索罗斯在达沃斯炮轰“黑帮国家”与科技巨头

George Soros pulled few punches as he addressed an audience in Davos on Thursday, bemoaning the rise of “mafia states”, such as Russia, and the threat to innovation posed by Facebook and Google.

周四，乔治•索罗斯(George Soros)在达沃斯(Davos)发表了直言不讳的讲话，他抱怨了俄罗斯等“黑帮国家”的崛起，以及Facebook和谷歌(Google)对创新带来的威胁。

Addressing diners at his annual dinner at the World Economic Forum the billionaire fund manager set the mood by saying the severity of the problems confronting the world forced him to scrap plans for the usual 50-50 speech and Q&A format for lengthier diatribe. “[P]repare yourselves,” he said.

在世界经济论坛(WEF)的年度索罗斯晚宴上，这位亿万富翁和基金经理用这样一番话给讲话定下了基调——他对就餐者说，世界面临的问题的严重性，迫使他放弃了通常演讲和问答各占一半的形式，转而进行更长篇大论的抨击。“你们自己做好准备，”他说。

Mr Soros described this moment in history as “rather painful”. Open societies around the world were “in crisis”, he continued, singling out Russia as an exemplification of the “dictatorships and mafia states” that were on the rise.

索罗斯称，现在是一个“相当痛苦”的历史时刻。世界各地的开放社会都“处于危机之中”，接着，他把单独点名俄罗斯，作为正在崛起的“独裁和黑帮国家”的代表。

Beyond the survival of open society, Mr Soros said that “the survival of our entire civilisation is at stake”, pointing to the nuclear stand-off between Donald Trump and North Korea’s Kim Jong-Un.

除了开放社会的存续以外，索罗斯表示“我们整个文明的存续正处在危险之中”，他指的是唐纳德•特朗普(Donald Trump)和朝鲜的金正恩(Kim Jong-Un)的核对峙。

“Both seem willing to risk a nuclear war in order to keep themselves in power,” he said.

“为了维护自己的统治，双方似乎都愿意冒爆发核战争的风险，”他说。

Mr Soros reiterated his concerns about climate change and the “severe and intractable” problem of forced migration. “I don’t want to go into the details on climate change because it is well known what needs to be done. We have the scientific knowledge, it is the political will that is missing, particularly in the Trump administration.”

索罗斯重申了他对气候变化以及“严重和棘手”的被迫迁移问题的忧虑。“我不想细谈气候变化问题，因为人们都知道需要做什么。我们有科学知识，缺失的是政治意愿，尤其是在特朗普政府之中。”

Mr Soros then turned his attention towards the huge, monopolistic internet platforms, arguing that the likes of Google and Facebook had become “obstacles to innovation” whose quest to increase their share of users’ attention was inducing people to give up their autonomy.

接下来，索罗斯把焦点转向庞大的、垄断性的互联网平台，他认为，谷歌和Facebook这样的公司已经变成“创新的障碍”，这些平台努力提高自身产品在用户注意力中的占比，诱使用户放弃自主。

At the quickening pace Facebook had added its first and then second billion users, it would run out of people to convert within three years, he said.

他表示，以Facebook增加其第一个和第二个10亿用户的速度，它将在三年内收尽可以“皈依”的人群。

That could lead to a more alarming prospect, Mr Soros warned, in the form of alliances between authoritarian states and these data-rich companies that would combine systems of corporate surveillance, in their infancy, with an already developed system of state-sponsored surveillance.

索罗斯警告称，这可能导致一个更令人担忧的前景——威权国家与这些拥有大量数据的公司结成联盟，将处于初创阶段的企业监控系统与国家支持的已经很先进的监控系统结合起来。

“This may well result in a web of totalitarian control the likes of which not even Aldous Huxley or George Orwell could have imagined.”

“这最终很可能会形成一个极权控制网络——连奥尔德斯•赫胥黎(Aldous Huxley)或乔治•奥威尔(George Orwell)都未曾想象到的控制。”

He added: “The owners of the platforms consider themselves the masters of the universe but, in fact, they are slaves to preserving their dominant position.”

他还表示：“这些平台的所有者认为自己是宇宙的主人，但实际上，他们是维护自己统治地位的奴隶。”

It is only a matter of time before the global dominance of the US monopolies is broken, he went on, suggesting that Davos was a good place to announce that their days were numbered. Regulation and taxation would be their undoing, he said, with Margrethe Vestager, the EU competition commissioner, their likely nemesis.

他接着说，美国垄断公司的全球主导地位被打破只是时间问题，暗示达沃斯是宣布他们的日子已经屈指可数的恰当之地。他说，监管和税收将是他们失败的原因，欧盟竞争专员玛格丽特•维斯特格(Margrethe Vestager)或将成为他们的“复仇女神”。

Mr Soros acknowledged concerns about the dominance of these platforms and rising levels of inequality and said the impact of innovations, such as driverless cars, on unemployment would depend heavily on government policies.

索罗斯承认对这些平台的主导地位和日益加剧的不平等感到担忧，他表示，各种创新(如无人驾驶汽车)带来的影响将严重依赖政府政策。

Lastly, the “man who broke the Bank of England” had a dig at the cryptocurrency phenomenon. “Cryptocurrency is a typical bubble, which is always based on some misunderstanding. It is not a currency.”

最后，这个“让英国央行(Bank of England)破产的男人”还挖苦了加密货币现象。“加密货币是一种典型的泡沫，总是建立在一些误解的基础上。它不是一种货币。”