提供商PlanetVPN的联合创始人康斯坦丁·列文宗（Konstantin Levinzon）在一份声明中表示。“如果你在交友网站上遇到的人让你觉得可疑，可以进行反向图片搜索，检查他们的照片是否来自其他来源。如果对话转向金钱，或者有人要求你的个人信息，立即结束对话。”你还可以使用VPN来隐藏你的位置，因为诈骗者可能会追踪用户的位置，并根据目标所在的城市或国家来定制诈骗。如果你被骗，尽早向FBI网络犯罪举报中心、联邦贸易委员会和你的银行举报，可以提高追回被盗资金的可能性。一些非营利组织也为爱情诈骗受害者提供支持。尼豪伊斯说：“无论你现在感到多孤独，无论你感到多羞愧，你都会从这次经历中恢复过来，有一天回望过去，你会看到你是如何挺过来的。”“这些诈骗者擅长剥夺希望，不要让他们夺走你的希望。”
Happy Valentine’s Day. Don’t let romance scams — which ramp up around the holiday and are at an all-time high — break your heart.
These scams cost Americans $3 billion last year alone. That’s almost certainly an undercount, given victims’ particular reluctance to report that they’ve fallen for such ruses.
Many romance scams fall under the umbrella of so-called “pig-butchering” scams, in which fraudsters build relationships with and gain the trust of victims over long periods of time. The moniker is a crude reference to fattening up a pig before the slaughter — and they go for the whole hog, repeatedly attempting to extract money from the target. Between 2020 and 2024, these scams defrauded more than $75 billion from people around the world.
Now, AI is making these scams increasingly accessible, affordable, and profitable for scammers. In the past, romance scammers had to have a strong grasp of the English language if they wanted to effectively scam Americans. According to Fred Heiding, a postdoctoral researcher at the Harvard Kennedy School who studies AI and cybersecurity, AI-enabled translation has completely removed that roadblock — and scammers now have millions more potential victims at their disposal.
AI is fundamentally changing the scale, serving as a force multiplier for scammers. A single person who used to manage a few scams at a time can use these toolkits to run 20 or more simultaneously, Chris Nyhuis, the founder of cybersecurity firm Vigilant, told me over email. AI-assisted scams are significantly more profitable than traditional ones, and they’re increasingly cheap and easy to run.
On the dark web, fraudsters can purchase romance scam toolkits complete with customer support, user reviews, and tiered pricing packages. These toolkits come with pre-built fake personas with AI-generated photosets, conversation scripts for each stage of the scam, and deepfake video tools, Nyhuis told me. “The skill barrier to entry is essentially gone.”
I wondered if romance scammers might automate themselves out of a job, but the Kennedy School’s Heiding told me that “oftentimes it’s just augmentation, rather than complete automation.” Many of the scammers are also victims themselves, with at least 220,000 people trapped in scam centers in Southeast Asia and forced to defraud targets, facing terrible abuse if they refuse. Leveraging AI means “the crime syndicates [who run these centers] will probably just have better profit margins,” Heiding said.
For now, there’s a human being behind the scenes of the scams, even if they’re just pressing start on an AI agent. But apart from that, it can be fully automated. At the moment, Heiding told me, AI isn’t much better than human romance scammers, but the technology evolves rapidly. In 2016, Google DeepMind’s AlphaGo beat the world’s best human go player in a landslide. Human forecasters think that AI is set to far outpace their ability to predict the future very soon.
“I wouldn’t be surprised [if] within a few years or a decade, we have AI scammers that are just thinking in completely different patterns than humans,” Heiding said. “And unfortunately, they probably will be really, really good at persuading us.”
Romance scams are unique: They target a core human need for love and connection. You may have heard that we’re in a loneliness epidemic, officially declared by the US Surgeon General in 2023, with health risks on par with smoking up to 15 cigarettes a day. Social isolation is linked to higher rates of heart disease, dementia, depression, and even premature death – and reportedly, 1 in 6 people worldwide are lonely. And lonely people make for prime targets.
Fraudsters send out initial AI-generated messages to prospective victims. Over time, they use lovebombing techniques to convince them that they are in a romantic relationship. Once trust is established, they make requests for money through methods that are difficult to recover like gift cards, wire transfers, or cryptocurrency. They will often make up crises that require urgent transfers. They might ghost the victim after reaching their goals, or continue the scam to squeeze more out of them.
AI romance scams use deepfake video calls, “cheap fake” social media profiles, and voice cloning technology like other AI-enabled scams to draw people in. But according to Nyhuis, they’re “uniquely dangerous because of what they exploit. Phishing uses urgency; tech support scams use fear. Romance scams use love, which can make people think irrationally or overlook their gut feeling that something is wrong.”
Older adults often experience social isolation and are frequently targeted by romance scammers. Retirement and bereavement can create circumstances that scammers deliberately manipulate, making victims feel seen and cared for, even as they steal their life savings and the homes where they plan to spend their retirement years. But anyone can be deceived by these scams. Despite being digital natives, Gen Z is three times more vulnerable to online scams than older generations since they spend so much time online, although they tend to have — and therefore lose — less money than older victims.
Here’s something else that will break your heart: Scam victims are more likely to be targeted again. Scammers create profiles of their targets, sometimes adding them to “sucker lists” shared across criminal networks. Victims of other crimes are also more likely to be revictimized, and falling prey to a romance scam isn’t a moral failing on the part of the target.
But it is something to be on guard against, since the vast majority of scam victims will not be able to get their money back. About 15 percent of Americans have lost money to online romance scams, and only 1 in 4 were able to recover all the stolen funds.
Romance scams thrive in shame and secrecy. Victims are sometimes blackmailed and told that if they confide in people in their lives, the scammers will expose sensitive information. Sanchari Das, an assistant professor and AI researcher at George Mason University, and Ruba Abu-Salma, a senior lecturer in computer science at King’s College London, received a Google Academic Research Award to study AI-powered romance scams targeting older adults in 13 countries. Their research examines how AI tools can amplify traditional scam tactics and how families and communities can better support the victims.
The researchers are building connections with gerontological societies, and aim to build educational tools to support AI romance scam victims. There’s a fair amount of information already out there about prevention, but very little directing victims what to do next.
Like so many people, I met my partner online. I’m grateful that we started dating in the late 2010s, before the explosion of AI-generated profiles on apps and dating sites.
AI is getting better at tricking people across the board. It has massively improved at rendering hands, a formerly reliable tell for deepfakes, and it learns from its mistakes. “As these technologies improve, traditional signals for spotting manipulation are no longer dependable,” Das said. “At the same time, we are leveraging AI to counter these threats by detecting scam patterns, forecasting emerging tactics, and strengthening protective responses. The goal is to build systems and communities that are as adaptive as the technology itself.”
Society is also getting increasingly desensitized to AI romance. One study found that almost a third of Americans had an intimate or romantic relationship with an AI chatbot. The 2013 movie Her, in which a man falls in love with an AI voiced by Scarlett Johansson, was set in 2025. It wasn’t too far off the mark.
AI chatbots are purposefully designed to keep people engaged. Many use a “freemium” model, in which basic services don’t cost anything, but charge a premium for longer conversations and more personalized interactions. Some “companion bots” are designed to make users form deep connections. Even though people know that the “significant other” is AI, these companion bot apps sell user data for targeted advertising and aren’t transparent about their privacy policies. Is that not also a sort of intimacy scam, a way to extract resources from lonely people for as long as possible?
There are steps you can take to protect your heart, wallet, and peace of mind. It seems obvious, but refusing to send money to someone you haven’t met in person will stop a romance scam in its tracks. You can demand spontaneous video calls, and ask the person on the other end to do something random; deepfakes still struggle with “unscripted” actions.
“Be suspicious of anyone you’ve never met in person — that’s the only safe approach in a digital world increasingly filled with scams,” Konstantin Levinzon, the co-founder of free VPN service provider PlanetVPN, said in a press release. “If someone you meet on a dating site seems suspicious, perform a reverse image search to check if their pictures are stolen from other sources. And if the conversation shifts to money, or if someone asks for personal information, leave the conversation immediately.”
You can also use a VPN to obscure your location, since scammers might track users’ location and try to personalize their scams based on the target’s city or country. If you are scammed, reporting early to the FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center, Federal Trade Commission, and your bank increases the chances that you’ll be able to recover the stolen funds. Several nonprofits offer support for victims of romance scams.
“No matter how alone you feel right now, no matter how embarrassed you are, you will recover from this and one day look back and see how you made it through it,” Nyhuis said. “These scammers are good at removing hope. Don’t let them take that from you.”
2026-02-14 20:00:00
2025年11月11日，伊利诺伊州州长JB普里茨克尔参加了芝加哥小村社区的退伍军人纪念日仪式。| Jacek Boczarski/Anadolu via Getty Images
在反对特朗普政府的斗争中，很少有民主党政治人物像普里茨克尔这样积极。虽然一些蓝州领导人试图通过妥协或低调抵抗来应对，但普里茨克尔则采取了相反的策略，签署了限制移民与海关执法局（ICE）在州内活动的法律，创建了由退休联邦法官组成的伊利诺伊问责委员会，起诉联邦政府，并成功阻止了联邦化国民警卫队在芝加哥街头部署。普里茨克尔将伊利诺伊州变成了一个示范案例，展示了如何在州一级组织对特朗普政府的抵制，并希望其他蓝州州长能够效仿。
普里茨克尔是民主党中一个独特的角色。他是希尔顿酒店集团的亿万富翁继承人，曾花费数千万美元推动伊利诺伊州实施更进步的累进所得税，并倡导全国范围内的财富税——这些政策将直接减少他的财富。他还是一个犹太裔民主党人，曾处理过民主党在以色列和加沙问题上的立场变化，同时作为两届州长，他也在一些公众支持下被视为2028年总统竞选的潜在人选。
在我们的对话中，我们讨论了诸多话题：伊利诺伊州对抗ICE的策略、民主党在信息传递上的失误、财富税、医疗保健、反犹太主义、AIPAC以及普里茨克尔认为民主党应如何重新赢得选民支持。以下是对话的节选，已进行删减和润色。
我们想谈谈你如何将伊利诺伊州定位为抵制特朗普移民执法行动的前沿阵地。你签署了限制ICE的法律，创建了问责委员会，还起诉了联邦政府。我想知道你能否描述一下伊利诺伊州制定的这套应对特朗普的策略。首先，要确保人们了解当ICE特工敲门时他们的权利。你是否必须开门？他们可以做什么，又不能做什么？其次，我要强调的是，要拿出你的iPhone或安卓手机，全程录像。我指的是不仅那些被追捕的人，还包括想要保护邻居的社区居民。他们确实这么做了……这些证据在后来的法庭上派上了大用场，我们赢得了官司。
我之所以想深入探讨这一点，是因为特朗普曾给你一个最后通牒，说要么动用国民警卫队，要么他就把你的部队联邦化。你称之为“独裁式的推进”。但最终，仍有300名国民警卫队成员来到芝加哥，数百人被捕。特朗普也如愿以偿地得到了他想要的场面。你认为这套策略的现实影响是什么？你们成功抵制了什么？
他确实联邦化了我们的国民警卫队，但不允许将其部署在我们州的街头。他们始终没有被派往芝加哥市内，而是在联邦基地待命，直到法院——包括最高法院——裁定他确实没有权力将联邦化的国民警卫队或我的国民警卫队部署到我们州的街头。我很好奇，这里是否隐含着一种暗示，即蓝州在抵制特朗普方面过于胆怯？看起来你所展示的是一种对其他民主党州的呼吁。
确实，我们必须要站出来抵制。我指的是和平抗议，鼓励人们像我之前所说的那样，全程录像，挺身而出。顺便说一句，我知道抗议者举着标语牌，有时可能会让执法者觉得他们说了些可怕的话。但这就是抗议的意义，人们聚集在一起表达自己的声音。对我们来说，保护这种权利非常重要。
民主党在过去几年中也参与了资助和扩大ICE的行动。就在2024年，我还记得一些民主党总统竞选人同意非法移民是一个问题。近年来，像芝加哥这样的城市一直在应对无证移民数量的增加——我记得我的家人住在郊区，他们提到过去四五年来街头上的无证移民人数明显增加。有时，这似乎意味着民主党其实并不反对驱逐，只是希望这些驱逐行动更加隐秘，而不是像特朗普政府那样公开进行。
这仅仅是语气上的不同，还是民主党与特朗普在行动上的实质性区别？实质性的区别在于，目前在特朗普领导下，ICE和CBP正在对黑人和棕色人种的美国公民进行盘查，要求他们出示公民身份文件。而我，作为一个美国人，却不会被要求出示这些文件，我甚至没有带在身上。但他们在对那些合法居住、甚至在该地生活了几代的美国公民进行盘查。这明显是一种基于种族的歧视行为。
那么，是否应该废除ICE？特朗普对它的使用已经完全不同了。他所做的一切都应被废除，并被替代。他把ICE变成了秘密警察，而我认为我们并不希望在我们的城市和国家街头出现秘密警察。因此，当你呼吁停止资助、停止占领、停止暴力时，实际上就是在呼吁废除并替代ICE。这就是我的观点。
我也想谈谈税收问题。你曾花费5800万美元试图在2020年推动实施累进所得税，但该政策被选民以55比45的比例否决。我知道你支持全国范围内的财富税，而你自己也会成为该税种的纳税人。请告诉我，你为何支持一个会让自己付出代价的政策？
我是一名民主党人，我相信我们的政府有责任为中产阶级、工人阶级和最弱势群体发声。要实现这一点，必须有资金支持。而这些资金不应该主要由中产阶级和工人阶级来承担，而应由那些能够承担的人来支付。因此，我真正支持的是累进所得税。在伊利诺伊州，我们宪法上实行的是单一税率。我知道有很多人喜欢这一点，但大多数是那些富裕的人，因为他们同样不喜欢联邦层面的累进所得税。所以，你支持财富税的动机是增加收入，还是更偏向意识形态？你一直支持财富税吗？请谈谈你对这个问题的思考历程。
我称之为一种思考历程。说实话，我一生都是民主党人。我成长在一个充满民主党的家庭中，尤其是那些富裕的民主党人，他们并不支持像财富税这样的政策。对此我无话可说。我可以告诉你的是，我们需要……有人来为道路、政府运作以及最弱势群体所需的支持买单。因此，问题在于，这个负担应该由那些负担不起的人还是那些负担得起的人来承担？这很公平。
你最近访问了新罕布什尔州，该州希望将伊利诺伊州提升到民主党初选的优先位置。我最近读到詹姆斯·卡维尔公开支持你竞选2028年总统。我知道你正在竞选连任伊利诺伊州州长，但作为记者，我必须直接问你：你是否是我们应该考虑的2028年总统候选人？
我正在竞选连任，正如你所说。这正是我目前关注的重点。我当然很感激人们提到我可能担任国家职务。我是一个国家第五大州的州长，我为此感到自豪。但我的重点是我们在伊利诺伊州取得的成就，以及我们为伊利诺伊人民所做的努力。
《今天，解释》每周六发布引人深思的政治和文化人物访谈。订阅Vox的YouTube频道，即可获取这些访谈，或在你常听的播客平台收听。
Few Democratic politicians have leaned into the fight against the Trump administration as aggressively as Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker. While some blue-state leaders have tried to find a lane of compromise or quiet resistance, Pritzker has gone the other direction — signing laws to limit ICE operations in the state, creating the Illinois Accountability Commission staffed by retired federal judges, suing the federal government, and successfully blocking the deployment of federalized National Guard troops on Chicago’s streets.
Pritzker has turned Illinois into a test case for what organized state-level opposition to President Donald Trump’s administration looks like — and has modeled a playbook he hopes other blue-state governors can follow.
Pritzker is a unique figure in Democratic politics. A billionaire heir to the Hyatt hotel fortune, he has spent tens of millions of his own dollars pushing for a more progressive income tax in Illinois and advocates for a national wealth tax — policies that would directly cost him money. He’s also a Jewish Democrat who has navigated his party’s shifting positions on Israel and Gaza, and a two-term governor who has drawn some public support as a potential 2028 presidential candidate.
In our conversation, we talked about all of it: the Illinois playbook against ICE, what Democrats are getting wrong on messaging, the wealth tax, health care, antisemitism, AIPAC, and what Pritzker thinks the party needs to do to start winning again. Below is an excerpt of our conversation, edited for length and clarity.
We want to talk about how you’ve positioned Illinois as a ground zero for pushing back against Trump’s immigration enforcement. You signed a law limiting ICE in Illinois. You created the accountability commission. You all sued the federal government. I wanted to know if you could describe the playbook that Illinois has laid out for what to do if Trump comes to town.
It starts with making sure people know what their rights are when ICE agents are banging on your door. Do you have to open the door? What is it that they’re allowed to do and not allowed to do — and then the second thing, and this is what I told everybody very early on: pull out your iPhone, pull out your Android phone, video everything. And I’m talking about not just the people who are being pursued, but you people in the neighborhoods who want to protect their neighbors. And they did that… That evidence came in handy when the ICE and CBP agents were taken to court here. And we won.
I wanted to dig into this because Trump gave you an ultimatum saying to activate the National Guard or they federalize your troops. You called that an authoritarian march. But at the end of the day, 300 Guardsmen still came to Chicago. There were hundreds of arrests there. Trump got the show he wanted, too. What do you think was the tangible impact of that playbook you’re laying out? What do think you all succeeded in resisting?
Well, he federalized our National Guard, but was not allowed to deploy them in our streets. They were never deployed in the city of Chicago. They had to stay on a federal base until it was determined by the court — including the Supreme Court — that indeed he doesn’t have the ability to send his, you know, federalized National Guard or my National Guard into our streets.
I wonder if the implication here is somewhat that blue states have been too timid in pushing back against Trump. It seems like implied in what you’re laying out is a kind of call to action for other Democratic states.
Well, it’s certainly true that we’ve got to stand up and push back. And I’m talking about peaceful protests and encouraging people to do as I’ve described, to video everything, to stand up. And by the way, I know that protesters hold up signs and they say — maybe the law enforcement agents feel like it’s terrible things they’re saying. But that is what protest is about, right? People showing up and making their voices heard. And it’s very important for us to protect that right.
Democrats have also been a part of funding and expanding ICE over the years. As recently as 2024, I remember Democrats on the presidential campaign trail agreeing that illegal immigration was a problem. Cities like Chicago have struggled with the increase of undocumented migrants in recent years — I remember my family who lives in the suburbs here talking about how they see more people on the street over the last four or five years.
Sometimes it feels as if Democrats want deportations to happen. They just want them to happen quietly and not necessarily like we’re seeing from the Trump administration. Is it just a matter of tone here, or what is the tangible difference between what Democrats want to happen versus what Donald Trump is doing?
The tangible difference is ICE and CBP today under Donald Trump are stopping US citizens who are Black and brown and demanding to see citizenship papers. Now, I don’t know about you, I don’t get asked for citizenship papers. I don’t have any on me. But they’re doing it, and they’re doing it to people who are not undocumented, they’re doing [it] to people who are here legally, people who have lived here maybe generations, US citizens… The difference is that they’re racially profiling.
So should ICE be abolished?
It is fundamentally different, what Donald Trump is doing with it. What he’s doing with it should absolutely be abolished. And it’s got to be replaced. It’s just got to be wiped away and replaced. Donald Trump has turned them into a secret police. And I do not believe that we want secret police on the streets of our cities and of our country.
So when you say stop the funding, stop your occupations, stop the killing, that is meant to be —what you’re saying is that that amounts to a call to defund and replace ICE.
That’s what I’m saying. I think what they’re doing in the Senate right now, holding up DHS funding, precisely to get a lot of rules and regulations around what’s happening, because people are getting shot in the streets by ICE and CBP, is the right thing to do.
I want to also talk about taxes. You’ve spent $58 million of your own money trying to pass a graduated income tax in 2020 that voters rejected 55 to 45. I know you’re in favor of a wealth tax nationally. You yourself are someone who would fall under said wealth tax. Tell me how you came to supporting an idea of something that would cost you money.
I’m a Democrat. I believe that it is our obligation to have a government that stands up for the middle class, the working class, the most vulnerable. You’ve got to pay for that somehow. And it shouldn’t fall on the backs of the middle class and the working class mostly. It should fall on the backs of the people who can afford it. And so I really believe in a graduated income tax. We have constitutionally in the state of Illinois, a flat tax. I know there are lots of people who like that fact, but mostly they’re the wealthiest people who like that fact because they don’t like the graduated income tax that exists at the federal level either.
So is it about raising revenue or is it more ideological? Were you always someone who was supportive of a wealth tax? Tell me about your kind of journey on that question.
You call it a journey. Listen, I’ve been a Democrat my whole life. I grew up in a household where we were…
There’s a lot of Democrats, particularly wealthy ones, who don’t believe in something like a wealth tax.
I don’t know what to say about that. I can tell you this — that we need…you got to pay for roads. You got to pay for, you know, government. You got to pay for the supports that the most vulnerable need, somehow. And so the question is, who should that burden fall on? People who can’t afford it or people who can?
Fair. You’ve been traveling to New Hampshire. The state has pushed to move Illinois up in the Democratic primary. I recently read James Carville publicly backed you for president in 2028. I know you’re immediately running for a third term for Illinois governor, but I would not be a journalist if I didn’t just directly ask you — are you someone who we should be thinking about as a 2028 presidential candidate?
I’m running for reelection like you just said. Now that is what I’m focused on. I’m obviously flattered that people have talked about me for national office. I, you know, look, I’m the governor of the fifth-largest state in the country. And I’m very proud of that fact. But I’m focused on the accomplishments that we need to make and that we’ve made, in the state of Illinois and for the people of Illinois.
Today, Explained publishes compelling interviews with key figures in politics and culture every Saturday. Subscribe to Vox’s YouTube channel to get them or listen wherever you get your podcasts.
2026-02-13 21:30:00
2007年，美国俄勒冈健康与科学大学（OHSU）的灵长类动物研究中心被PETA的调查员拍摄到猴子的图片。| PETA 特朗普政府的科学议程被广泛认为是对科学进步的战争，但请听我说：事情还有更多层面。该政府的科学政策并非仅仅由反科学意识形态主导，而是由一群具有不同批评意见的多元势力共同塑造，他们愿意放弃既有的科学传统。其中包括一些动物权益倡导者，他们本身也是科学家，合理地希望推动科学超越目前对动物实验的依赖。
目前，从老鼠、兔子到猴子等动物仍支撑着大量医学研究。但它们作为人类研究模型的效用一直有限。正如哈佛生物工程学家唐·英格伯去年所说：“大家都承认，动物模型在最好的情况下也只是一般，更常见的是高度不准确。”对动物实验的伦理问题也极为严重，同时，一种新的无动物研究技术正在迅速发展，包括实验室制造的类器官、器官芯片和先进的计算建模。
基于这一思路，美国国家卫生研究院（NIH）——美国大学生物医学研究的主要资助者——在去年由主任杰伊·巴特查里亚领导下宣布，计划优先采用无动物实验方法，并减少其资助研究中对动物的使用。同时，NIH与一所主要的美国生物医学研究大学合作，迈出了实现这一目标的重要一步。本周，OHSU的董事会一致同意开始与NIH就其提议结束灵长类动物实验、将研究中心转变为动物庇护所进行谈判。许多反对动物实验的人希望此举能推动对灵长类动物实验的逐步淘汰。
OHSU的灵长类动物研究中心是美国七所联邦资助的灵长类动物研究中心之一，目前饲养着约5000只猴子，包括恒河猴、日本猕猴、狒狒和松鼠猴等，占美国所有灵长类研究猴子的约5%。根据本周达成的决议，该中心将停止繁殖新猴子，除非现有实验需要，同时在未来六个月与NIH讨论可能的转型计划，将研究中心从灵长类动物繁殖和实验设施转变为庇护所。
OHSU长期以来因动物福利问题备受争议，过去几十年中曾多次被联邦动物福利法违规。例如，2020年一名工作人员不小心将两只猴子放入笼子清洗机中，导致它们死亡；2023年，一只新生猴子被掉落的滑动门砸死。维琴尼亚法律与研究生院动物法律与政策研究所的教授德尔西安娜·温德告诉我：“OHSU的记录是我见过最差的，他们总是不断发生疏忽导致的死亡。”（披露：2022年，我曾参加过该学院的一个媒体交流项目。）
本周一，OHSU灵长类研究中心的研究人员以及来自大学和公众的其他人士在公开会议上激烈辩论了结束该中心研究的提议。俄勒冈州急诊科医生迈克尔·梅茨勒表示：“尽管过去灵长类动物研究可能对医学进步有所贡献，但如今先进的方法已使其几乎过时。”他指出，这些猴子研究分散了资金和注意力，无法与以人类为中心的研究相比。
支持该研究中心的人则批评大学“在政治压力下立即向敌对政府屈服”，如OHSU的一名生物医学工程博士生科尔·贝克在听证会上所说。OHSU显然面临来自NIH的压力，因为NIH自2023财年起提供了该大学大部分研究资金。白宫也表明，它愿意惩罚不配合其政策的大学。然而，呼吁关闭该中心的呼声早在特朗普政府之前就已存在，而且并不只是共和党的优先事项。俄勒冈州民主党州长蒂娜·科特克曾呼吁关闭该中心，她以哈佛大学为例，哈佛大学在2015年因对猴子的待遇问题而关闭了自己的灵长类动物研究中心。哈佛的决定本身就是一个重要的信号，表明医学研究正在向新的方向发展。
为什么我们仍然在灵长类动物身上进行实验？关于灵长类动物研究必要性的争论往往难以理解。支持者和反对者似乎在使用不同的语言。反对者认为动物数据对人类应用价值有限，而支持者则坚持认为没有猴子就无法研究人类的严重疾病。20世纪的科学史学家托马斯·库恩曾用“不可通约性”一词描述这种沟通上的断裂。在不同范式下工作的科学家即使面对相同的现象，也可能得出截然不同的结论，因为他们从不同的概念框架来看待问题。正如前OHSU教授、Vox撰稿人加雷特·拉希维斯所指出的，科学家们往往被孤立，这种专业化的研究方式使得他们难以从更广泛的科学视角看待问题。
灵长类动物研究，像科学中的许多领域一样，是路径依赖和历史环境的产物。20世纪60年代，美国建立了联邦资助的灵长类动物研究中心，如OHSU的中心。当时NIH认为灵长类动物实验是未来的方向，这一观点至今仍影响着医学研究的实践。然而，如今实验室中笼养的猴子更像是一种过时的象征。显然，至少有些灵长类动物实验在美国家实验室中的作用极为有限，特别是那些试图通过在猴子身上诱导抑郁等复杂心理疾病来模拟人类情况的研究。
2014年，前NIH主任弗朗西斯·柯林斯在一封被PETA获取的私人电子邮件中承认了这一点，称“在非人类灵长类动物身上进行的大量研究毫无意义”。此外，灵长类动物的圈养状态可能使实验结果更难以应用于人类。例如，拉希维斯认为，极端的笼养环境会损害实验动物的健康，并扭曲猴子的心理状态，使它们难以作为健康人类的可靠替代品。
尽管支持灵长类动物研究的人引用其在人类药物开发中的应用，如艾滋病疗法，但灵长类动物数据的存在并不能证明这些研究是不可或缺的。考虑到对社会和认知复杂的动物进行研究的高道德风险，以及将资源和职业生涯投入到灵长类动物实验室的高昂机会成本，仅仅偶尔有用似乎不足以证明将猴子置于终身圈养和侵入性实验中的正当性。
NIH值得肯定的是，它正在采取这一观点。事实上，过去十年中，联邦政府已经停止了对黑猩猩的生物医学研究，尽管其他灵长类动物在研究中的参与程度比黑猩猩更深。因此，NIH现在面临的挑战是如何在尊重研究人员职业发展的前提下逐步减少灵长类动物研究；建立一个可信的无动物研究工具的过渡方案；并在其资助灵长类动物庇护所的提议中，为在联邦资助科学中受到伤害的动物提供一定程度的正义。这对于任何正常政府来说都是一个艰巨的任务，而对于一个已严重损害科学界信任的政府而言，更是难上加难。这可以被视为一个测试案例，看看特朗普政府在削减科研经费的同时，是否能够推动至少一次积极的科学范式转变。
The Trump administration’s scientific agenda has been widely characterized — rightly so — as a war on scientific progress. But, hear me out here: There is more to the story.
This administration’s science policy is being shaped not solely by anti-science ideologues, but also by a motley coalition of players who have distinct criticisms of the status quo and are united by their willingness to part ways with established orthodoxies. They include animal advocates, some of them scientists themselves, who quite reasonably hope to advance science beyond its current dependence on animal experimentation.
Sign up here to explore the big, complicated problems the world faces and the most efficient ways to solve them. Sent twice a week.
Research animals — from mice, to rabbits, to monkeys — still underpin much of medical research. But their usefulness as models for humans has always been limited. As Harvard bioengineer Don Ingber told me last year, “Everyone admits that animal models are suboptimal at best, and highly inaccurate more commonly.” The ethical problems with experimenting on animals are also immense, and meanwhile, a new generation of animal-free research technologies is proliferating, including lab-made organoids, organs-on-chips, and advanced computational modeling.
Following on this line of reasoning, the National Institutes of Health (NIH), chief underwriter of university biomedical research in the US, last year under the leadership of director Jay Bhattacharya announced its intent to prioritize animal-free methods and reduce the use of animals in the science it funds. And, together with a major US biomedical research university, it just took a major step toward that goal.
This week, the board of Oregon Health and Science University (OHSU), which runs the one of nation’s largest university centers for biomedical research on primates, voted unanimously to begin negotiating with the NIH about the agency’s proposal to end experiments on the primates and turn the center into a sanctuary for the animals. Many opponents of animal research hope this can create momentum for a phaseout of experimentation on our primate cousins.
OHSU’s primate research center, one of seven such federally funded centers still running at universities across the country, houses about 5,000 monkeys of various species — about 5 percent of all research monkeys in the US — including rhesus macaques, Japanese macaques, baboons, and squirrel monkeys. As part of the resolution reached this week, the center will stop breeding new monkeys, except as required by current experiments, while it discusses a potential plan with the NIH over the next six months to evolve from a primate breeder and experimentation facility to a sanctuary.
OHSU has been dogged by controversy over conditions for animals there, including dozens of citations for violations of federal animal welfare law over the past few decades. Two monkeys died in 2020 after a worker accidentally placed them in a cage-washing machine, while, in 2023, a newborn monkey was killed after being hit by a falling sliding door, to name a couple examples.
“[OHSU’s] record is one of the worst I’ve seen,” Delcianna Winders, a professor and director of Vermont Law and Graduate School’s Animal Law and Policy Institute, told me. “They just have negligent death after negligent death.” (Disclosure: In 2022, I attended a media fellowship program at Vermont Law and Graduate School.)
At a public meeting on Monday, researchers at the university’s primate center, along with others from the university and members of the general public, fiercely debated the proposal to end research at the center. “Past research in primates might have contributed to the advancement of medicine, but it is evident that the advanced methods now available have rendered it virtually obsolete,” said Michael Metzler, an emergency physician at Pioneer Memorial Hospital in Oregon. “These monkey studies divert funds and attention from the more valuable human-centered studies.”
Supporters of the primate center, meanwhile, condemned the university’s “immediate surrender to a hostile administration over political pressure,” as Cole Baker, a PhD student in biomedical engineering at OHSU, put it at the hearing.
OHSU is no doubt under pressure to cooperate with the NIH, which, as of fiscal year 2023, provided the majority of the university’s research funding, and the White House has shown that it’s perfectly willing to punish universities that don’t comply with its wishes. But calls to close the center predate the Trump administration, and it is hardly just a Republican priority. Oregon’s Democratic governor Tina Kotek has urged the primate center’s closure, citing the example of Harvard University, which closed its own primate research center in 2015 amid controversy over its treatment of monkeys.
Harvard’s decision itself is a noteworthy signal of where medical research is headed. One of the world’s top biomedical research institutions apparently determined — more than a decade ago — that the medical science coming from its primate research center wasn’t worth its continued financial, reputational, and ethical costs.
Debates over the necessity of primate research can be hard to parse. Advocates on either side of the question appear to be speaking different languages, with opponents arguing that animal data tells us very little that’s applicable to humans, and proponents insisting that they couldn’t possibly conduct research into debilitating human diseases without using monkeys.
Thomas Kuhn, the 20th-century historian of science who coined the phrase “paradigm shift,” had a name for such breakdowns in communication: incommensurability. Scientists working within different paradigms can see the same thing and come to radically different conclusions because they are looking at problems through different conceptual lenses.
And scientists are still often siloed, as neuroscientist and Vox contributor Garet Lahvis, a former professor at OHSU who spoke in favor of ending research at the primate center at the hearing this week, pointed out to me. Primates are used in a wide range of research applications, including infectious diseases, neuroscience, psychology, reproductive health, and more, and that very specialization, he pointed out, can make it hard for scientists to take a broader scientific perspective.
Primate research, like most things in science, is the product of path dependency and historical circumstance. In the 1960s, the US created a system of federally funded primate centers, like the one at OHSU. The NIH at the time “thought primate experiments were the future,” Winders told me, and it has shaped the way lots of medical science is practiced to this day.
But today, the sight of caged lab monkeys looks more like a relic of the past.
It now appears beyond doubt that at least some of what primates are used for in US labs is of extremely limited value, particularly research that aims to model complex mental health conditions in humans, like depression, by inducing them in monkeys. Former NIH director Francis Collins acknowledged as much in 2014, when he referenced “the pointlessness of much of the research being conducted on non-human primates” in a private email that was obtained by PETA as part of a lawsuit.
And the primates’ very captivity might make results even less translatable to humans. Lahvis, for example, has argued that extreme confinement in cages stunts the health of lab animals and skews the psychology of monkeys to such a degree that they can hardly be seen as sound proxies for healthy humans.
While proponents of primate research cite its use in human drug development, like therapies for HIV, the mere presence of primate data in the evidence chain for a medical treatment does not prove that that research was indispensable. And given the high moral stakes of research on social, cognitively complex animals, and the substantial opportunity costs of devoting resources and careers to primate labs, merely being sometimes useful does not seem like sufficient justification for subjecting monkeys to lifelong captivity and invasive experiments.
The NIH deserves credit for acting on this perspective. And there is precedent for phasing out research on a class of animals. The federal government a decade ago ended biomedical research on chimpanzees, although other primates are more deeply embedded in such research than chimps were. So, the NIH now faces the challenge of winding down that research enterprise in a way that respects researchers’ careers; building a credible off-ramp to animal-free research tools; and, in its proposal to fund a primate sanctuary, providing some measure of justice for the animals harmed in federally funded science.
That would be no small task for even a normal administration — and for one that has wrecked its credibility with the scientific community, it will be even harder. Consider it a test case for whether the Trump administration can, amid its ruthless cuts to research, contribute to at least one positive paradigm shift in science.
2026-02-13 20:45:00
2025年1月25日，索马里邦特兰防卫部队的士兵们返回前线基地，该基地位于邦特兰的达布达马勒地区，以打击ISIS武装分子。| 《华盛顿邮报》/盖蒂图片社
要点总结
2025年2月3日，特朗普在社交媒体上发布了一篇关于美国在索马里打击ISIS领导人的福克斯新闻文章，同时对国会议员伊尔汗·奥马尔进行了带有种族色彩的侮辱。特朗普对奥马尔的攻击已成为常态，但在国家安全领域，提及空袭行动显得尤为不寻常。这是他一年来首次在社交媒体上提到对索马里的军事行动，尽管该国在这一时期遭受了比以往任何时期更多的空袭。在特朗普的两个任期内，美国对索马里的空袭都相对低调，几乎没有公开解释。虽然特朗普并非唯一在索马里进行空袭的总统，但他的行动规模远超以往。根据新美国（New America）的数据，2025年美国在索马里进行了125次空袭和一次地面突袭，而拜登总统整个任期仅进行了51次行动。2026年，美国在索马里已执行了28次行动，超过了任何非特朗普总统任期内的完整一年。据估计，在特朗普第二个任期的空袭中，死亡人数在172至359人之间，但美国非洲司令部（AFRICOM）自去年4月起未公布伤亡数据，因此实际数字可能更高，且难以确定有多少是平民。相比之下，美国在加勒比海和东太平洋地区针对所谓贩毒船只的行动仅进行了34次空袭。此外，美国在索马里的空袭数量甚至超过了2010年奥巴马政府在巴基斯坦的无人机战争高峰期。
特朗普和高级官员很少提及他们在索马里的空袭行动，有时甚至表现出对这种长期行动的回避。事实上，他唯一一次在军事背景下提到索马里，是为了炫耀自己没有参与该国事务。他说：“只有在最近几十年，政治家们才相信我们的职责是去警察肯尼亚和索马里的偏远地区，而美国却正遭受内部入侵。”
为何美国对索马里进行如此频繁的空袭？
有多个因素在起作用：对索马里在全球恐怖主义复兴中作用的担忧、放宽了对平民的保护规则，以及一个几乎可以自动运行的反恐战争机器。
索马里自1990年代初以来一直处于内战和人道主义危机之中，美国也参与了近三十年的反恐行动。1993年“黑鹰坠落”事件中，18名美国海军陆战队员在摩加迪沙阵亡，这是美国自越南战争以来最严重的军事损失。9/11事件后，美国开始对索马里的恐怖分子进行空袭和特种部队突袭，特别是针对与基地组织有关联的索马里青年党（Al-Shabab）。该组织曾控制索马里大部分领土，包括首都摩加迪沙。如今，它虽然分散，但仍活跃于索马里各地，并对索马里政府和外国部队发动致命袭击。
自特朗普重返白宫以来，美国对索马里的空袭不仅针对青年党，还越来越多地打击ISIS索马里分支。该分支由青年党叛徒创建，与ISIS是死敌。近年来，ISIS在全球范围内发动了多起高调袭击，专家认为索马里分支在策划这些行动中发挥了关键作用。美国非洲司令部的第二号人物约翰·布伦南（John Brennan）最近告诉福克斯新闻，美国在索马里的反ISIS行动旨在“破坏针对美国本土和欧洲的阴谋”。他声称，索马里ISIS领导人阿卜杜勒·卡迪尔·穆民（Abdalqadir Mumin）实际上是“全球ISIS网络的哈里发”，并从索马里北部的戈利斯山脉据点指挥全球活动。然而，这一说法受到质疑，许多反恐专家并不认为穆民是全球哈里发。该组织从未正式宣布他获得这一头衔，而且他并非阿拉伯人，也不声称是先知穆罕默德的后裔，因此不太可能成为哈里发。
尽管穆民是否为哈里发存在争议，但专家普遍认为，索马里ISIS分支虽然在该国本身只有少数地面战士（据联合国估计，最多200-300人），但已成为全球ISIS网络中最重要的分支之一，负责筹款、融资和招募。反恐分析师科林·克拉克（Colin Clarke）表示：“无论穆民是否是头目，他在全球ISIS网络中都极具影响力，因此是一个高价值目标。从战场上移除他是一个值得的目标，他是全球网络中的关键一环。”
大多数针对ISIS的空袭发生在索马里北部，与邦特兰政府合作进行。与此同时，针对青年党的行动仍在南部持续进行，最近一次打击行动就发生在上周。青年党在索马里国内仍控制着大量领土，并在2025年初短暂占领了距离首都摩加迪沙仅30公里的政府建筑。然而，与ISIS相比，青年党在全球范围内的影响力较小。
特朗普改变了空袭规则
一个可能的解释是，特朗普对索马里的空袭行动并不特别关注。根据政府授权，白宫可能不需要对每次空袭进行审批。这更像是特朗普允许后9/11时代的反恐战争继续进行，而且比之前更加缺乏监督。由于缺乏公众关注，政府也不必详细解释其行动目标或成本。
新美国（New America）的数据表明，特朗普任期内的空袭数量也大幅增加。2017年，特朗普放宽了防止平民伤亡的规则，使AFRICOM能够更自由地选择目标。在重返白宫后，他再次放宽了这些限制，这可能是导致索马里空袭增加的主要原因。
反恐行动“自动运行”
新的空袭规则解释了行动规模的扩大，但并未说明为何选择在索马里进行。一个可能的解释是，索马里是“最方便的目标”。美国的反恐行动似乎存在路径依赖，即在过去的反恐行动中形成的惯性。2024年，美国从尼日尔撤军，使得在萨赫勒地区（非洲西部）打击恐怖分子的资源减少。此外，美国两党都不愿重返阿富汗，而反恐行动在叙利亚（美国仍有驻军）和索马里（有长期合作和邻近的美军基地）仍在继续。
特朗普与索马里的关系
特朗普虽然很少公开谈论索马里的空袭行动，但经常提及索马里本身，尤其是在美国移民官员在明尼苏达州（索马里移民社区聚集地）展开争议性且暴力的打击行动后。该行动表面上是为了打击索马里企业涉嫌的社会福利欺诈。在达沃斯世界经济论坛上，特朗普称索马里人是“低智商的人”，并称索马里“不是一个国家”。副总统JD·范斯（JD Vance）也提到美国存在“索马里问题”。
美国与索马里政府的关系最近也紧张。美国削减对外援助严重破坏了索马里的医疗系统，使许多儿童无法获得粮食援助。美国上个月曾短暂暂停对索马里的所有粮食援助，因指控当地官员劫持了世界粮食计划署的仓库。
尽管特朗普对索马里的敌意可能与大规模空袭有关，但这种联系似乎不太可能。空袭行动是在与索马里政府和邦特兰当局密切合作下进行的，而周围的政局并未影响行动的进行。索马里驻美大使达希尔·哈桑·阿比（Dahir Hassan Abdi）表示：“索马里政府不会将政治言论视为政策的替代品。美国仍是安全合作的关键伙伴，索马里则专注于推进共同目标的实际协调。”
空袭是否有效？
大使达希尔认为，美国的支持帮助索马里的武装力量削弱了恐怖分子，恢复了一定的稳定。他指出：“恐怖分子攻击主要城市和政府部队的能力下降，为摩加迪沙的和平居民创造了自由参与地方选举的条件，这是五十年来首次。”
然而，美国空袭在以往的反叛乱行动中效果不佳，反恐专家乔舒亚·梅塞维（Joshua Meservey）表示，空袭未必能成为解决索马里问题的关键。他指出：“索马里的核心问题是缺乏有能力和合法的本地治理。”
此外，有官员担心空袭可能导致更多平民伤亡，从而加剧索马里民众对政府和美国支持者的不满，甚至催生更多恐怖分子。这些动态并非特朗普独有，而是美国反恐行动长期存在的问题。在这一背景下，特朗普不愿亲自公开谈论行动也情有可原。他更倾向于快速、决定性的胜利，而索马里的行动则是一个持续多年、成效难以界定的战争。在前任建立的体系中，只需他的默许，就能维持这场遥远的战争。
On February 3, President Donald Trump posted a Fox News article about a US strike targeting ISIS leaders in Somalia, along with an inflammatory insult aimed at Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, who arrived in the US as a refugee from the country.
Trump taking a racist dig at Omar has become routine. But in national security circles, the mention of the strikes stood out as unusual.
The post, along with a similar one the day before, was the first time in a year that the president’s account had mentioned his military campaign in Somalia, despite bombing the country more than any other in the same period.
In both his terms as president, Trump has quietly overseen a massive escalation of airstrikes in Somalia with little public explanation. And while the president is not unique in ordering strikes there — the military has been enmeshed in the Horn of Africa country’s conflicts since the early 1990s — his campaign is simply on another level, as shown by data compiled by New America.
In 2025, the US carried out 125 airstrikes and one ground raid in Somalia, compared to 51 operations during Joe Biden’s whole presidency. Already, in 2026, the US has carried out 28 operations, more than any full year under a non-Trump president. Between 172 and 359 people have been killed in Trump’s second term strikes, though David Sterman, a counterterrorism analyst at New America, notes that US Africa Command (AFRICOM) has not been reporting casualty estimates from these strikes since April of last year, meaning that the real numbers are likely much higher, and it’s difficult to know how many were civilians.
By comparison, the high-profile US campaign against alleged drug trafficking boats in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific since last fall has consisted of just 34 strikes.
Or, another point of comparison: The US carried out more strikes in Somalia last year than it did in Pakistan in 2010 — the height of the Obama administration’s drone war — when these tactics were a matter of major controversy and national debate.
Not only do Trump and senior officials rarely talk about the fact that they are waging an air war in Somalia that rivals the height of the Global War on Terror, the statements the president does make sometimes suggest an aversion to exactly this type of open-ended campaign. In fact, one of the rare times he’s brought up Somalia in a military context was to boast about not getting involved in the country.
“Only in recent decades did politicians somehow come to believe that our job is to police the far reaches of Kenya and Somalia, while America is under invasion from within,” Trump told a group of US military leaders at a gathering in Quantico last fall.
So, why is the US bombing Somalia so much, and why isn’t anyone talking about it?
There appear to be several factors in play: a genuine growing concern about Somalia’s role in a global resurgence of jihadist terrorism, a loosening of rules protecting civilians that allows for more strikes, and a post-9/11 war machine that can operate almost automatically without the president’s personal attention.
Somalia has been in a state of civil conflict and humanitarian crisis since the early 1990s, and the US has been involved for almost that long. The deaths of 18 US Marines in the infamous “Black Hawk Down” incident in Mogadishu in 1993 was the worst loss of life for the US military since Vietnam at that time.
After 9/11, the US began to target militants in the country with airstrikes and special forces raids, particularly the newly emerged al-Qaida-linked movement known as Al-Shabab. At various points, al-Shabab has controlled large swaths of Somali territory, including parts of the capital, Mogadishu. Today, it is a more dispersed movement but is still active in much of the country and continues to carry out deadly attacks against the Somali government and foreign troops in the country.
The war against al-Shabab has continued with various levels of intensity across several administrations, but the biggest change since Trump returned to office, experts say, is that, in addition to al-Shabaab, the strikes reported by AFRICOM are increasingly targeting ISIS’s affiliate in the country. (ISIS’s Somali “province” was founded by al-Shabab defectors, and the groups are sworn enemies.) The Islamic State has carried out a number of high-profile global attacks recently, and experts believe the Somali affiliate is playing a key role in facilitating those plots.
Lt. Gen. John Brennan, the second-highest-ranking officer at AFRICOM, recently told Fox News that the stepped up anti-ISIS campaign in Somalia is in order to disrupt plots “against the United States homeland as well as Europe.”
Notably, Brennan also claimed that Abdalqadir Mumin, the leader of ISIS in Somalia, is in fact “the caliph — absolute leader — of the global ISIS network” and is directing ISIS’s global activities from his hideout in the Golis Mountains.
That assertion, which first emerged after Mumin was unsuccessfully targeted in a 2024 strike, is contested. Many terrorism experts do not believe Mumin is the global caliph. The group never announced he’d been given the title, and, as a non-Arab who doesn’t claim descent from the Prophet Mohammed, he would make an unusual choice.
Caliph or no, there is growing consensus among terrorism experts that the Somali affiliate, which has relatively few fighters on the ground in Somalia itself (as few as 200-300 according to UN estimates), has become one of global ISIS’s most significant global affiliates, playing a key role in fundraising, financing, and recruiting.
“Whether Mumin is the head or not, he’s extremely influential within the Islamic State’s global network, so he’s a high-value target, clearly. Removing him from the battlefield is a worthwhile objective; he’s a vital cog in the global enterprise,” said Colin Clarke, terrorism analyst and executive director of the Soufan Center.
The vast majority of the strikes against ISIS have been in northern Somalia in cooperation with the security forces of the semi-autonomous Puntland state. But the campaign against al-Shabab in southern Somalia continues apace, as well; a strike against the group took place just last week. Al-Shabab is more formidable with Somalia and has carried out high-profile attacks outside of it — mainly in East African countries that have sent troops to Somalia — but it has less of a global reach than ISIS. Some worry that could be changing. In 2024, US intelligence agencies learned of discussions about a weapons deal between al-Shabab and the Houthis, the Iran-backed militant group across the Red Sea in Yemen that Trump has previously targeted, though it’s unclear if anything came of those talks.
So, it’s not surprising that the US would pay attention to Somalia as part of an overall global campaign against jihadist terrorism. US officials have even evoked the Israeli phrase “mowing the grass” to describe their goal in Somalia: keep militant groups degraded to prevent them from becoming too much of a threat.
But this doesn’t fully explain the shift. Somalia is hardly the only country where these groups are a threat. The Afghan ISIS affiliate, ISIS-Khorasan, has carried out major recent attacks in that country and abroad. The US has not carried out a publicly reported military operation in the country since the drone strike that killed al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri in 2022.
Meanwhile, the epicenter of global terrorist violence, accounting for more than half of all deaths, is West Africa’s Sahel Region — particularly countries like Mali, Niger, and Burkina Faso, rather than East Africa. Mali is under literal siege from the local al-Qaeda affiliate, forcing the government to ration fuel. But with the exception of Trump’s Christmas Day bombing of Nigeria, which appears to have been a one-off, the US has not seemed particularly interested in West African jihadist groups.
So, why Somalia in particular?
The simplest theory for why Trump doesn’t speak much about his administration’s most extensive military operation is that he’s not particularly involved with it. Under the authorities the administration has granted, the White House most likely doesn’t need to sign off on individual strikes.
It’s less of an example of a Trump policy than him allowing one of the remaining vestiges of the post-9/11 war on terror to continue — with even less oversight than before. The lack of public attention on the operation has meant the administration is under little pressure to fully explain its goals or justify its costs.
As New America’s numbers show, the number of strikes in Somalia also grew dramatically in Trump’s first term. One big reason: In 2017, Trump relaxed rules meant to prevent civilian casualties, giving AFRICOM wider latitude to go after targets as it saw fit. And after returning to office a second time, Trump again relaxed these limits, which appears to have been the main factor leading to the uptick in operations in Somalia.
“It’s very clear that they’re operating under significantly expanded authorities for strikes again,” said Sterman, who tracks reports of strikes in Somalia for New America.
The most extensive public discussion of the shift from a Trump administration official came last July from Sebastian Gorka, the National Security Council’s Director for Counterterrorism, during an appearance at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies in Washington.
“You may not be aware of it in the broader universe, but we are stacking [jihadis] like cord wood,” Gorka declared.
Gorka said that, shortly after taking office, he was told by intelligence and defense officials that “we’re not allowed to kill bad guys” under Biden’s targeting review rules. Gorka claims that on “day eight of the administration” he presented the president with evidence of an “ISIS jihadi running freely around a terror compound, a cave system in Northern Somalia,” who had been tracked for years. Trump quickly signed off on the order to kill the jihadi, after which Gorka watched on a screen as the man was turned into “red mist.”
This strike, in February, 2025, was one of the only times Trump has tweeted about the campaign, calling it a “message to ISIS and all others who would attack Americans is that ‘WE WILL FIND YOU, AND WE WILL KILL YOU!’”
Under the more relaxed targeting standards that have been in place since the summer, this consultation with Trump would not have even been necessary. The rationale for these strikes has also subtly changed. According to Sterman, strikes under previous administrations, including the first Trump term, had often been justified as “collective self-defense” operations, meaning the US was responding to an attack on either US personnel or its Somali allies. That language appears less often now. It’s also possible Biden may in fact have set the stage for this new offensive by preemptively signing off on the targeting of about a dozen Shabab leaders, meaning AFRICOM may feel more comfortable calling in the drones in the absence of a pressing threat.
The new targeting standards help account for the scale of the bombing but not why it’s happening in Somalia, specifically, as opposed to other countries with Islamic militants that the US has targeted in the past.
One possible explanation is that it’s the most convenient target. There appears to be an element of path dependence in the way counterterrorism is carried out by the US today. Having withdrawn troops from what was once a major counterterrorism hub in Niger in 2024, the US has fewer resources for combating jihadists in the Sahel than it once did. There’s little appetite in either US party for a return to Afghanistan after Biden’s ugly withdrawal in 2021.
By contrast, anti-ISIS operations have continued in Syria, where the US still has a troop presence — though that could be ending soon — and in Somalia, where there’s a history of these operations and cooperation with local forces, as well as US troops stationed nearby in Djibouti, Kenya, and Somalia itself.
“It seems like it’s on autopilot,” said Tibor Nagy, a veteran US diplomat who served as under secretary of State for African Affairs during Trump’s first term. “It’s easier to keep doing something because there’s the institutional bureaucracy in place to keep supporting it.”
Asked about the reason for the uptick in strikes, a Department of Defense spokesperson speaking on background told Vox: “Our strategic approach to countering terrorism in Africa relies on trusted partnerships and collaboration grounded in and through shared security interests. The cadence in conducting airstrikes in Somalia reflects that strategy, enabled by the administration’s policy to empower commanders to protect the U.S. homeland and citizens abroad.”
Trump may not talk about the air campaign in Somalia, but he has been talking about Somalia itself quite a bit, particularly since US immigration officials began a contentious and violent crackdown in Minnesota — home of a large Somali immigrant community — ostensibly motivated by cases of social services fraud by individual Somali owned businesses.
In a recent high-profile speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Trump said he had always thought of Somalis as “low-IQ people” until seeing the scale of the fraud and called Somalia “not a country.” Vice President JD Vance has described the United States as having a “Somali problem.”
Relations between the US and Somali government have also been strained lately. US foreign aid cuts have devastated the country’s health care system and left children in much of the country without food aid. The US briefly suspended all food aid to Somalia last month over allegations that local officials had seized a World Food Program warehouse.
It’s tempting to wonder if Trump’s general enmity toward Somalia is related at all to his massive bombing campaign in the country, but that seems unlikely.
The air campaign is conducted in close coordination with the government of Somalia and Puntland authorities. If anything, what’s notable is that the surrounding politics haven’t disrupted the campaign.
“Somalia’s government does not treat political statements as a substitute for policy,” Somalia ambassador to the United States, Dahir Hassan Abdi, responded by email when asked about Trump’s comments. “The United States remains a critical partner in security cooperation, and Somalia remains focused on practical coordination that advances shared goals.”
Dahir, the Somalia ambassador, argued that US support has allowed its forces to put the jihadists on the back heel and restore a bit of stability.
“The degradation of terrorists’ ability to attack major cities and government forces have created the conditions for peace-loving residents of Mogadishu to freely participate in local elections on December 25, 2025, for the first time in five decades,” he said in an emailed statement from the embassy.
Those local elections, held last year, were billed as a kind of rehearsal for national elections — which are planned for this year — despite concerns about violence and instability.
But while it’s generally agreed that Shabab no longer poses the existential threat to the Somali state that it did in the past, it still controls a significant amount of territory outside the capital and, early last year, briefly captured government buildings just 30 kilometers from Mogadishu.
“The Somali government’s in a decent enough position that it’s not about to fall,” said Omar Mahmood, a senior analyst at the International Crisis Group, speaking by phone from Somalia. “But the question is always, how stable is the Somali government.” Mahmood noted with an upcoming contested election, an international peacekeeping mission underfunded, and the US withdrawing much of its non-military support, the concern is that some of these underlying gains could unravel. That would allow al-Shabab to advance.”
Air strikes don’t have a great record as a counterinsurgency tool in past conflicts, and Joshua Meservey, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and author of a book on al-Shabaab, was skeptical that they would make the key difference in this place. “The core problem in Somalia is that there is a lack of competent, legitimate local governance in the country,” he said. “If you do not have that, you will never successfully eradicate these groups.”
Former officials who spoke with Vox also expressed concerns that civilian casualties — about which we have little publicly available information — could turn more Somalis against the government and its US backers and potentially create more militants. None of these dynamics are particular to Trump. If anything, the Somalia campaign is an illustration that the militant groups were the primary focus of US national security for the 20 years after 9/11 have not gone away, even if we don’t talk about them as much, and that efforts to combat them are still slow-going and legally murky.
In that context, it makes sense Trump is reluctant to bring the operations up himself. The president surely approves of the killing of senior al-Shabab and ISIS leaders, but this is a leader who likes quick, decisive, and overwhelming victories. A now-decades-old operation whose success is difficult to define is not that. In the machine built by his predecessors, though, all that’s needed to maintain a simmering war thousands of miles away is his tacit consent.
2026-02-13 20:15:00
在允许AI机器人使用其内容进行训练后，关于维基百科以人类为主导身份的未来引发了诸多疑问。如果你曾在课堂上使用过电脑，很可能听过这样的告诫：不要相信维基百科。其理由是任何人都可以修改维基百科的页面。虽然这在很大程度上属实，但某些页面会因遭受大量滥用或破坏而被锁定。然而，学校对维基百科不可靠或充斥错误信息的观念被夸大了。这个众包在线百科全书依赖于一群被称为“维基人”的志愿者，他们遵循严格的编辑流程。每篇文章底部都有参考文献，每个条目都有公开的“讨论页面”，允许编辑者讨论修改并达成共识。此外，该网站还拥有高效的监控系统，由可靠的编辑和经过维基百科认证的机器人实时监督内容。
“我们被教导不要在课堂上使用维基百科，这让我感到很沮丧，因为我们并没有真正学会如何使用它，”22岁的内容创作者Dean告诉Vox。去年12月，Dean在TikTok上发布了一条呼吁粉丝使用维基百科的视频，强调了它在信息泛滥时代的重要性。他和其他许多社交媒体上的创作者和用户一样，正在重新发现这个25年历史平台的可信度和价值，尤其是在一些有时存在错误的AI聊天机器人崛起的同时。
例如，BBC在2024年12月进行的一项研究发现，像OpenAI的ChatGPT和微软的CoPilot这样的大型AI模型在被提示时会错误地总结新闻。而《卫报》在2026年1月的一项调查则发现，谷歌的AI摘要功能正在向用户展示错误和误导性的医疗信息，这可能危及他们的健康。所有这些都使得一个由人类生成并严格监控的知识平台显得更加有吸引力。
如果公众意识到维基百科的重要性，维基媒体基金会（该基金会资助和支持维基百科）在2025年筹集了高达1.84亿美元的资金，比前一年增加了400万美元。与此同时，《华盛顿邮报》在2025年8月报道说，“可疑的编辑，甚至是完全新的文章，带有错误、虚构的引用和其他AI生成写作的特征，不断出现在这个免费的在线百科全书上”，迫使人类编辑去发现并纠正这些错误。如今，维基百科正在直接与许多用户认为其抗衡的大型语言模型合作。2025年1月，该组织宣布了一批新的科技公司，这些公司将使用维基百科的付费产品Wikipedia Enterprise来训练其AI模型。这并不是一个前所未有的举措，但它引发了对这个早期互联网标志性平台未来发展的担忧。在AI对互联网的控制日益增强的情况下，维基百科如何保持其以人类为主导的身份？
尽管维基百科在线上仍受到一定的怀旧情怀青睐，但它也面临着与其他数字出版商相同的可见度下降问题。去年10月，该组织报告称，其每月的人类页面浏览量相比2024年下降了约8%，并将其归因于人们越来越多地使用生成式AI来获取信息，而这些AI工具通常会直接从维基百科获取信息。此外，人们在需要信息时也更倾向于在社交媒体上搜索。据研究显示，目前有五分之一的美国人经常从TikTok获取新闻，而使用ChatGPT的美国人数量自2023年以来已经翻了一番。
但这并不意味着维基百科已经过时。它仍然是谷歌搜索结果和AI摘要中列出的首要信息来源。过去十年间，维基百科的文章被浏览了1900亿次，2025年成为全球第九大访问量最高的网站。
在TikTok上，维基百科的怀旧情怀似乎仍然存在。像@tldrwikipedia和@depthsofwikipedia这样的流行Instagram账号在过去几年里成功地利用了这种怀旧情绪。后者由Annie Rauwerda运营，展示了维基百科一些更具体和奇特的页面，拥有160万粉丝。在TikTok上，也有专门的维基百科粉丝群体，他们传播该网站及其应用程序的福音，并分享自己浏览随机文章的喜爱之情。去年秋天，一位不愿透露姓氏的22岁毕业生Chisom发布了一条TikTok视频，说她“毫无保留地买了一顶维基百科帽子”，该视频获得了百万次观看和大量正面评论。Chisom表示，她以前认为维基百科不可靠，直到一位高中老师展示了该网站的监控系统如何有效运作，以及如何快速进行实时更正。现在，她说自己成了“深入维基百科的爱好者”，并认为维基百科比谷歌的AI摘要更易于使用。“我确实使用得更多了，”她说，“以前我用谷歌，他们会提供一些名人的简要信息，比如他们结婚的对象、孩子等。但自从他们开始使用AI摘要，这对我帮助不大。”
尽管AI的威胁依然存在，但人类仍然为维基百科的未来提供了希望。尽管维基百科在线上重新获得了关注，但随着AI逐渐渗透到我们日常生活的各个方面，尤其是维基百科与AI公司建立合作关系，这似乎与其以人类为中心的原则相冲突。大型语言模型已经使用维基百科一段时间了，而且通常是未经允许的，这对维基百科造成了很大的负担。科技记者Stephen Harrison在Slate上多年报道维基百科，他对维基百科与AI公司的合作表示，“这是科技公司对维基百科等项目的一种认可，认为它们的长期发展依赖于这些项目。”他更担心的是像埃隆·马斯克这样的公众人物对维基百科发起的政治攻击。去年，马斯克批评并呼吁削减维基百科的资金，因为他的条目被更新以指出他在特朗普就职典礼上做出的一个手势，被广泛解读为纳粹礼。随后，他推出了竞争对手网站Grokipedia，其条目由他的公司xAI编辑。
Harrison还担心，如果用户主要通过AI摘要来接触维基百科，他们可能会逐渐忘记这个网站。维基百科志愿者Hannah Clover自2018年以来一直参与维基百科的工作，她对AI的影响也有自己的担忧。她并不认为AI会取代人类编辑，但担心AI的普及会使信息来源变得更加难以追踪。“我担心的是，我们引用的许多来源在未来可能会变得不可靠，”Clover说，“我们有一个长期的来源列表，有时一些原本可靠的来源会因为突然开始发布AI生成的垃圾信息而变得不可靠。”
这些与AI的合作表明，维基百科仍然是一个极其重要的知识库。但最终，维基百科的存续仍取决于那些热爱它的人。Clover承认，许多年轻人因为经济压力而没有时间或精力成为维基百科的编辑，但这并不是“缺乏兴趣”的表现。Harrison则认为，像“深度维基百科”这样的独立创作者对于维基百科品牌的延续至关重要。“社交媒体影响者依赖维基百科作为他们知识的隐形基础，”他说。目前，TikTok上所有关于“旧互联网”的怀旧内容给了他一些希望，认为维基百科可能会迎来复兴。“我成长于维基百科被视为互联网‘荒野’的时代，”他说，“维基百科在很多方面已经成为一个充满故事的机构，人们对其怀有怀旧和喜爱之情。”
If you grew up with computers in your classroom, there’s a good chance you heard this instruction before starting a research paper: Don’t trust Wikipedia.
The reasoning? Anyone can go in and make changes to a Wikipedia page. This is mostly true, though pages that are subject to a high amount of abuse or vandalism can be locked. However, the notion that the website is unreliable or a playground of misinformation has been overstated in schools. The crowdsourced online encyclopedia relies on a community of volunteers, known as “Wikipedians,” who adhere to a rigorous editing process. Citations are available at the bottom of each article, and public-facing “talk pages” attached to every entry allow editors to discuss changes and try to reach consensus. And the site has an efficient monitoring system, with reputable editors and Wikipedia-approved bots watching entries in real time.
“The fact that we were all told not to use it in school is really frustrating because we just weren’t taught how to actually use it,” Dean, a 22-year-old content creator, told Vox.
Last December, Dean posted a TikTok urging his followers to utilize Wikipedia, emphasizing its importance in an era of rampant misinformation. He’s like many other creators and users on social media who are discovering the credibility and value of the 25-year-old platform in the same moment that sometimes-faulty AI chatbots are ascendant. For example, research conducted by the BBC in December 2024 found that major AI models like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Microsoft’s CoPilot inaccurately summarize news when prompted, and a Guardian investigation in January 2026 found that Google’s AI Overview was showing users false and misleading medical information that put their health at risk.
All of this makes a knowledge platform that’s human-generated and rigorously monitored look pretty appealing. If there’s any indication that the public understands its necessity, the Wikimedia Foundation, which funds and supports Wikipedia, raised a staggering $184 million in 2025, a $4 million increase from the previous year.
At the same time, the Washington Post reported in August 2025 that “suspicious edits, and even entirely new articles, with errors, made-up citations and other hallmarks of AI-generated writing keep popping up on the free online encyclopedia,” forcing human editors to find and fix them. And Wikipedia is now working directly with the large language models that many users see it as counterbalancing. In January, the organization announced a new batch of tech companies that will train their AI models using Wikipedia Enterprise, a paid product allowing partners to access its content at scale. This isn’t an unprecedented move, but it raises concerns about the future of the early-internet staple. How will it maintain its human-powered identity amid AI’s chokehold on the internet?
Wikipedia might have had a big year for fundraising, but it’s faced the same struggles with visibility as other digital publishers. Last October, the organization reported that its monthly human page views had seen a roughly 8 percent decline compared to 2024 and attributed it to the uptick in people using generative AI — which, again, uses Wikipedia as a source and provides the info directly to users — and searching on social media when they need information. (Research has shown that one in five Americans regularly gets their news from TikTok now, while the number of Americans using ChatGPT has already doubled since 2023.)
That’s not to say Wikipedia’s gone out of fashion. It remains a top source listed in Google search results and AI summaries. Over the past decade, its articles have been viewed a total of 1.9 trillion times. It was the ninth most-visited website in the world in 2025.
There also seems to be a niche, nostalgic appeal to Wikipedia that persists online. It’s something that popular Instagram accounts like @tldrwikipedia and @depthsofwikipedia have been able to capitalize on over the past few years. The latter, run by Annie Rauwerda, features screenshots of the site’s more specific and bizarre pages and boasts 1.6 million followers.
On TikTok, there’s a dedicated Wikipedia fandom, with users spreading the gospel of the website (and its app) and sharing their affinity for browsing random articles. Last fall, Chisom, a recent grad and substitute teacher who prefers not to share her last name online for privacy reasons, posted a TikTok saying she “unironically bought a Wikipedia hat.” It received a million views and loads of positive comments.
Chisom, 22, told Vox she grew up believing that Wikipedia was unreliable until a 10th-grade teacher demonstrated how well the site’s monitoring system works and how quickly corrections are made in real-time. Now, she said, she’s become “rabbit-hole Wikipedia girl” and finds it much more user-friendly than Google’s AI overview.
“I definitely use it more,” she said. “I used to use Google, and they would have a little summary of a celebrity — who they’re married to, their kids. But since they started doing the whole AI summary thing, that’s so unhelpful to me.”
Despite renewed enthusiasm for Wikipedia online, the future of the site seems tenuous as AI creeps into more aspects of our everyday lives, and, especially, because seeing the website establish relationships with AI companies feels at odds with its human-first principles. Large language models have been using Wikipedia for a while now, famously without their permission and at a high cost to the site.
Tech journalist Stephen Harrison, who covered Wikipedia on Slate for years, told Vox that he sees the LLM partnerships as “recognition” by tech companies that “their long-term future depends on nurturing projects like Wikipedia.” He’s more concerned about the political attacks the platform has faced recently from people like Elon Musk. (Last year, Musk criticized and called to defund Wikipedia after his entry was updated to note a gesture he made during Trump’s inauguration that was widely interpreted as a Nazi salute. He’s since launched the rival website Grokipedia, with entries edited by his company xAI.) Harrison is also concerned about internet users “forgetting” about Wikipedia if they’re mainly consuming the site’s content through AI summaries.
Hannah Clover, a Wikipedian who has been working with the site since 2018, told Vox her concerns about AI’s impact are a bit less obvious. It’s not that she believes AI will ever replace human editors, but that its prominence will make sourcing harder.
“I worry about it more in the sense that a lot of the sources that we cite might become unreliable in the future,” Clover, 23, said. “We have a perennial sources list, and sometimes you have sources that were previously reliable that become unreliable because they start publishing AI slop out of nowhere.”
These AI deals show that Wikipedia is still an extremely critical knowledge base. But it will inevitably be up to the humans who love it to keep the site going. Clover acknowledges that a lot of young people struggling to pay their bills may not have the time or energy to become Wikipedians who edit the site, but that’s “not for a lack of interest.” Harrison, meanwhile, sees independent creators, like Depths of Wikipedia, as crucial in keeping Wikipedia’s brand alive. “Social media influencers rely on Wikipedia as a sort of invisible foundation for their knowledge,” he said. For now, all the “old internet” nostalgia on TikTok gives him some hope for a revival.
“I grew up when Wikipedia was considered the Wild West of the internet,” he said. “It’s really remarkable how Wikipedia has, in a lot of ways, become this storied institution that people have all these feelings of nostalgia and affection toward.”