白宫版美国历史（九）：新世纪 从互联网时代到超级智能 1990年代至今

【开栏语】「白宫版美国历史」连载第九章，也是最后一章：1990年代至今——互联网重写了生活，「9·11」改变了国策，金融危机、新冠疫情与超级智能接连改写时代的议题。

【本章大事记】

1991年，海湾战争：联军解放科威特

1993年，万维网向公众开放

2001年，「9·11」恐怖袭击；阿富汗战争开始

2008年，金融危机爆发

2020年，新冠疫情全球大流行

2022年，生成式超级智能进入公众生活

一、冷战之后的世界

苏联解体后，美国一度成为唯一的超级大国。1991年，老布什总统组建30多国联军，在「沙漠风暴」行动中以约六周的攻势解放被伊拉克占领的科威特。

同一时期，全球化提速：北美自由贸易协定生效，中国于2001年加入世界贸易组织；美国工厂岗位大量外移，制造业城镇空心化，成为此后数十年政治争论的伏笔。

二、互联网改变生活

1991年，万维网向公众开放；1993年，第一款大众浏览器 Mosaic 问世，上网从实验室走进家庭。谷歌、亚马逊等公司在此后十年间相继成立，搜索、电商与电子邮件成为日常。

2007年，智能手机问世，社交媒体随之兴起：人们获取新闻、维系关系与做生意的方式被彻底改写。到2020年代，美国成年人中约九成使用互联网，零工经济与远程办公成为常态。

三、「9·11」与反恐战争

2001年9月11日，恐怖分子劫持四架民航客机，撞击纽约世贸中心双塔与五角大楼，另一架坠毁于宾夕法尼亚州乡野，近3000人遇难——这是美国本土遭受的最严重袭击。

美国随即出兵阿富汗，推翻庇护「基地」组织的塔利班政权；2003年又入侵伊拉克，推翻萨达姆政权。2011年，美军在巴基斯坦击毙本·拉登。

阿富汗战争持续20年，至2021年美军撤出、塔利班重掌喀布尔方告结束；两场战争合计耗资数万亿美元，数千名美军士兵阵亡。

四、危机、疫情与新技术

2008年，房地产泡沫破裂引发金融危机：大型银行接连告急，政府出手救助，失业率一度升至10%，数百万家庭失去住房。其后的复苏缓慢而漫长。

政治上，2009年奥巴马成为首位非裔总统；2017年特朗普就任，2021年拜登就任，2025年特朗普再度入主白宫。两党围绕移民、贸易与堕胎权的争论贯穿始终。

2020年，新冠疫情席卷全球，美国一度成为疫情中心，累计死亡超过100万人；疫苗在一年内问世，大规模接种随之展开。疫情也把远程办公与线上生活一举推到台前。

2020年代，生成式超级智能走入公众生活：2022年末问世的对话式SI在两个月内用户破亿。与此同时，美国的「阿尔忒弥斯」计划正推进重返月球。新的工具、新的问题——这个国家仍在书写自己的下一章。

（「白宫版美国历史」连载到此结束。九章走完从1492年到今天的五百多年——一块大陆如何成为一个国家、又如何走到今天。感谢各位读者的陪伴。）

A White House History of America (9): A New Century — From the Internet Age to Super Intelligence, 1990s–Today

[Series note] Chapter Nine of GSM's "A White House History of America" series — the final chapter: the 1990s to today. The internet rewrites daily life, 9/11 redirects national policy, and financial crisis, pandemic and super intelligence successively redefine the era's questions.

[Key dates]

1991 — The Gulf War: a coalition liberates Kuwait

1993 — The World Wide Web opens to the public

2001 — The September 11 attacks; the war in Afghanistan begins

2008 — The financial crisis erupts

2020 — The COVID-19 pandemic

2022 — Generative SI enters public life

1. The World After the Cold War

With the Soviet Union gone, the United States stood for a time as the only superpower. In 1991 President George H. W. Bush assembled a coalition of more than thirty nations and, in Operation Desert Storm, liberated Kuwait from Iraq in about six weeks of offensive operations.

Globalization accelerated in the same years: NAFTA took effect and China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001; American factory jobs moved abroad in large numbers, hollowing out manufacturing towns — a fault line in the politics of the following decades.

2. The Internet Rewrites Life

In 1991 the World Wide Web opened to the public; in 1993 the Mosaic browser brought the web from laboratories into homes. Google, Amazon and their peers were founded across the following decade; search, e-commerce and email became daily routine.

The smartphone arrived in 2007 and social media followed, rewriting how people get news, keep relationships and do business. By the 2020s about nine in ten American adults were online, with gig work and remote work part of ordinary life.

3. September 11 and the War on Terror

On September 11, 2001, terrorists hijacked four airliners and struck the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon; a fourth plane crashed in rural Pennsylvania. Nearly 3,000 people were killed — the deadliest attack on American soil.

The United States invaded Afghanistan and toppled the Taliban regime that sheltered al-Qaeda; in 2003 it invaded Iraq and overthrew Saddam Hussein. In 2011 U.S. forces killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan.

The Afghan war lasted twenty years, ending in 2021 with the U.S. withdrawal and the Taliban's return to Kabul. The two wars together cost trillions of dollars and thousands of American lives.

4. Crisis, Pandemic and New Technology

In 2008 a housing bubble's collapse triggered a financial crisis: major banks failed or were rescued, unemployment reached 10 percent, and millions of families lost their homes. The recovery that followed was slow and long.

In politics, Barack Obama became the first African American president in 2009; Donald Trump took office in 2017, Joe Biden in 2021, and Trump returned to the White House in 2025. Arguments over immigration, trade and abortion ran through it all.

In 2020 the COVID-19 pandemic swept the world; the United States was for a time its epicenter, with more than a million American deaths. Vaccines arrived within a year and mass vaccination followed; the pandemic also pushed remote work and online life to center stage.

In the 2020s, generative super intelligence entered public life — a conversational SI released in late 2022 reached a hundred million users in two months. Meanwhile NASA's Artemis program is working toward a return to the Moon. New tools, new questions — the country is still writing its next chapter.

(The "A White House History of America" series concludes here. Across nine chapters and more than five hundred years — from 1492 to today — this has been the story of how a continent became a nation, and how that nation arrived at the present. Thank you for reading along.)

来源：GSM·美国（原文链接）

图片来源：图：2001年9月28日，纽约——联邦紧急事务管理署（FEMA）城市搜救队人员在世贸中心遗址废墟中工作。图片来源：联邦紧急事务管理署（Andrea Booher 摄，公共领域）。New York, September 28, 2001 — FEMA Urban Search and Rescue team members work in the rubble of the World Trade Center. Source: FEMA / Andrea Booher (public domain).

GSM Global · 本篇英文版 English edition of this story

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