“书呆子”奥巴马的下一份工作？硅谷在招手

WASHINGTON — Staring intently at the dual screens inside a flight simulator this month at the University of Pittsburgh, President Obama tapped the controls in front of him, firing faux thrusters as he pretended to maneuver his space shuttle toward the International Space Station. Pulse up. Pulse to the right. Left. Down. Down. Left. Left.

华盛顿——本月，在匹茨堡大学(University of Pittsburgh)的一个飞行模拟器里，奥巴马总统专注地盯着两块屏幕，操作着他面前的控制装置，启动模拟推进器。他是在假装操作自己驾驶的航天飞机飞向国际空间站。逐渐向上。向右渐转。左。下。下。左。左。

“Uber shuttle,” the beaming president told reporters after a brief but successful docking mission, joking that the next market for Uber would be outer space. “In case anyone calls, we’ll be there in five minutes.”

“优步飞机，”满脸笑容的总统在结束了短暂但成功的对接任务后对记者说，并开玩笑称优步(Uber)的下一个市场是外太空。“要是有人叫飞机，我们五分钟后就到。”

For nearly eight years, the presidency has been Mr. Obama’s science and technology playground, a place where he sought to become the advocate in chief for industries pushing advanced batteries, powerful medical devices and cutting-edge research.

在近八年时间里，总统职位一直是奥巴马的科技游乐场。在这个职位上，他试图成为推行先进的电池、强大的医疗设备和前沿研究的行业的首席倡导者。

“I’m a nerd, and I don’t make any apologies for it,” Mr. Obama said after his faux shuttle flight. He added: “It’s cool stuff. And it is that thing that sets us apart, that ability to imagine and hypothesize, and then test and figure stuff out, and tinker and make things and make them better, and then break them down and rework them.”

“我是个书呆子，对此我没有丝毫的歉意，”奥巴马在模拟飞行结束后说，并接着表示：“这是一件很酷的事情。正是这个东西让我们与众不同，这种想象和假设，然后试验并弄明白，不断修改和发明创造并逐步改善，然后把它们拆散重做。”

With less than three months left in his presidency, Mr. Obama is preparing for a life after the White House that will most likely include a close relationship with Silicon Valley. Officials running Mr. Obama’s presidential foundation have made about 10 trips to tech strongholds in California in the past year as they help him plot his next steps.

在总统任期只剩下不到三个月的情况下，奥巴马正在为离开白宫后的生活做准备。卸任后的生活极有可能涉及到他与硅谷的亲密关系。过去一年里，奥巴马的总统基金会的负责人前往加利福尼亚州的科技要塞大约十次，帮他部署接下来的步骤。

“I wouldn’t be surprised if that was one of the key focus areas for him post-presidency,” said Steve Case, a co-founder of AOL.

“如果那是他卸任后的重点关注领域之一，我不会惊讶，”美国在线(AOL)联合创始人史蒂夫·凯斯(Steve Case)说。

The path from the Obama White House to the tech giants — many of them major political donors to Mr. Obama — is already well worn.

从奥巴马领导的白宫到科技巨头——其中很多都是奥巴马重要的政治捐助者——已经是一条老路了。

David Plouffe, the architect of Mr. Obama’s 2008 campaign, is at Uber. Jay Carney, his onetime press secretary, is at Amazon. Dan Pfeiffer, the former communications guru, is at GoFundMe. Lisa Jackson, who once led Mr. Obama’s Environmental Protection Agency, is a senior executive at Apple. Last year, Chris Lehane, an alumnus of Bill Clinton’s White House, took a job at Airbnb, which offers short-term home rentals.

奥巴马2008年竞选活动的设计师戴维·普洛夫(David Plouffe)目前就职于优步。曾担任奥巴马的新闻发言人的杰伊·卡尼(Jay Carney)在亚马逊(Amazon)任职。前通讯联络主任丹·法伊弗(Dan Pfeiffer)在GoFundMe。曾担任奥巴马的环境保护局(Environment Protection Agency)局长的莉萨·杰克逊(Lisa Jackson)现在是苹果(Apple)的高管。去年，曾在比尔·克林顿(Bill Clinton)时期的白宫任职的校友克里斯·勒汉(Chris Lehane)入职提供短期房屋租赁服务的Airbnb。

“This place is becoming an assisted living facility for political vets,” said Matt McKenna, a former spokesman for Mr. Clinton who decamped last year to Uber and now runs a boutique public relations firm in the center of the tech world.

“这个地方正在成为资深政界人士的辅助生活设施，”曾任比尔·克林顿发言人的马特·麦克纳(Matt McKenna)说。他去年加入优步，如今在这个科技世界中心管理着一家高端公关公司。

Suspicions that Mr. Obama harbors some dreams of joining them — at least in some capacity — were given new life during the past several weeks. The president’s flight-simulator moment in Pittsburgh capped a recent flurry of White House activity highlighting American technology.

有关奥巴马正梦想——至少以某种身份——加入那里的猜测，最近几周再次受到热议。总统在匹茨堡使用飞行模拟器的举动，成为白宫最近一系列突显美国科技的活动的高潮。

In the course of just one week this month, Mr. Obama promoted new frontiers in space on CNN.com, writing that government and industry should collaborate to send a manned mission to Mars by 2030. He guest-edited an issue of Wired magazine, challenging Silicon Valley to tackle inequality and civic participation. And, with the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon, he hosted the White House Frontiers Conference in Pittsburgh.

本月，在短短一周的时间里，奥巴马在CNN.com上宣传新的太空领域，撰文称政府和行业应该携手，在2030年之前进行一次载人火星任务。他为一期《连线》杂志(Wired)担任客座编辑，激励硅谷解决不平等和公民参与问题。此外，他还和匹茨堡大学及卡耐基·梅隆大学(Carnegie Mellon)在匹茨堡共同主办了白宫前沿会议(White House Frontiers Conference)。

“I would be surprised if he did not spend a significant amount of his post-presidency time and effort connecting the resources and ideas and capabilities that he has learned about in Silicon Valley with the kinds of causes that he will choose,” said Reid Hoffman, the executive chairman and co-founder of LinkedIn and a top political donor to Mr. Obama. “如果他卸任后不花大量时间和精力把他在硅谷了解到的资源、想法和能力同他将要选择的事业结合起来，我倒是会感到惊讶，”领英(LinkedIn)执行主席兼联合创始人、奥巴马最重要的政治捐赠人之一雷德·霍夫曼(Reid Hoffman)说。

White House aides declined to comment on the president’s plans for Jan. 21 and beyond. But Phil Larson, who was one of Mr. Obama’s advisers at the Office of Science and Technology Policy, called him “a true geek president.”

奥巴马在白宫的助手拒绝评论总统1月21日及以后的安排。但曾在科技政策办公室(Office of Science and Technology Policy)为奥巴马担任顾问的菲尔·拉森(Phil Larson)称奥巴马是“一个真正的极客总统”。

Mr. Larson, who is now at SpaceX, the rocket company founded by the billionaire Elon Musk, said Mr. Obama “loves sitting back and having scientists say magical things about the future.”

现就职于亿万富翁埃隆·马斯克(Elon Musk)创办的火箭公司SpaceX的拉森称，奥巴马“喜欢闲坐着，听科学家说未来的神奇事物”。

Mr. Obama is the first sitting president to post a selfie on Instagram, and he proudly gave the Vulcan salute when he met Leonard Nimoy, the actor who played Spock in “Star Trek.” Mr. Obama created the position of United States chief technology officer on his first day in office, and he has championed initiatives on issues like funding for start-ups, visas for international entrepreneurs, and self-driving cars.

奥巴马是首位在Instagram上发布自拍照的在任总统。见到在《星际迷航》(Star Trek)中扮演斯波克(Spock)的演员伦纳德·尼莫伊(Leonard Nimoy)时，他自豪地行了瓦肯举手礼。上任第一天，奥巴马就创设了美国首席技术官这个职位。他还支持资助创业公司、向国际创业者发放签证和研发自动驾驶汽车等问题上的行动。

A number of Silicon Valley executives have joined the Obama administration, including Megan J. Smith, a former Google executive who is now the United States chief technology officer, and Kurt DelBene, who left Microsoft in 2013 to manage Healthcare.gov and later returned to the tech company.

不少硅谷高管加入了奥巴马政府，包括现任美国首席技术官的前谷歌(Google)高管梅甘·J·史密斯(Megan J. Smith)和2013年离开微软(Microsoft)管理Healthcare.gov，后来又回到微软的库尔特·德尔贝恩(Kurt DelBene)。

But Mr. Obama has also angered civil liberties advocates who grew to view him as the “surveillance president,” too willing to continue government programs, put in place after the terrorist attacks of 2001, that use technology to snoop on Americans. A report last week from the Center for Privacy & Technology at Georgetown Law chided the F.B.I. and the police for assembling a face-recognition database system that contains more than 117 million American adults, half of all adults in the country.

但奥巴马也惹怒了公民自由倡导人士，他们认为他是“监视总统”，过于热心坚持2001年的恐怖袭击后实施的政府计划，利用技术手段监视美国民众。乔治城大学法学院隐私与技术中心(Center for Privacy & Technology at Georgetown Law)上周发布的一份报告指责联邦调查局(FBI)和警方集成了一个人脸识别数据库系统。该系统有1.17亿美国成年人的信息，相当于美国一半的成年人。

“This president has presided over an era in which universal tracking is becoming more pervasive, not just from intelligence agencies but also at the level of local law enforcement,” said Ben Wizner, the director of the speech, privacy and technology project at the American Civil Liberties Union and the chief legal adviser to Edward J. Snowden, a former government contractor who revealed in 2013 that United States intelligence agencies had created a mass surveillance system to comb through Americans’ phone records and international internet traffic.

“这位总统在位期间，无处不在的追踪变得更加普遍，不仅仅是来自情报机构，还有地方执法机构层面的追踪，”美国公民自由联盟(American Civil Liberties Union)的演讲、隐私与技术项目主任、爱德华·J·斯诺登(Edward J. Snowden)的首席法律顾问本·维茨纳(Ben Wizner)说。2013年，曾是政府承包商雇员的斯诺登爆料称美国情报机构创建了一个大型监视系统，检查美国的电话记录和国际互联网通讯。

The public controversy that followed the disclosures emboldened some technology executives to stand up to government intrusion, leading to disagreements about how to ensure data security and privacy while meeting the needs of law enforcement. This year, Apple refused to comply with an F.B.I. demand that the company unlock an iPhone during a terrorism investigation.

爆料引发的公众争议促使一些科技高管开始抵制政府的干涉，引起了关于如何在满足执法需求的同时确保数据安全和隐私的分歧。今年，苹果在一起恐怖主义调查中拒绝按照FBI的要求破解一部iPhone。

Still, that has not stopped Silicon Valley from keeping an open door for Mr. Obama.

但这并未阻止硅谷向奥巴马敞开大门。

Sam Altman, the president of Y Combinator, a Silicon Valley start-up accelerator, suggested that the soon-to-be ex-president would be a good job candidate.

硅谷的创业孵化器Y Combinator的总裁萨姆·奥尔特曼(Sam Altman)表示，即将成为前总统的奥巴马会是一个优秀的应聘者。

“We’d happily hire him,” Mr. Altman joked, “and give him a chance.”

“我们会很乐意雇佣他，”奥尔特曼开玩笑说，“给他一个机会。”