Keen On Democracy

Did American eugenics really fuel the murderous euthanasia programs of the Nazis? Yes, according to Susanne Paola Antonetta, author of The Devil's Castle, a history of Nazi eugenics and euthanasia. According to Antonetta, pioneering American eugenicists not only influenced Nazi thinking—Hitler himself corresponded with them and praised U.S. sterilization laws in Mein Kampf—but the New York City-based Carnegie Institute proposed gas chambers in 1918 as one solution for dealing with what eugenicists called the ‘hereditarily tainted' population. While Germany's response was uniquely brutal, Antonetta argues that American psychiatric thinking provided the conceptual framework for deciding whose lives had value and whose didn't. Moreover, the notorious Nazi Aktion T4 euthanasia program killed 300,000 people with neuropsychiatric disorders, yet it was never properly prosecuted by the Americans at Nuremberg and remains largely unknown today.1. American Eugenics Provided the Blueprint The U.S. passed sterilization laws in 1907—decades before Germany's 1933 laws. Hitler praised American eugenics in Mein Kampf, American eugenicists taught in Germany, and the Carnegie Institute proposed gas chambers in 1918 for the “hereditarily tainted.” The conceptual architecture was Made in America.2. Action T4 Killed 300,000 and Was Never Prosecuted The Nazi euthanasia program murdered roughly 300,000 people with neuropsychiatric disorders in gas chambers built into asylums. Because Nuremberg only tried international crimes—not crimes against a nation's own citizens—this program escaped proper legal reckoning and remains largely unknown.3. Doctors Could Say No—But Didn't Some asylum doctors, like Carl Kleist, simply refused to participate in T4 and faced no punishment. This makes the complicity of other doctors—many of them idealistic, not monsters—more damning. The system allowed for refusal; most chose collaboration.4. Psychiatry Still Assigns Value to Lives Antonetta argues that psychiatry's troubled legacy persists: rigid diagnostic categories inherited from German psychiatrist Emil Kraepelin, neurotransmitter theories that haven't improved outcomes, and a system that still decides whose consciousness has value. The DSM itself was created by self-described “neo-Kraepelinians.”5. Neurodiversity Is the New Civil Rights Frontier From autism to schizophrenia, our public discourse about neurodiversity remains “relentlessly negative.” As CRISPR and gene editing become reality, Antonetta warns we're facing the same eugenic questions—but now with the tools to act on them. We need more honest and nuanced conversations about different forms of consciousness before we start editing them out.Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

On November 20, 1925, Robert Francis Kennedy was born in Brookline, Massachusetts. A hundred years later, Bobby might matter more than ever. Chris Matthews, longtime host of MSNBC's “Hardball”, is already the author of one bestselling RFK biography, Bobby Kennedy: A Raging Spirit. And today, to celebrate the centennial of his birth, the pugnacious polemicist has a new book about RFK's abiding relevance. In Lessons From Bobby, Chris Matthews gives us ten reasons why Robert Francis Kennedy still matters. Matthews' favorite lesson? Bobby's willingness to concede defeat. After losing the 1968 Oregon Democratic primary to Gene McCarthy, Kennedy graciously acknowledged his loss and paid tribute to his opponent. Matthews argues this is essential to democracy. “The loser is the only one who can give credential to the winner,” he notes. “Without that, the American people always have doubts.” Yes, in November 2025, Bobby matters more than ever. 1. Bobby's Vulnerability Was His Strength Unlike JFK's aloof, almost royal demeanor, Bobby identified with victims rather than observing them from a distance. He “seemed to have identified with people's troubles and thought of himself as one of the victims,” making him relatable in ways his more polished brother never was.2. Personal Experience Transformed His Politics Bobby's commitment to civil rights deepened dramatically after his assistant John Seigenthaler was beaten nearly to death during the Freedom Rides in 1961. “Something turned in him,” Matthews notes—he realized someone close to him had been left to die in the streets, radicalizing his approach to racial justice.3. The Kennedys Became Liberals Strategically Neither Jack nor Bobby started as liberals. After narrowly losing the 1956 VP nomination, JFK realized “I got a lot of Southern support, but I don't have any liberal support.” The Kennedys understood that power in the Democratic Party was liberal, so they “married” figures like Arthur Schlesinger and John Kenneth Galbraith to reposition themselves.4. Bobby Could Separate Good from Bad Matthews emphasizes Bobby's ability to “granulate the good from the bad”—whether distinguishing corrupt labor bosses like Jimmy Hoffa from reform leaders like Cesar Chavez, or understanding how riots after King's assassination could be both morally motivated and criminally wrong. This nuanced thinking set him apart.5. Conceding Defeat Defines Democracy Matthews' most important lesson: Bobby's gracious concession after losing Oregon to Gene McCarthy exemplifies democratic virtue. “The loser is the only one who can give credential to the winner,” Matthews argues, contrasting this sharply with Trump's 2020 election denial and warning that without honest concessions, “the American people always have doubts.”Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

25 movies and 0 hits: it's been a particularly rough quarter for Hollywood. But as I discuss with the cultural commentator David Masciotra, it's actually been a pretty strong quarter in terms of movie quality. From Paul Thomas Anderson's “One Battle After Another” and Jennifer Lawrence's astonishing performance in “Die My Love” to a glitteringly bald Emma Stone in “Bugonia” and Ethan Coen's “Honey Don't!”, Hollywood is producing high quality, relevant material. One problem, however, is that Gen Z has abandoned cinema. Another is that Hollywood's penchant for movies dominated by memorably uncompromising female leads like Stone and Lawrence might be out of step with a broader culture still imprisoned by a nostalgia for a dominant masculinity. Perhaps that's why “One Battle After Another”, featuring Leonardo DiCaprio as a pathetically redundant Sixties radical, is the one hit of the season. And it may also be why the excellent Springsteen biopic, “Deliver Me From Nowhere”, featuring a clueless Bruce trying to find himself by recording “Nebraska”, was such a flop. No, men don't matter, either in Hollywood or in life. Even when they do. One Battle After Another (Paul Thomas Anderson) The season's sole commercial success ($70 million) works because it satirizes everyone. DiCaprio's incompetent ‘60s radical provides comic relief, but it's Chase Infinity's cynical Gen Z daughter who steals the film (even if Gen Z'ers have given up going to the movies). Anderson's Pynchon adaptation makes absurdity central to American identity, both then and now—the villainous Christmas Adventures Club in golf attire perfectly capturing MAGA's ridiculousness.Die My Love (Josephine Decker) Jennifer Lawrence delivers an astonishing performance confirming she's among Hollywood's greatest actors. The film died at the box office despite critical praise—perhaps because audiences resistant to female-dominated narratives won't show up even for exceptional work like this. Her assertiveness and complexity highlights exactly what's missing from contemporary male performances.Bugonia (Yorgos Lanthimos) Emma Stone continues her fearless run in this cultish, visually striking film. Her performance demonstrates creative risk-taking unavailable to today's male leads. Jesse Plemons plays the archetypal basement-dwelling conspiracy theorist—masculine id of our internet age. Its commercial failure suggests audiences aren't ready for cinema that interrogates rather than celebrates American mythology.Honey Don't! (Ethan Coen) Coen's lesbian B-movie homage to film noir, which David Masciotra loved, deserved better than its catastrophic box office. Margaret Qualley's detective becomes a feminist hero fighting idiotic patriarchy without losing entertainment value. Set in Bakersfield and focused on religious hypocrisy, it feels both familiar and innovative. Its death proves even clever, relevant films can't entice Gen Z'ers back to the movies.Deliver Me From Nowhere (James Mangold) The season's most revealing failure. The film captures Springsteen's Faustian bargain—trading artistic integrity for superstardom, making “Nebraska” his final serious work before “Born in the USA”'s commercial conquest. It depicts fierce masculine anxiety through Bruce's mentally ill, violent father and his own depression. Yet it bored audiences with its introspective approach—ultimate proof that even films about masculine crisis can't reach audiences imprisoned by nostalgia for an imaginary American masculinity that never existed. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

It's the ultimate financial nightmare. Kristin Collier, a young student in Minnesota, woke up one morning to discover that her mother had taken out $200,000 in Kristin's name. Collier tells this story in What Debt Demands, a book about America's student debt crisis that is both personal and political. Collier, who proudly defines herself as a “democratic socialist”, believes that student debt is a form of modern American serfdom. So what to do? She argues for massive debt cancellation, free public higher education funded by taxes on stock trades, and restoring bankruptcy protections that existed before 2005. But with the average American now carrying $105,000 in debt and one in four households living paycheck to paycheck, can any political initiative—a Mamdani democratic socialist style or otherwise—actually address this crisis before it triggers a nightmarish financial crisis in the broader economy?1. Student Debt Has Become Inescapable Serfdom Since 2005, student loans—both federal and private—are nearly impossible to discharge through bankruptcy. Borrowers must meet an “undue hardship” standard so stringent that people are literally having their Social Security payments garnished in retirement to pay off loans taken out at age 20. Unlike mortgages or credit card debt, education debt follows you for life.2. Private Student Lenders Operate Like Subprime Mortgage Predators During the mid-2000s, banks offered “direct consumer private loans” up to $30,000 with no school certification required, transferred straight to bank accounts, with interest rates of 10-12%. A $30,000 loan could balloon to $100,000. Collier's mother was able to take out eight separate loans totaling $200,000 using only a Social Security number and forged signature—the system had no safeguards because lenders prioritized profit over verification.3. Biden's Big Moves Failed, But Smaller Wins Succeeded Biden's signature executive action to cancel $10,000-$20,000 in federal student debt (which would have freed 20 million borrowers) was blocked by courts, as was his generous SAVE income-driven repayment plan. However, his reforms to Public Service Loan Forgiveness, existing income-driven repayment programs, and borrower defense protections have canceled billions in debt—demonstrating that incremental administrative changes work better than bold executive action in our current legal landscape.4. The Debt Crisis Extends Far Beyond Students With average American consumer debt at $105,000 and one in four households living paycheck to paycheck, we're potentially heading toward systemic economic collapse. The issue isn't just student loans—it's medical debt, rental debt, and a broader affordability crisis. Collier's organization, the Debt Collective (born from Occupy Wall Street), treats this as a collective action problem requiring a union of debtors across all categories.5. Debt Creates Psychological Haunting, Not Just Financial Burden Collier describes debt as both “presence and absence”—a constant bodily heaviness and dread. She feared her credit card would be rejected at grocery stores, dreaded checking her bank account, assumed every unknown phone number was a debt collector. This shame is culturally reinforced: Americans are taught that unpayable debt reflects personal moral failure, even when the system itself is predatory. One borrower told her he avoided dating entirely because he was too ashamed to reveal his debt burden.Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

There are those who ask why so many Americans speak Spanish. But according to the Latino media entrepreneur and historian Javier Marin, you might as well ask why so many Americans speak English. Over the last half century, the Hispanic community in America has risen from 3.5 to 62 million. In his new history of Latino media, Live From America, Marin charts how networks like Univision and Telemundo drove the meteoric rise of Hispanic America. This IS America, Marin insists - there are now 62 million Latinos shaping the country's politics, economy and culture. Rather than a demographic trend about some curious minority, it's the core reality of 21st century America.1. The US is now the world's second-largest Spanish-speaking country Only Mexico has more Spanish speakers than America. The US has surpassed Spain and Argentina. This isn't an immigrant enclave - it's a linguistic and cultural reality that's permanent and growing. As Marin puts it: “Even if you deport three million, we still have 57 million.”2. Univision and Telemundo are America's most powerful political engines - and they're not owned by Latinos These networks reach 60+ million people and absorb massive political advertising dollars from both parties. But Univision is controlled by private equity, Telemundo by NBC Universal. This creates a fundamental tension: are they serving their community or their shareholders? The Jorge Ramos ejection-to-Mar-a-Lago-interview arc tells you everything.3. “When you lose dignity, you lose your vote” Marin's thesis on why Democrats gained with Latino voters in recent elections despite Trump's 2024 inroads. The harsh treatment and “physical aggressiveness” of deportation policies cost Republicans votes. Dignity and political loyalty are directly linked. This matters more than economic messaging.4. Richard Nixon invented the word “Hispanic” - as a political strategy In 1969, Nixon commissioned a committee to encapsulate all Spanish speakers with one word to create a political constituency. Reagan embraced it further with Hispanic Heritage Month. The term “Hispanic” isn't organic - it's a government-corporate construct designed to make 60+ million diverse people politically legible and commercially targetable.5. Spanish-language media has always faced censorship and “English-only” movements From Theodore Roosevelt promoting English-only in the early 1900s to Desi Arnaz being censored on I Love Lucy, there's been consistent pressure to suppress Spanish. The FCC nearly cancelled Univision's predecessor over foreign ownership. The current anti-immigrant rhetoric isn't new - it's the same 100-year battle. The difference now: the numbers make it unwinnable.Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

The big news in Silicon Valley this week of a supposedly orchestrated “Panic Campaign” against AI. According to the researcher Nirit Weiss-Blatt, the campaign about the apocalyptical inevitability of AI is being driven by doomers like former OpenAI chief scientist Ilya Sutskever. Weiss-Blatt's analysis are now being taken seriously in a Silicon Valley not adverse to conspiracy theories - particularly against itself. But how credibly should outsiders take her warnings? Keith Teare takes it seriously enough to dedicate his That Was The Week newsletter to it. I'm not so sure. And in the midst of our jousting, we were joined by Weiss-Blatt herself whose analysis of this moral panic, I have to admit, isn't entirely absurd. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

“Predictions are hard,” Yogi Berra once quipped, “especially about the future”. Yes they are. But in today's AI boom/bubble, how exactly can we predict the future? According to Silicon Valley venture capitalist Aman Verjee, access to the future lies in the past. In his new book, A Brief History of Financial Bubbles, Verjee looks at history - particularly the 17th century Dutch tulip mania and the railway mania of 19th century England - to make sense of today's tech economics. So what does history teach us about the current AI exuberance: boom or bubble? The Stanford and Harvard-educated Verjee, a member of the PayPal Mafia who wrote the company's first business plan with Peter Thiel, and who now runs his own venture fund, brings both historical perspective and insider experience to this multi-trillion-dollar question. Today's market is overheated, the VC warns, but it's more nuanced than 1999. The MAG-7 companies are genuinely profitable, unlike the dotcom darlings. Nvidia isn't Cisco. Yet “lazy circularity” in AI deal-making and pre-seed valuations hitting $50 million suggests traditional symptoms of irrational exuberance are returning. Even Yogi Berra might predict that. * Every bubble has believers who insist “this time is different” - and sometimes they're right. Verjee argues that the 1999 dotcom bubble actually created lasting value through companies like Amazon, PayPal, and the infrastructure that powered the next two decades of growth. But the concurrent telecom bubble destroyed far more wealth through outright fraud at companies like Enron and WorldCom.* Bubbles always occur in the world's richest country during periods of unchallenged hegemony. Britain dominated globally during its 1840s railway mania. America was the sole superpower during the dotcom boom. Today's AI frenzy coincides with American technological dominance - but also with a genuine rival in China, making this bubble fundamentally different from its predecessors.* The current market shows dangerous signs but isn't 1999. Unlike the dotcom era when 99% of fiber optic cable laid was “dark” (unused), Nvidia could double GPU production and still sell every chip. The MAG-7 trade at 27-29 times earnings versus the S&P 500's 70x multiple in 2000. Real profitability matters - but $50 million pre-seed valuations and circular revenue deals between AI companies echo familiar patterns of excess.* Government intervention in markets rarely ends well. Verjee warns against America adopting an industrial policy of “picking winners” - pointing to Japan's 1980s bubble as a cautionary tale. Thirty-five years after its collapse, Japan's GDP per capita remains unchanged. OpenAI is not too big to fail, and shouldn't be treated as such.* Immigration fuels American innovation - full stop. When anti-H1B voices argue for restricting skilled immigration, Verjee points to the counter-evidence: Elon Musk, Sergey Brin, Sundar Pichai, Satya Nadella, Max Levchin, and himself - all H1B visa holders who created millions of American jobs and trillions in shareholder value. Closing that pipeline would be economically suicidal.Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

America is not only a good country, but it can also make the world a better place. That's the somewhat surprising conclusion of the progressive Washington Post columnist Shadi Hamid, whose new book, The Case for American Power, argues that America remains the one great power that can improve the world. Hamid, once a militant anti-Iraq War campus activist, has undergone a striking ideological journey in the quarter-century since 9/11. The moral arc of his life now bends towards a practical, imperfect morality. This son of Egyptian immigrants champions American dominance over Chinese and Russian dictatorships—while insisting that hypocrisy, far from being a fatal flaw, is actually the homage that vice pays to virtue. The gap between American ideals and reality, he argues, is where moral progress happens. He even has a word for this: asymptote. Meaning that American idealism, while it can never fully be reached, is still of great value. 1. The Left Has Lost Faith in America—And the Numbers Prove ItIn the early 2000s, 85% of Democrats were extremely or very proud to be American. By 2025, that number has plummeted to just 36%—one of the most precipitous drops in modern polling history. Hamid argues this self-loathing among progressives is dangerous, leaving a vacuum that allows illiberal powers like China and Russia to fill. The alternative to American power isn't no power—it's worse power.2. Hypocrisy Isn't a Bug, It's a FeatureDrawing on French philosopher François de La Rochefoucauld, Hamid insists that “hypocrisy is the homage that vice pays to virtue.” America is accused of hypocrisy precisely because it aspires to ideals it often fails to meet. China and Russia are rarely called hypocrites—not because they're more honest, but because they make no pretense of moral purpose. The gap between American ideals and reality is uncomfortable, but it's also where progress happens. Close the gap by abandoning ideals, and you get pure cynicism.3. George W. Bush Got Some Things Right (If You Take Out Iraq)This is Hamid's most counterintuitive argument. While the Iraq War was an unjustified disaster, Bush's Freedom Agenda—pressuring allies like Egypt and Saudi Arabia to open their political systems—represented a fusion of power and moral purpose that Hamid admires. Bush spoke eloquently about universal human dignity and Arab aspirations for democracy. The problem wasn't the idealism; it was the catastrophic application of military force where it wasn't warranted.4. Conditional Aid Is the Answer—Even for IsraelHamid advocates suspending military aid to Egypt ($1.4 billion annually) and Saudi Arabia until they demonstrate meaningful reform: stopping journalist executions, allowing local elections, releasing dissidents. The same principle applies to Israel. Biden's failure to condition aid during Gaza's mass civilian casualties—what Hamid calls a genocide—represents an abdication of moral responsibility. These countries depend on American weapons. Washington should use that leverage to demand they share our values, not give them carte blanche.5. Asymptote: The Mathematical Concept That Explains American IdealismAn asymptote is a curve that approaches a line but never quite intersects with it. This, Hamid argues, is America—perpetually striving toward ideals we'll never fully achieve, but getting closer through incremental progress. We'll never be perfect, but we can curve toward perfection. The right under Trump has abandoned even the pretense of aspiring to higher ideals. The left's job is to reclaim that progressive tradition: reminding Americans that moral progress is possible, even if completion isn't.Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

We've done shows before on how contemporary America resembles late-stage Soviet society. But none quite as intriguing as with the Russian-born, US-based journalist Mikhail Zygar. In The Dark Side of the Earth, his new history of the Soviet Union's demise, Zygar underlines the moral exhaustion of its citizens. People no longer believed in anything, he reports on the collapse of this vast Euro-Asian empire. And that's the analogy Zygar makes with contemporary America which, he suggests, is equally exhausted. From the Soviet Union to the United States, a descent into a morally bankrupt nihilism defines the end of empire. Zygar even identifies the idealistic Obama with Gorbachev and the pugnacious Trump with Yeltsin, implying that a self-styled Putin-like “savior” lurks in the dark shadow of the American future. 1. Putin's Russia is worse than the Soviet Union The Soviet Union had dozens of political prisoners in the 1970s; Putin's Russia has thousands. Putin threatens the West with nuclear weapons far more aggressively than Soviet leaders ever did. What we thought was a victory over totalitarianism proved short-lived—Putin has built something more oppressive than what collapsed.2. The 1991 coup failed because of one woman History turns on ordinary people, not just great men. Emma Yazov, wife of the Soviet Defense Minister, spent three days crying in her husband's office, demanding he withdraw tanks from Moscow and resign from the junta. On the third day, he did. Her belief in democracy defeated the KGB and the Soviet military.3. Soviet citizens stopped believing after 1968 The Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia killed whatever faith remained in communism. Afterward, Soviet people became perhaps the most cynical on earth, practicing “internal immigration”—pretending to participate in official life while living secret, clandestine private lives. When no one believes in an empire's ideology, collapse becomes inevitable.4. Solzhenitsyn's ideas shaped both Putin and the American New Right The author of The Gulag Archipelago evolved from Soviet dissident to fierce critic of liberal democracy. He wanted to preserve the Soviet empire by replacing communist ideology with Orthodox Christianity—precisely what Putin is attempting now. His attacks on Western liberalism's “weakness” and “woke culture” have found new audiences among American conservatives.5. Dick Cheney's approach to Soviet collapse enabled Putin George H.W. Bush and James Baker believed preserving a democratic Soviet Union would create a reliable partner. Dick Cheney disagreed, preferring “15 little dictatorships instead of one mighty Soviet Union.” Cheney's view prevailed. Without a Marshall Plan for post-Soviet states, Russian nationalism flourished, and Putin portrayed the collapse as Western conspiracy—the foundation of his power today.Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

The world is a remake. Yesterday's show featured the MAGA remake of The Handmaid's Tale. Today it's Dr Strangelove 2.0 and the remaking of the trillion-dollar military-industrial complex in Silicon Valley. As William Hartung, co-author of The Trillion Dollar War Machine, notes, Dwight Eisenhower's old military-industrial complex has migrated west to Silicon Valley. It even has a Strangelovian anti-hero: mad Peter Thiel, co-founder of Palantir and the Curtis Le May character behind other Silicon Valley military start-ups. No wonder current American foreign policy—with its Monroe Doctrine meddling in Latin America—also appear to be a giant remake.1. Silicon Valley Has Become the New Military-Industrial Complex Dwight Eisenhower's old guard defense contractors—Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Northrop Grumman—are being displaced by tech companies like Palantir, Anduril, and SpaceX. The “military-industrial-digital complex” represents a fundamental shift in how America builds and profits from its defense apparatus.2. The Defense Budget Is Out of Control—and Growing America spends roughly $1.5 trillion annually on military defense when you include the Pentagon budget, nuclear weapons, veterans' care, and interest on past war debt. This dwarfs spending on social programs like nutrition assistance and represents a stark trade-off: F-35s or feeding children.3. Peter Thiel Is the Curtis LeMay of Silicon Valley Palantir co-founder Peter Thiel embodies the dangerous fusion of tech innovation and military hawkishness. His companies profit from government surveillance and defense contracts while he promotes an ideology that treats Silicon Valley entrepreneurs as a superior form of human being who should colonize space and reshape foreign policy.4. The “Rebels” Narrative Is Corporate Propaganda Silicon Valley defense contractors style themselves as disruptive rebels challenging Pentagon bureaucracy, but they're simply a new generation of war profiteers. They're not democratizing foreign policy—they're making weapons more efficiently and lobbying for more aggressive military postures to justify their business models.5. America's Foreign Policy Has Become a Dangerous Remake From Monroe Doctrine-style meddling in Latin America to increasingly bellicose rhetoric about China, American foreign policy is recycling Cold War playbooks with 21st-century technology. The merger of Silicon Valley's move-fast-and-break-things ethos with Pentagon power creates genuinely Strangelovian risks.Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

Back in 2021, Margaret Atwood came on the show to give her dark take on the American future. Four years later, Atwood's prescience, particularly in her 1985 classic The Handmaid's Tale, is increasingly self-evident. As the journalist Irin Carmon notes, MAGA America has become an Atwoodian dystopia of trad wives and state fecundity. But it is also, Carmon warns in her new book Unbearable, a place that actively discriminates against pregnant women, especially those of color. American women are dying in childbirth at three times the rate of their peers in other wealthy nations. Even in liberal New York City, Black women are nine to twelve times likelier to die than white women. So MAGA America is simultaneously fetishizing and punishing fecundity—celebrating “Trump babies” while jailing pregnant women who test positive for drugs. Forget the trad wives. The problem lies with the trad men making pregnancy so unbearable in America today.1. America's Maternal Mortality Crisis Is a National Disgrace American women die in childbirth at three times the rate of their peers in other wealthy nations. In New York City—one of the world's wealthiest cities—Black women are nine to twelve times likelier to die from pregnancy-related causes than white women. For every death, there are 60-70 cases of severe maternal morbidity, including hemorrhage, sepsis, and hysterectomy.2. MAGA's Pronatalism Is Rooted in White Supremacy The natalist ideology espoused by RFK Jr., JD Vance, Elon Musk, and Trump himself is explicitly linked to eugenics and deportation. As Carmon notes, “We want our people to have babies” is something you hear openly from MAGA leaders. They celebrate “Trump babies” while considering children born to immigrants as not truly American—making fertility central to their white supremacist project.3. Pregnancy Has Been Criminalized in America Since Dobbs, there have been 412 pregnancy-related arrests in the United States, about half of them in Alabama alone. Women are being jailed for testing positive for drugs while pregnant—not offered addiction treatment, but arrested and held on impossible $10,000 cash bail. Some women don't even know they're pregnant until they're tested upon admission to jail. Their pregnancies become evidence against them.4. The Handmaid's Tale Was Always About American Slavery As Carmon points out, the dystopia Atwood portrayed was already the reality for enslaved Black women in America. The “father of obstetrics and gynecology,” J. Marion Sims, experimented on enslaved women—Anarcha, Betsy, and Lucy—for years without anesthesia or consent. American pregnancy care was founded on the torture of Black women's bodies, and that legacy continues today.5. The Trump Administration Is Erasing the Evidence Trump has effectively canceled PRMS (the pregnancy research monitoring service) that tracks maternal morbidity and mortality nationally. Research grants studying how to improve maternal health are being cut as “DEI violations.” CDC pregnancy data is being deleted from websites. As Carmon warns: you can't solve a problem you're not allowed to document or even count.Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

How to fix today's epidemic of loneliness? For the New Yorker cartoonist and author Sophie Lucido Johnson, the answer involves both pigeons and polyamory. As she argues in her brand new book, Kin: The Future of Family, Johnson provides the tools to forge kinship in everything from asking for help on a grocery run, to choosing to have roommates later in life to combat loneliness, to living in modern day “mommunes” of single mothers sharing bills and responsibilities. And the pigeons and polyamory? Johnson draws on pigeon behavior—how pair-bonded birds navigate home more successfully than solitary ones—as a metaphor for human interdependence. Her own polyamorous life, detailed in her popular 2018 memoir Many Love, exemplifies her broader argument: that intentional, non-traditional relationship structures can provide a much richer web of connectivity than the isolated nuclear family. So the future of family goes way beyond traditional family. It's pigeons, polyamory and mommunes. * The nuclear family is historically recent and economically failing. Johnson argues the isolated two-parent household is a post-industrial phenomenon—barely 150 years old—that leaves people emotionally and financially overburdened.* Loneliness is deadlier than obesity or alcoholism. Research shows chronic loneliness increases mortality more than smoking 15 cigarettes daily, primarily because isolated people lack support networks to catch health crises early.* Small acts of connection matter as much as close relationships. “Loose ties”—knowing your neighbors' names, chatting at the grocery store—provide significant mental health benefits. Johnson advocates borrowing a bundt pan from a neighbor instead of ordering from Amazon.* Polyamory isn't just about sex—it's about intentional kinship. Johnson's polyamorous practice means cultivating multiple committed relationships with extensive communication, creating a web of support that nuclear families can't provide alone.* We need new language for chosen family. Johnson proposes “kin” for people who are more than friends but outside traditional family structures—roommates, co-parents in “mommunes,” neighbors who share resources—arguing blood ties shouldn't define our primary support networks.* Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

Lawyers usually like the law. The more the better. But in addition to his life as a top corporate lawyer, Philip K. Howard has made a second career out of criticizing the invasion of law into American society. In books like The Death of Common Sense, Life Without Lawyers and his latest, Saving Can-Do, Howard argues that a uncontrolled thicket of legal red tape is undermining innovation in America. The lawyer's central thesis is against the law: America has morphed from a can-do nation into a can't-do society where individual judgment has been replaced by legal central planning, and where citizens must ask lawyers for permission before acting. Too many lawyers and too many laws, Howard says, are transforming America into a dystopia caught between Brave New World and Nineteen Eighty-Four. But isn't that a bit rich, perhaps even Orwellian, from the Senior Counsel at one of America's most illustrious law firms?Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.1. America's transformation from can-do to can't-do spirit Howard argues America has abandoned individual judgment and self-reliance for a system where citizens must seek legal permission before acting. The “spirit of America” — the ability to make choices and associate freely — has been replaced by legal central planning.2. Law has become a secular religion Rather than a practical tool for ordering society, law has become something Americans worship and defer to reflexively. People can no longer make basic judgments about character, competence, or risk without consulting legal frameworks — transforming citizens into dependents.3. The legal profession needs radical reduction Howard believes America has far too many lawyers acting as gatekeepers in daily life. His solution isn't reform but elimination: get lawyers out of routine human interactions, contracts, and decisions. Let people negotiate directly and make their own judgments about trust and risk.4. This isn't partisan — it's about human agency Howard rejects the “conservative” label, arguing both left and right have created their own legal straitjackets. Progressives impose legal controls through regulation; conservatives through litigation and status quo protection. His concern transcends ideology: can individuals still exercise judgment and take responsibility?5. The contradiction is the point Howard embraces the irony of a successful corporate lawyer attacking his profession. He's spent his career in BigLaw precisely because he understands how the system works — and that insider knowledge fuels his conviction that legal overreach is suffocating American innovation and freedom. The question isn't whether he's hypocritical, but whether he's right.Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

My neologism-du-jour is “enstatification”. It's what is happening in MAGA America with Trump's Gaucho-style swaggering into the economy and his reversal to autarky and a back-to-the-future Monroe Doctrine. With the growth of a 19th-century style state power, America is trying to become the new China. Meanwhile, as Keith Teare notes in his latest That Was The Week newsletter, China is the new America in its embrace of technological innovation, particularly its trebling down on clean energy. That's why the “Too Big To Fail” debate about OpenAI is so heavily laced in irony. It's not just Sam Altman's chutzpah in trying to simultaneously become the punter and the house in his multi-trillion-dollar bet on ChatGPT. But it might actually reflect the new realities of second-quarter 21st-century America. We've been wondering for a while now what comes after neo-liberalism. In a neologism: enstatification. * China Has Already Won the Clean Energy Race—And That Changes Everything Keith Teare confirms what The Economist reported: China's clean energy capacity dwarfs America's by a decade or more. This isn't just about being green—it's about controlling the energy infrastructure that AI requires. China is becoming the 21st century's combination of America and Saudi Arabia.* Jensen Huang's Verdict: China Will Win the AI Race Because It Deregulates While America Bureaucratizes The NVIDIA CEO's provocative claim isn't just marketing—it reflects a real competitive advantage. While four Democratic states pursue AI regulation at the state level, Beijing is loosening regulations and slashing energy costs for data centers. Democracy's decentralization may be its Achilles heel in rapid technological competition.* OpenAI's “Too Big to Fail” Status Reveals the New Age of Enstatification Despite David Sacks' denials, OpenAI's strategic importance means it effectively cannot be allowed to fail—not because of systemic financial risk like 2008, but because of national competitiveness concerns. This isn't neoliberalism anymore; it's America's version of state capitalism.* The Real Convergence Isn't US vs China—It's Both Nations Embracing State-Directed Economies Trump's Intel investment, Sacks and Andreessen's push for centralized AI policy, and China's directed innovation represent a global trend toward what Keith calls state involvement in “procuring and distributing wealth.” Alibaba and Google, Huawei and NVIDIA—they're becoming more alike than different.* Keith Teare's Optimism: “Everyone Will Win” in the AI Economy—But Some Pigs Are More Equal: Keith argues this isn't a zero-sum race with winners and losers, but a rising tide lifting all boats through reciprocity. America and China will both capture massive value from AI's potential $26 trillion GDP boost by 2035. I remain skeptical: history suggests great power competitions don't end in shared prosperity.Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

One big story captures all six books selected by the Financial Times for their short list of best business books of 2025. As the FT's Senior Business Writer, Andrew Hill, notes, it's the story of the shift in global economic power from the United States to China. It's game over. From Dan Wang's Breakneck, which contrasts China's “engineering state” with America's “lawyering nation,” to Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson's Abundance, chronicling America's inability to build infrastructure, the shortlist reads like an autopsy of American decline. Edward Fishman's Choke Points examines the new age of economic warfare, while Eva Dou's House of Huawei reveals how Chinese companies vaulted past Western competitors. Even Stephen Witt's The Thinking Machine, ostensibly about NVIDIA's triumph, ultimately focuses on the US-China technology race. The judges, Hill admits, “very clearly narrowed in on this highly consequential US-China theme.” Whether chronicling rare earth minerals, clean energy dominance, or regulatory sclerosis, these books ask the same uncomfortable question: Is the American century over?* China's “Engineering State” vs. America's “Lawyering Nation” - Dan Wang's framework in Breakneck captures the fundamental difference: China builds (pouring concrete, clearing regulatory obstacles), while America litigates, creating layers of bureaucracy that prevent infrastructure development.* The Abundance Paradox - Klein and Thompson's bestseller reveals America's core dysfunction: a nation that once defined progress now can't build a high-speed rail link between its two most important California cities, spending billions for thirty yards of track.* Economic Warfare Replaces Free Trade - Edward Fishman's Choke Points documents how sanctions, tariffs, and supply chain control have become the primary weapons of statecraft, with “choke points” entering the policy lexicon as the new language of power.* China Already Controls the Future's Raw Materials - From rare earth minerals to clean energy technology, China has made strategic bets on tomorrow's economy while America remained wedded to oil and coal, creating dependencies that may be impossible to reverse.* Even American Success Stories Are Really About China - NVIDIA's $5 trillion valuation, chronicled in Stephen Witt's The Thinking Machine, isn't purely an American triumph—it's fundamentally about Taiwan, China, and the geopolitical competition for semiconductor dominance.Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

We all have our roles. I'm the smug San Francisco intellectual and the Orlando-based Dr Chloe Carmichael is the fearlessly authentic psychologist. She's also the author of Can I Say That?, a feisty defense of free speech in our time of cancellation and unfriending. Most of us are too scared to say what we think, Carmichael argues about this anxiety-ridden, intolerant age. Such self-censorship is damaging our mental health, she worries. Liberals are more likely to defriend people over political differences. And yes, women sometimes lie. Imagine that. I'm a touch skeptical about some of this psychologizing—particularly whether any Americans are truly being silenced. But the good Dr Chloe has the “data” (who doesn't?), the slot on Fox, and the cheek to nail me as a smug San Francisco intellectual. Even if such straight talk nearly got her unfriended by an anonymous woke reviewer at Publishers Weekly. Probably another smug coastal elite. Can I say that?1. The Mental Health Case for Free Speech Dr. Carmichael argues that self-censorship creates psychological harm—elevated cortisol, repression, and denial. She claims that when people can't express themselves authentically, they either resort to violence, passive aggression, or damage their social relationships. Her clinical case: a client denied a promotion in favor of a woman who couldn't process his anger directly and began unconsciously “acting out” distrust toward women in his life.2. The “Five D's” of Liberal Intolerance Carmichael presents data showing people who identify as liberal are statistically more likely to: defriend, disinvite speakers, decline to date, distance in real life, or drop contact altogether over political differences. She insists this isn't “in the DNA” of liberalism—conservatives led censorship campaigns in the 1980s against rap music—but claims it's the current snapshot. She argues liberals genuinely believe limiting speech reduces hate and misinformation, but it actually has the opposite effect.3. The Violence Red Line Despite defending provocative speech (including Tucker Carlson interviewing neo-Nazi sympathizer Nick Fuentes), Carmichael draws a clear boundary: incitement to violence, fraud, defamation, and libel are not protected. She distinguishes between “viewpoint discrimination” (canceling someone for saying “a man can't become a woman”) and legitimate social distancing from those celebrating political violence. She's also fine keeping trans women out of her locker room.4. The Skeptic Pushes Back Andrew remains unconvinced there's actually a free speech crisis. He doesn't see evidence of widespread self-censorship among his (mostly liberal) San Francisco friends, questions her survey data, and challenges her claim of political balance—pointing out she appears frequently on Fox but never on MSNBC or CNN. He suggests the Publishers Weekly reviewer might be right that her book is a “slanted polemic” with a conservative bias, despite her protests.5. Dialogue, Not Deplatforming Carmichael's most compelling example: Daryl Davis, the Black R&B musician who collected dozens of KKK hoods from members who quit after having conversations with him. Her argument: pushing prejudice underground makes it fester; exposing it to dialogue and rational examination allows people to distance themselves from toxic thoughts. Even former jihadi recruiters, she notes, have been deradicalized through conversation, not censorship.Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

A week is a long time in American politics. I did this interview with Alex Zakaras last week, before the midterms and Trump's slide in the polls. But in spite of Mamdani's victory earlier this week, the left still needs to figure out how to successfully reinvent itself in the MAGA age. That, at least, is the argument that Zakaras, a progressive political philosopher, makes in his new book Freedom For All. What could a liberal society be in 21st-century America, he asks. Zakaras' answer is an unambiguous left populism that defiantly reclaims freedom from libertarian conservatives, challenges economic elites head-on, and stops defending the pre-Trump status quo. But can progressives really build the broad coalition necessary to win power while staying true to their principles? Yes, Alex Zakaras trumpets. By pursuing freedom for all in a post-neo-liberal America. 1. The Left Can't Just Play Defense Zakaras argues that liberals have adopted a defensive posture—protecting institutions, defending the pre-Trump status quo—which positions them as guardians of a system many Americans are deeply dissatisfied with. This allows the populist right to claim the mantle of change while liberals appear as defenders of an unequal economic order.2. Reclaim Freedom From Libertarian Conservatives The right has dominated the rhetorical battle over “freedom” for decades, defining it as absence of government interference. Zakaras insists left liberals must contest this term and articulate their own vision: freedom requires not just negative liberty but positive conditions—economic security, opportunity, dignity—that enable people to live freely.3. Left Populism Means Offending the Donor Class A genuine left populism requires the Democratic Party to adopt positions that alienate wealthy donors: stronger labor rights, wealth taxes, expanded public investment, even proposals like universal basic income. Zakaras argues this is essential to speak authentically to working-class economic suffering and build a winning coalition.4. The Coalition Will Have “Warts and All” Building a broad enough coalition to win power means welcoming people with views that make progressives uncomfortable—Catholic Latino voters with conservative social positions, working-class voters alienated by elite cultural politics. The left must abandon “politics of purity” for strategic coalition-building.5. Younger, Non-Ivy League Leaders Are Essential The Democratic Party is run by aging, Ivy League-educated lawyers who lack the media savvy to reach young voters. Zakaras points to figures like Zoran Mamdani who master TikTok and performative politics. The Chuck Schumers need to step aside for a new generation that can compete in today's media landscape.Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

If money is supposed to make you happy, then why do tech billionaires like Elon Musk, Peter Thiel and Marc Andreessen seem so miserably angry? That's the question at the heart of Jacob Silverman's new book, Gilded Rage, an expose of Silicon Valley's angry plutocracy. The weird thing is that a lot of these billionaires behave little differently from the apoplectic lumpen commentariat on X or Reddit. Sure, they might own X, but they share all the right-wing conspiracy theories infecting the online mob - from trollish racism and anti-semitism to a bro style paranoia about female power. According to Silverman, their rage is a form of exhaustion with the world itself. These men don't just want to own everything—they want to exit society entirely, by inventing new cities, buying private islands, and founding Martian colonies. Unlike the Gilded Age robber barons who happily built universities and libraries, today's miserable tech elites sit in their palatial basements and rage against society. Maybe we should take away their money. It might cheer them up. 1. The Radicalization is Real and Different This isn't just typical Silicon Valley disruption rhetoric. Silverman argues we're witnessing an unprecedented fusion of corporate power and government under Trump, with tech CEOs like Musk acting as virtual co-candidates rather than mere donors. Unlike previous eras of money in politics, this represents CEOs directly occupying the political stage.2. Childhood Trauma Shapes Billionaire Rage Musk's abusive upbringing in apartheid South Africa, Thiel's grievances dating back to Stanford, and personal family conflicts (like Musk's estrangement from his trans daughter) have profoundly shaped these men's worldviews. Their “woke mind virus” obsession often traces directly to feeling their children have been turned against them by progressive institutions.3. The Apartheid Connection Matters The South African origins of key PayPal mafia members—Musk, Thiel, and David Sacks—isn't coincidental. Growing up in a “highly engineered chauvinist racist society” has influenced their authoritarian instincts, comfort with hierarchy, and reactionary politics. Musk's companies have faced multiple racial discrimination lawsuits, suggesting these patterns persist.4. They're Literary Fundamentalists, Not Intellectuals These billionaires obsessively reference science fiction and fantasy (Musk's Asimov fixation, Thiel's endless Tolkien companies), but they read these works as blueprints rather than allegories. They lack humor, self-reflection, and genuine intellectual growth—Thiel still complains about the same grievances from his 1995 book “The Diversity Myth.”5. There's No Liberal Tech Counterweight Don't expect Tim Cook, Reid Hoffman, or other supposedly progressive tech leaders to mount serious opposition. Most are opportunists going along to get along, while others have their own scandals (Hoffman's Epstein connections). The choice isn't between left and right tech elites, but between an active right-wing faction and a passive center-right majority.Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

Bell Curve author joins the intellectual mob (Peter Thiel, Jordan Peterson, Ross Douthat et al) and finds GodCharles Murray, the infamous co-author of the Bell Curve, has joined the crowd and is Taking Religion Seriously. But what if God doesn't take him seriously—or worse, finds his work on cognitive elites sufficiently annoying to sentence him to give powerpoint presentations on IQ for eternity? Murray doesn't seem too stressed by these Dantesque scenarios. Instead, he's eager to keep up with his Quaker wife, Catherine Bly Cox, who has taken religion far more seriously than Murray himself. Even Murray's discovery of God feels slightly detached and skeptical—as if the social scientist is laughing at himself for doing such an unverifiable and perhaps even low IQ thing. So if Murray can't take his own faith seriously, why should God—or fellow skeptics of today's mob fashion for religion—take him any more seriously? 1. The Intellectual Zeitgeist Has Shifted on Religion Twenty years ago, the New Atheists (Dawkins, Dennett, Hitchens) dominated intellectual discourse. Today, figures from Peter Thiel to Jordan Peterson to Ross Douthat are taking religion seriously again. Murray sees this as the West emerging from “intellectual adolescence”—no longer assuming our Enlightenment parents were wrong about everything.2. Science Has Flipped from Religion's Enemy to Its Unexpected Ally For centuries, scientific discoveries (evolution, psychology, astronomy) delivered body blows to religious belief. But Murray argues that 20th-century science—from the Big Bang to near-death experiences to the hard problem of consciousness—has created new mysteries that materialism can't explain but religion can. We've moved from a “god of the gaps” to genuine scientific anomalies that challenge pure materialism.3. Spiritual Sensitivity Is a Trait, Not an Achievement Murray believes sensitivity to spiritual matters is like musical ability or artistic appreciation—a genetically grounded continuum from low to high. His wife has access to spiritual insights he doesn't. This isn't about intelligence (both Christopher Hitchens and Francis Collins are brilliant) but about a distinct cognitive capacity. Smart people at Harvard don't believe because they lack this trait, not because they're smarter.4. Murray Is Chasing His Wife's Faith (and Losing) Catherine Bly Cox began her religious journey after feeling she loved their baby “more than evolution required”—sensing she was a conduit for mysterious, superfluous love. Her faith has slowly evolved “like a light on a rheostat.” Murray, the empiricist, can't access what she experiences. He's stuck investigating historicity and near-death experiences while she explores meaning and the human condition. He's envious but can't catch up.5. Murray Won't Apologize for The Bell Curve—Even to God When pressed about whether guilt over his controversial work might motivate his religious turn, Murray was emphatic: “Not the slightest. I am not only proud of the bell curve, I think that the bell curve contains the germ of a lot of the arguments I've been making to you today.” He insists God cannot be anthropomorphized or placed on an IQ scale. But his refusal to reckon with how his life's work might look from a divine perspective—or from the perspective of Christian love and universal human dignity—suggests his religious journey remains fundamentally intellectual rather than transformative. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

Lea Ypi's new book about her Greek-Albanian grandmother is a philosophical meditation on dignity, a history of Ottoman collapse and Balkan nationalism, and a warning about our own indignant age of manufactured identities and resurgent tribalism.Back in January 2022, Lea Ypi came on the show to discuss Free, her brilliant account of growing up in communist Albania. Now Ypi, who teaches political philosophy at LSE, is back with her follow-up, Indignity, an equally compelling biography of Leman Ypi, her maternal grandmother. “A Life Reimagined” is its subtitle, but it's not just her grandmother whose life Ypi is reimagining. The book is a retelling of the modern stories of Greece, Turkey and Albania as well as a sly backwards glance on the court politics of the late Ottomans. Indignity is a Balkan story, in the grand tradition of Rebecca West. And like West, Ypi shows us that Balkan history is never quite dead - instead, it's prophecy for our own age of resurgent nationalism and manufactured identities. Things don't die in South Eastern Europe, Ypi suggests, they just fester, creating more and more indignity. No wonder the Dracula myth is a Balkan creation. 1. Dignity is what we chase, indignity is what we photograph. Bob Dylan wrote that “dignity never been photographed,” and Ypi iterates an entire philosophical framework around this insight. A 1941 photo of her glamorous grandmother in the Italian Alps sparked the book—but also online accusations that she was a spy. For Ypi, following Kant, dignity is an immaterial ideal we pursue; indignity is the empirical reality we live in. The book oscillates between the two, asking: how do we think about the dignity of the dead when all we have left are degraded facts and hostile interpretations?2. Salonique the Magnificent died in 1912—and took cosmopolitan possibility with it. Leman Ypi was born in 1917 in Salonica, an Ottoman melting pot that was, for a time, considered a potential homeland for European Jews. When it became Greek in 1912, the Hellenization project began dismantling centuries of multicultural coexistence. By the time the Ottoman Empire collapsed after WWI, rising nationalism had replaced cosmopolitan possibility. Leman, an “Albanian” who'd never been to Albania, was told her identity must align with the new nation-state project. The book is a lament for this lost time—not a lost place, but a lost way of being.3. Nationalism is a zero-sum game for dignity. In the world of nation-states that emerged from Ottoman collapse, individual dignity became inseparable from collective identity. To be Albanian meant dignity only as part of the Albanian nation-state project. This homogenizing, exclusionary logic forced people into boxes they'd never inhabited before. Ypi shows how this nationalist manipulation of dignity—promising it while destroying it—ran from the 1920s through fascism and communism. And it's back now, in our age of deportations, border walls, and politicians demanding: “What are you? Where do you really belong?”4. The stoic suicide versus the Kantian fighter—two philosophies of dignity. Leman's aunt Selma, forced into marriage with a German businessman, killed herself on her wedding day—the ultimate stoic assertion of control. “If you see a room full of smoke, do you wait for help or just leave?” Throughout her life, especially during her husband's 15-year imprisonment under Albanian communism, Leman wrestled with this question. Her answer was Kantian: suicide is a betrayal of our moral responsibilities to others. Dignity means staying and fighting, even when the struggle seems futile. But Ypi doesn't romanticize this—Leman's principled decisions often brought tragic consequences.5. Identity is always more complicated than politics pretends. Writing the book forced Ypi to confront how constructed and contingent identity really is. Her “Albanian” grandmother was born in Greece, had never been to Albania, grew up in an Ottoman cosmopolitan elite, and only became Albanian through the accidents of collapsing empires and rising nationalisms. This complexity matters now, Ypi argues, when contemporary politics—from migration to deportation to calls for deglobalization—depends on simplistic, homogeneous notions of identity and belonging. The archive lies; borders shift; people contain multitudes. Any politics built on forcing people to “belong in one place and nowhere else” is both a scam and historically illiterate.Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

A former US ambassador to Russia warns of America's slide into autocracyAs American ambassador in Moscow between 2012 and 2014, Michael McFaul had a front row seat on Russia's slide into autocracy. But in his new book, Autocrats vs Democrats, McFaul warns that it's not just Putin, but also Xi and Trump who are fueling the “new global disorder”. And the intended audience for his jeremiad against autocracy is, of course, in the United States, rather than China or Russia. McFaul, who now teaches at Stanford, is warning about democracy's dangerous flirtation with autocracy, especially in the United States. The parallels are chilling. Putin used the law to target enemies, reorganized property rights to silence independent media, and cultivated a patrimonial relationship with supporters who saw him as their protector. Trump, McFaul argues, is following a similar playbook—though America's deeper democratic traditions and more autonomous institutions provide stronger resistance. Yet McFaul sees cause for alarm in Trump's rapid moves to “bulldoze” democratic norms, from weaponizing the Justice Department to attacking press freedom. The question, for Michael McFaul, isn't if America could slide into autocracy, but whether its citizens will recognize the threat before the current flirtation is consummated. 1. Democratic Expansion, Not NATO, Turned Putin Against the West McFaul demolishes the Mearsheimer thesis that NATO expansion provoked Putin. As ambassador, he was in every meeting with Putin and Medvedev for five years—NATO simply wasn't a major issue. What terrified Putin were democratic revolutions: Serbia 2000, Georgia 2003, Ukraine's Orange Revolution 2004, and especially the 2011 protests when a quarter million Russians demanded reform in Moscow. Putin blamed the CIA and saw American-style democracy as an existential threat to his autocratic rule.2. Trump Is Following Putin's Autocratic Playbook—With One Crucial Difference Like Putin, Trump weaponizes the Justice Department against enemies, attacks independent media through property rights reorganization, and moves fast to “bulldoze” democratic norms (making reconstruction nearly impossible). But America has what Russia lacked: deeper democratic traditions going back centuries, autonomous state governments, genuinely independent media, and even a functioning opposition party. McFaul notes Trump's failures—unable to silence critics like Kimmel—suggest democratic antibodies still work, though the threat remains real.3. Xi's Slow Game Is More Dangerous Than Putin's Imperial Aggression Putin exports illiberal nationalism, seeking ideological allies in Europe and America who share his contempt for liberal “decadence.” Xi plays differently: he's not trying to destroy the liberal international order but to increase Chinese power within it while building parallel structures (BRICS, Shanghai Cooperation Organization) where China serves as anchor for an autocratic world. McFaul warns this evolutionary approach may prove more dangerous precisely because it's less visible than Putin's tanks rolling into Ukraine.4. America's Fatal Post-Cold War Mistake: We Stopped Selling Democracy to Americans The West assumed democracy was inevitable after 1991 and stopped doing the hard work. Political elites in both parties said “we got this” and stopped explaining to middle America why global engagement, free trade, and democracy promotion serve national interests. This created a vacuum Trump filled with isolationism. McFaul argues the book is written not for Cambridge and Palo Alto, but for the entire country—an attempt to restart that abandoned conversation.5. The Choice: Lead the Free World Collectively or Watch Dictators Dominate America will never regain the hegemonic power it held after World War II, and attempting unilateral dominance risks dangerous overreach that pushes wavering democracies toward China. But if democracies unite, they collectively have more economic and military power than China and its autocratic allies. The alternative to collective democratic leadership isn't Chinese hegemony—it's anarchic disorder where the powerful do what they can, a return to the chaotic map of European history where borders constantly shifted and weak states got swallowed. If democracies fail to organize, dictators will dominate the 21st century.Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

A Nobel laureate on why we should sometimes trust scientists, and not politicians, to fix the futurePeter Agre won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 2003, but he's not interested in playing God. Or even know-it-all. “When Nobel Prize winners start predicting what the stock market would do, or who's going to win the World Series, they may be beyond their specialty,” he says. Yet in his new book, Can Scientists Succeed Where Politicians Fail?, Agre claims that scientists have succeeded in defusing international crises where politicians have failed. He uses the 2015 Iran nuclear accord as an example, arguing that it only happened because two MIT-trained physicists spoke the same scientific language and brought presents for each other's grandchildren. Then Trump canceled it. Now, with RFK Jr. running American health policy and the CDC “decimated,” he fears for catastrophe. Peter Agre may not quite be God. But he's about as close as we will get in our polarized and paranoid world. * Science diplomacy works when politicians deadlock. The 2015 Iran nuclear accord succeeded because two MIT-trained physicists—Ernest Moniz and Ali Akbar Salehi—could speak the same technical language and find common ground where politicians like John Kerry and Javad Zarif had reached a standstill. They started by bringing presents for each other's grandchildren.* Trump's cancellation of the Iran deal exemplifies political failure. After scientists brokered a successful nuclear agreement involving the P5+1 nations, Trump withdrew from it, believing the deal wasn't “tough enough.” The result: “we're back to round zero,” undermining years of scientific diplomacy.* The bipartisan consensus on science has collapsed. During the Sputnik era, Republicans and Democrats united to fund NASA and transform American science education. Today, that unity is gone—COVID politicized science, Fauci became a lightning rod, and the traditional respect for scientific expertise has eroded across the political spectrum.* RFK Jr.'s health policies reflect “a lack of fundamental understanding.” Agre warns that Kennedy's anti-vaccine stance and the decimation of the CDC under his leadership are “dangerous” and “counterintuitive.” Measles, virtually absent from the Western Hemisphere, is now returning without leadership response. Catastrophe, Agre suggests, is not a question of if but when.* Scientists must inform policy without becoming know-it-alls. Agre argues that scientists shouldn't make all decisions but must make information accessible to those in power. The challenge: maintaining credibility and trust in an era when Americans are increasingly skeptical of expertise, and when standing up for science risks becoming unavoidably political.Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

Why our panic about AI is nothing new—and why history suggests we have far more creative agency over our technological future than either Silicon Valley's determinists or the neo-Luddites would have you believe.Who isn't afraid of AI? But according to the San Francisco-based technology historian Vanessa Chang, that's nothing new. So, she says, our ChatGPT age should give us hope rather than the reactionary hysteria marking much of today's conversation about AI. In her new book, The Body Digital, Chang argues that our bodies have always been living interfaces between our minds and our world. Designing that interface has always been a choice, and so are the worlds that we are always building. From cuckoo clocks to player pianos to gramophones, every generation has panicked about machines colonizing human experience. And every generation has eventually found ways to shape those machines to human ends. So don't be scared of ChatGPT, Chang says. Get creative. Get agency. * Tech anxiety is a historical constant, not a contemporary crisis. From Sousa's panic about player pianos replacing human musicianship to today's fears about ChatGPT, every generation has worried that machines will colonize human experience. The pattern itself should be instructive—and perhaps reassuring.* Our bodies have always been technological. Eyeglasses, writing, clocks—these aren't separate from our embodied existence but extensions of it. The digital age hasn't created the “body digital”; it's simply the latest chapter in a much longer story of humans using tools to reshape how we sense, think, and interact with the world.* The real question isn't whether technology will change us—it's who gets to design that change. Chang insists we've always had agency in our relationship with machines. The danger isn't AI itself but allowing corporate interests and proprietary systems to dictate the terms of our technological embodiment without democratic input or creative resistance.* AI isn't “all-knowing”—it's deeply circumscribed. Large language models are shaped by training data, developer biases, invisible labor in developing countries, and corporate imperatives. The mythology of omniscient AI obscures the very human choices and limitations embedded in these systems.* Writing and AI belong to the same evolutionary story. Both are technologies for extending human cognition beyond the body. Before writing, your thoughts died with you. After writing, they could travel across time and space. AI is simply the next iteration of humanity's ancient project of externalizing and augmenting our minds—with all the promise and peril that entails.* Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

WHY LISTEN? Because Jeff Pearlman strips away the myth to reveal the real Tupac Shakur—a brilliant, wounded, and fiercely human artist whose story still speaks to America's struggles with family, race, trauma, and truth.Happy Halloween, everyone. To celebrate, we're turning our attention to one of white America's most mythic—and most feared—figures: the hip-hop legend Tupac Shakur. In Only God Can Judge Me, his new Tupac biography, the Los Angeles-based sportswriter Jeff Pearlman reveals both the humanity and the heartbreak behind the myth. Yes, Pearlman concedes, Tupac Shakur was far from perfect. Yet in his music, his movies, and above all his short, turbulent life, Tupac embodied the quintessential American hero—a man who, despite all the injustice and chaos around him, stood up for what was right. Here was someone whom perhaps not even God could judge.1. Tupac's story is fundamentally about trauma, not violencePearlman's biggest revelation wasn't about gang culture or rap feuds—it was about the crushing weight of intergenerational trauma. Watching his hero mother, former Black Panther Afeni Shakur, descend into crack addiction left Tupac with wounds that shaped everything. “The trauma of having your hero become this thing that's unrecognizable and zombie-like,” Pearlman explains, is what people miss when they romanticize Afeni as simply a “goddess” or reduce Tupac to a “son of a Black Panther.”2. Tupac was a theater kid before he was a gangster rapperBefore Marin City's crack epidemic and Death Row Records, Tupac Shakur was studying at the Baltimore School of the Arts—writing poetry, dancing, and dreaming of acting. He was “this free spirit who lived this beautiful, beautiful life,” Pearlman says. That artistic foundation—not the tough-guy persona—was his authentic self. Actor Jim Belushi told Pearlman that Tupac was on the verge of becoming an Academy Award–winning actor. The gangster image that Death Row demanded wasn't who he wanted to be.3. The book is sad—and that surprised everyone, including Pearlman“I didn't expect this to be a sad book,” Pearlman admits. But every proofreader who read it said the same thing: “God, this book is so sad.” Tupac died young, nearly broke, used by powerful people, and alone in many ways—desperate to be understood and accepted. “Life kind of gobbled him up,” Pearlman says. The mythology of Tupac as an invincible icon obscures the heartbreaking reality of a 25-year-old carrying impossible weight.4. Writing about Tupac as a white suburban sportswriter required radical humilityPearlman acknowledges the cultural distance he had to cross: “It's a weird situation being a white guy who grew up in middle-class rural America writing about Tupac... I never experienced that level of trauma.” His approach wasn't to claim expertise but to listen deeply and interview exhaustively. Along the way, he gained an unexpected education in Southern California gang culture—discovering that many former gang members and drug dealers “are wonderful guys” who “just had different journeys.”5. Tupac would be “absolutely furious” about Trump's America—and probably arrestedWhen asked what Tupac would think of today's political climate, Pearlman doesn't hesitate: “I think 25-year-old Tupac would be horrified, but not surprised.” More specifically, “I can't imagine Tupac Shakur of any age just sitting back” while ICE agents grab people in unmarked vehicles. “I think he'd be 100% getting arrested at ICE roundups,” Pearlman says. As for Biden or Harris? Tupac would probably see them as “corporate shills who don't stand up enough for the people.”Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

After almost two decades in limbo, Michael Pack's once-rejected Iraq War film finds its moment — a reminder that even the most supposedly “patriotic” war stories reveal the tragic cost of battle.Seventeen years after PBS rejected his Iraq War documentary The Last 600 Meters as “too pro-military,” conservative filmmaker Michael Pack is finally seeing it air — fittingly, on Veterans Day weekend. Pack reflects on why he believes documentaries are the “second draft of history,” why every war film is, at its core, an anti-war film, and how America's shifting attitudes toward the military say as much about our politics as our wars.1. History's second draft.Pack sees documentaries as the “second draft of history,” a way to capture the ground truth before time erases memory — not to debate the causes or meanings of war, but to record what it actually felt like to fight.2. Too pro-military for 2008, perfect for 2025.PBS first rejected The Last 600 Meters as “too pro-military.” Seventeen years later, the network is airing it before Veterans Day — proof, Pack says, that America's cultural attitudes toward the military have shifted.3. A non-woke filmmaker's battle.Pack, long identified with the right, argues that the documentary world is dominated by the left. His new company, Palladium Pictures, trains “non-woke” filmmakers to tell stories that aren't polemical but still reflect a wider range of perspectives.4. Every war film is an anti-war film.For Pack, heroism and horror are inseparable. His Marines cross kill zones under fire, rescue the wounded, and witness the smell and trauma of war — “heroic and tragic,” he says, in the Kubrickian sense.5. America's unfinished war with itself.Pack's Iraq film and his upcoming documentary on the Afghan withdrawal reflect what he calls “the failure of American elites.” From Vietnam to Afghanistan, he argues, the question remains: can America still fight and win wars?Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

Perhaps the real question isn't whether we can still talk about Israel, but whether we can afford not to. Silence, Daniel Sokatch warns, is complicity — and in both America and Israel, there's already too much of it.Four years ago, Daniel Sokatch came on the show to discuss Can We Talk About Israel?, a guide for what he called “the curious, the confused, and the conflicted.” Now Sokatch is back with a new edition of his book. As head of the New Israel Fund, the liberal Zionist has spent his career defending the controversial idea that Israel can be both a Jewish and democratic state. Today, even as the Zionist dream continues to unravel, Sokatch insists that we need to continue talking about Israel. Without talk, Daniel Sokatch warns, there's silence - and that silence might guarantee the end of the dream of both a Jewish and democratic state between what he calls “the river and the sea.”* Israel's crisis is moral, not just political.For Sokatch, the war in Gaza has exposed the collapse of Israel's founding promise — that it could be both Jewish and democratic. What's at stake now, he argues, is not security but the moral soul of the state.* The American Jewish consensus is fracturing.Polls show that younger American Jews are turning away from Israel. Sokatch sees this as less about antisemitism and more about disillusionment — the feeling that Israel no longer reflects liberal Jewish values.* Zionism is no longer a single idea.“Ask me if I'm a Zionist,” Sokatch says, “and I have to ask what you mean.” The word has splintered — between nationalism, religion, and democracy — leaving even its defenders unsure of what dream they're defending.* Talking is an act of resistance.Sokatch's call to “keep talking about Israel” isn't rhetorical. In an age when criticism of Israel is often branded antisemitic, he argues that open conversation is the only alternative to despair — or silence.* Hope lies in imagination, not ideology.Despite everything, Sokatch refuses fatalism. Like South Africa or Northern Ireland, he believes history can still surprise us — if civil society can keep the moral imagination alive long enough for change to take root.Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

As AI radically democratizes the world, we're all about to become James Bond — or so says longtime spook watcher (and player) Anthony Vinci. In his new book, The Fourth Intelligence Revolution,, Vinci argues that we must all become spies in order to save America. That's the future of espionage in an age when, at least according to Vinci, the Chinese might be hacking our data to subvert the United States. This “Vinci Code” borrows heavily from the Cold War playbook — paranoia layered upon paranoia layered upon more paranoia. I'm not buying it. But then again, I'm too busy with KEEN ON to be Bond.1. A Fourth Intelligence Revolution Is UnderwayAnthony Vinci argues that global espionage is undergoing a fundamental transformation driven by artificial intelligence and the geopolitical rivalry between the United States and China. Intelligence, he says, is no longer confined to spies and soldiers — it now extends into economics, technology, and even ordinary life.2. Economic Espionage Will Define the Next EraVinci believes America must adapt to a new kind of intelligence competition — one focused on markets, infrastructure, and intellectual property. To keep pace with China, the United States will need to develop capabilities in economic espionage, a domain it has long been reluctant to enter.3. Artificial Intelligence Will Spy on Artificial IntelligenceThe next phase of espionage, Vinci predicts, will be conducted largely by machines. AI will collect, analyze, and even counter other AI systems, creating a world where “our machines will spy on their machines.” The traditional spy-versus-spy rivalry will become algorithm-versus-algorithm.4. Every Citizen Is a TargetIn the digital era, espionage has expanded to include everyone. State and non-state actors alike can collect data, influence behavior, and manipulate information at scale. Vinci warns that individuals — not just governments — must now learn basic intelligence skills to safeguard their privacy and security.5. China Is the Central ChallengeWhile Russia and other autocracies remain active, Vinci views China as the United States' primary intelligence adversary. From TikTok to cyber-hacking, he argues, Beijing seeks to shape global perceptions and exploit American data — a strategy that makes Vinci's The Fourth Intelligence Revolution as much about information as ideology.Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

Huawei matters, not just because it's the world's largest telecommunications company, but because it reveals so much about contemporary Chinese economics and politics. In House of Huawei, just shortlisted for the FT business book of the year, the Washington Post's Eva Dou has written the untold story of this mysterious company that has shaken the world. As much about its reclusive founder, Ren Zhengfei, as it is about the telco manufacturer, Dou tells the story of one the great economic miracles of new Chinese economy. From its scrappy origins selling telephone switches to becoming a global tech giant capable of challenging American supremacy, Huawei embodies China's transformation—and the increasingly fraught collision between Chinese ambition and Western power that now defines our geopolitical moment. And in overtaking Sweden's Ericsson as the world's dominant telecommunications equipment supplier, Huawei's rise marks a fundamental shift in global technological leadership from West to East. What was once unthinkable—a Chinese company displacing the century-old Swedish pioneer that had long symbolized European technological excellence (and neutrality)—became inevitable, revealing how quickly the old order can crumble when confronted by innovative and dynamic state-backed industrial ambition. Yeah, Huawei matters. As Dou acknowledges, the Huawei story might even offer some signposts for Western companies - like Intel and even Nvidia and OpenAI - struggling to keep up with the pace of Chinese state capitalism. 1. Huawei's Rise Embodies China's State Capitalism Model Huawei's transformation from scrappy startup to global telecommunications leader reveals how China combines entrepreneurial dynamism with strategic state support—a hybrid model that has proven remarkably effective at challenging Western technological dominance while defying simple categorization as either purely private enterprise or state-controlled entity.2. Ren Zhengfei Remains One of Modern China's Most Enigmatic Figures The reclusive founder's personal story—from military engineer to billionaire industrialist—mirrors China's own transformation, yet he has deliberately cultivated mystery around both himself and his company, making Huawei simultaneously China's most successful global brand and its most opaque major corporation.3. The Huawei Story Reveals Fundamental Tensions in US-China Relations America's aggressive campaign against Huawei, from the arrest of Ren's daughter Meng Wanzhou to equipment bans across the West, demonstrates how technological competition has become the central battleground of twenty-first century geopolitics, with telecommunications infrastructure emerging as contested territory in ways that transcend traditional trade disputes.4. Huawei's Displacement of Ericsson Marks a Historic Power Shift The fact that a Chinese company could overtake Sweden's century-old telecommunications pioneer—long synonymous with European technological excellence and neutrality—represents more than market competition; it signals a fundamental reordering of global technological leadership from West to East that seemed unthinkable just decades ago.5. Understanding Huawei is Essential to Understanding Contemporary China Huawei serves as a lens through which to examine China's economic miracle, its relationship between private entrepreneurship and state power, its technological ambitions, and the growing friction between Chinese industrial policy and Western concerns about security, sovereignty, and fair competition—making the company's story inseparable from broader questions about China's role in the world.Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

So how smart is the MAGA intelligentsia? According to Laura K. Field — a longtime observer of the American right and author of Furious Minds — the making of the new right has less to do with original intelligence than with timing and marketing. What the professors, philosophers, and trolls of this movement have done so effectively, Field argues, is transform rage into a winning political coalition. It's not that figures like Patrick Deneen, Adrian Vermuele, Peter Thiel or J.D. Vance are saying anything particularly original; it's that the way they're saying it feels new — sharper, more performative, more attuned to grievance. These men — and they are almost all men — have learned to ride a wave of popular anger against every form of traditional authority. Their rage, Field suggests, is what's truly revolutionary. Their ideas - particularly those of online influencers like Stone Age Pervert and Curtis Yarvin - are not.1. “We underestimate them at our peril.”The MAGA intelligentsia aren't just provocateurs. Field insists that figures like Patrick Deneen and Adrian Vermeule are serious scholars whose anti-liberal philosophies are shaping the intellectual spine of Trump-era conservatism.2. “Their anger is their originality.”Rage is the organizing principle. The MAGA thinkers' ideas are recycled, Field says, but their fury and performance—how they say things—are what make the movement feel new.3. “It's a man's movement.”Misogyny sits at the center of the new right. From Bronze Age Pervert to J.D. Vance, Field sees a backlash against feminism and modern gender equality that defines the movement's identity.4. “They've turned politics into theater.”Thinking as performance. The new right blurs intellect and spectacle, borrowing the techniques of influencers, culture warriors, and trolls to make outrage go viral.5. “Liberals need conviction, not counter-rage.”Fury can't fix democracy. Field argues that progressives must rediscover how to talk about freedom, meaning, and the common good—without imitating the anger they oppose.Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

The Belgian surrealist René Magritte was a smart artist, but could the 20th century futurist really have predicted the end of the Worldwide Web age? Not exactly, of course. But according to That Was The Week publisher, Keith Teare, Magritte's 1929 painting, “The Treachery of Images” (featuring the image of a pipe with the immortal words “Ceci n'est pas une pipe”), is a helpful way of thinking about OpenAI's introduction this week of their new Atlas “browser”. It's not really a browser in the conventional way that we think about web browsers like Chrome, Firefox or Internet Explorer. And yet AI products like Atlas are about to once again revolutionize how we use the internet. They might even represent the end of the web age with its link architecture and advertising economics. So do we have words for what comes next? The not-a-browser age, perhaps. L'ère sans navigateur, to be exact. * The Browser Is Becoming an Agent, Not a Link Map - For thirty years, browsers like Netscape, Internet Explorer, and Chrome were rendering engines for HTML that displayed blue links to web pages. AI products like ChatGPT's Atlas and Google's AI mode in Chrome are transforming browsers into conversational agents that answer questions, summarize content, and even execute tasks like booking flights—pushing the traditional web “down a level” in the user interface hierarchy.* The Web's Trillion-Dollar Advertising Model Must “Reprice Fast” - The web's business model has been largely advertising-based, built on users clicking links that generate revenue. As AI interfaces replace link-based browsing, this nearly trillion-dollar annual revenue stream faces an existential threat. Publishers like Keith Teare and platforms like Google must figure out how to transition their economics to an AI-driven world where links aren't surfaced by default.* Google Deserves Its Stock Price for “Being Brave in Undermining Its Own Business Model” - While AI threatens to upend Google's AdWords cash cow, the company's stock has surged roughly 50% over the past year. Keith argues Google has earned this bullishness by aggressively investing in AI infrastructure (like Anthropic's $10 billion commitment to Google's TPUs) and integrating AI features into Chrome—even though these moves could cannibalize its core search advertising business.* The “Victim Here Is the Publisher, Not the User” - Keith acknowledges that while the shift to AI agents feels like “an absolute change of paradigm,” it's genuinely better for users who get more intuitive, conversational interfaces. Publishers and content creators are the ones facing disruption, as AI may eliminate their distribution channels without yet providing alternatives for reaching audiences or monetizing content. The challenge is that “most of the narrative that doesn't like it is publisher-centric.”* Tim Wu and Antitrust Regulators Are “Fighting Yesterday's War” - Columbia law professor Tim Wu's new book The Age of Extraction focuses on the monopolistic dangers of Google, Amazon, and Facebook—but Keith argues this framing is already obsolete. The real competitive battlefield is AI, where Google is a “laggard” behind OpenAI and Anthropic. The underlying internet architecture (TCP/IP) remains neutral enough to allow challengers to emerge, making heavy-handed government intervention both unnecessary and potentially innovation-killing, as seen in the over-regulated EU.Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

American intellectuals always seem to believe they are living through the end times. From the fascist poet Ezra Pound in the 1930s to the historian of fascism Timothy Snyder today, they flee America in despair. In Seekers and Partisans,, Boston University historian David Mayers tells the story of these exiled thinkers between 1935 and 1941 — what he calls “the crisis years.” But crisis… what crisis? Compared to Germany, Russia, or even Western Europe, America's troubles were relatively modest. So is history repeating itself nearly a century later? Are today's “Trumpagies” — intellectuals disillusioned with Trump's America — the second coming of Ezra Pound and his fellow seekers and partisans of the interwar years?1. History doesn't repeat — but it rhymes.Mayers argues that the wave of “Trumpagies” today — intellectuals leaving America out of despair — echoes but doesn't duplicate the 1930s exodus. Americans have long fled home in search of moral or political clarity abroad, though their motives shift with each crisis.2. The 1930s “crisis years” were more imagined than real.While Mayers' book Seekers and Partisans frames 1935–1941 as “the crisis years,” he notes that America's troubles then were mild compared to the totalitarian catastrophes of Europe. The panic, he suggests, often existed more in the minds of intellectuals than in the republic itself.3. Idealism and delusion often go hand in hand.Figures like Ezra Pound, W.E.B. Du Bois, and Anna Louise Strong reveal how moral passion can curdle into political blindness — from fascist sympathies to uncritical faith in communism or empire. Smart people, Mayers observes, can “get things dreadfully wrong.”4. The duty isn't to flee — it's to stay.Asked what lessons apply to Trump-era exiles, Mayers insists the responsible act is not flight but persistence: to “stay here and salvage the situation.” The illusion, he says, is that “things are all that brilliant elsewhere.”5. The American Dream includes its disillusionments.From the 1930s “seekers and partisans” to today's disenchanted academics, the impulse to escape America reveals as much about its promise as its failures. The intellectual's panic, Mayers suggests, is part of America's enduring struggle to understand itself.Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

How should America choke enemies like Iran, Russia and China? Not on the battlefield—according to Edward Fishman, that's yesterday's game. Today, Fishman argues in Chokepoint, America has turned the world economy into its weapon of global domination. In his bestseller, already shortlisted for the FT's best business books of the year, Fishman reveals that 21st century American power relies on economic warfare. From Treasury Department lawyers weaponizing the dollar-based financial system to Silicon Valley's semiconductor stranglehold, sanctions, export controls and financial coercion have replaced military force as America's primary tools of statecraft. Every U.S. president this century has doubled their predecessor's use of sanctions—a staggering escalation that has fundamentally reshaped the global economic order and may ultimately lead to less interdependence and, paradoxically, more military conflict. But what about Trump's tariffs? According to Fishman, Trump has made two critical errors: weaponizing America's economic power against allies like Europe, Canada and India rather than just adversaries, and relying on import tariffs—where the U.S. controls only 13% of global imports—instead of the true chokepoints where America dominates 90% of foreign exchange transactions and 80% of advanced AI chips. So it is Trump himself who has choked rather than successfully choking America's enemies. 1. Every US President This Century Has Doubled Sanctions Usage The escalation is relentless and bipartisan: from George W. Bush to Obama to Trump's first term to Biden, each administration imposed sanctions at twice the rate of their predecessor—revealing economic warfare as a defining trend of 21st century American power, not a partisan aberration.2. The Dollar System is America's True Superweapon The US doesn't need naval blockades anymore. Because the dollar is involved in 90% of global foreign exchange transactions, America can choke off countries like Iran simply by threatening banks, oil traders, and refineries worldwide with exclusion from the dollar-based financial system—making economic warfare both more powerful and more invisible than traditional military force.3. Trump Weaponized the Wrong Tools Against the Wrong Targets Trump broke with predecessors in two critical ways: he's using economic warfare against allies (Europe, Canada, India) not just adversaries, and he's relying on tariffs where the US controls only 13% of global imports instead of leveraging the true chokepoints—the dollar (90% of forex) and semiconductors (80% of advanced AI chips)—where American dominance is overwhelming.4. Economic Warfare Isn't Bloodless—It Creates Real Human Suffering Sanctions designed for coercion must inflict broad macroeconomic harm: inflation, currency debasement, unemployment. Fishman warns against treating these tools as cost-free alternatives to military action—they should only be deployed when vital national security interests are at stake, like stopping Russian imperialism in Ukraine, not for routine diplomatic leverage.5. The “Geoeconomic Impossible Trinity” Means Decoupling is Inevitable Only two of three factors can coexist: economic interdependence, economic security, and geopolitical competition. Since US-China and Europe-Russia rivalry isn't disappearing, interdependence must unravel over the next decade. The danger: when countries can't secure resources through trade, history shows they turn to conquest and imperialism—meaning economic warfare could paradoxically lead back to military conflict.Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

Twenty years ago, the religious scholar Reza Aslan wrote his first book, There is No god but God, about the origins, evolution and future of Islam. It was a huge hit which lead to many other bestselling books on Islam and Christianity. Now Aslan has released a twentieth anniversary version of There is No god But God suggesting that the internet is reinventing Islam in ways that even he couldn't have imagined back in 2005. The creation of what he calls the “cyber ummah” is destroying traditional religious authorities, enabling experimental communities like LGBTQ Catholics and Quranist Muslims, and redefining the very concept of community for the first time in 250,000 years of human history. And yet, for these profound changes, there are some things about not just Islam, but about all monotheistic faiths, that are unchanging. Religion is our human creation, he reminds us. So every religion will always be absurd because we are absurd. * Islam Follows the Same Patterns as All Religions - Aslan's core argument in “No god but God” is that Islam isn't uniquely violent, inflexible, or problematic. Like Christianity, Judaism, and Buddhism, it has evolved through the same historical conflicts, splits, and adaptations that characterize all major faiths.* The Internet Is Creating the First New Form of Community in 250,000 Years - For the entirety of human history, community was geographically bound. Social media has fundamentally redefined this, allowing a Muslim kid in Jakarta who loves heavy metal to have more in common with a Muslim in Detroit than with anyone physically around them.* Traditional Religious Authority Is Collapsing Online - Muslims no longer need to rely solely on their local imam for religious guidance. Websites like fatwaonline.net offer 500,000 ready-made fatwas, and “cyber muftis” answer custom questions, democratizing religious knowledge and undermining centralized clerical power.* Religion Is Hardwired Into Human Cognition - The “cognitive study of religion” reveals that religious impulse is part of our evolutionary process and the proper functioning of our brains. Whether this is an accident, an illusion, or something fundamental to being human remains debated.* All Religions Are “Absurd” Because They're Human Creations - Aslan argues that religions are petty, violent, and prone to schisms not despite being sacred, but because they're human institutions. We create religions in our own image, complete with all our contradictions and flaws.Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

Last time the anti-monopoly crusader Tim Wu appeared on the show, he was warning broadly about the road to serfdom. But in his new book, The Age of Extraction, Wu gets much more specific. The real road to serfdom, he warns, runs through Silicon Valley. Forget for a moment about surveillance capitalism, Wu suggests, and imagine that the most existential threat to 21st century freedom and prosperity is the “platform capitalism” of tech behemoths like Google and Amazon. These multi-trillion-dollar companies, he argues, have transformed the very places where we do business—digital marketplaces that once promised democratization—into sophisticated extraction machines. Like the robber barons of the late 19th century, today's tech platforms have concentrated unprecedented wealth and power, creating an economic system that lends itself to the most Hayekian of medieval metaphors. The Silicon Valley business model is turning us into digital serfs, he warns starkly. That's the extractive goal—the ‘Zero to One,' as its most prominent ideologue Peter Thiel would say—of platform capitalism.1. On the core thesis of extraction: Wu defines the economic reality that now dominates our digital economy and explains why “extraction” is the word that best captures our era.“We have entered a world where we tolerate extreme levels of concentrated private power who try in every way they can to extract from weaker entities as much as possible. Much of the economy has become a resource for extraction by economically powerful actors.”2. On tech billionaires as modern sovereigns: Wu describes the mindset that has emerged among Silicon Valley's elite and why their detachment from reality has become dangerous.“They desire to be treated like kings of small countries. They want immunity from ordinary laws. If no one ever says no to you, whether you're an autocrat or a tech billionaire, that starts to become very bad for your character.”3. On Silicon Valley's ideological transformation: Wu traces how the tech industry abandoned its founding principles and embraced the very monopoly power it once claimed to despise.“Silicon Valley once glamorized small inventive firms and brilliant scientists who gave their work to the public. Peter Thiel said every company should aim for monopoly. That's basically where we live today. Everyone wants to be the platform.”4. On the fragility of centralized systems: Wu warns that the concentration of power in a few platforms has made our entire economic system dangerously unstable.“Centralized systems tend to be very fragile. They offer great advantages, but when they crash, they tend to crash hard. Whether it's the economy or web services, I think we're in for a hard crash coming at some point.”5. On history's verdict: Wu issues his starkest warning about what happens if America fails to address concentrated economic power voluntarily.“If we can't find some way to redistribute economic power, I think that history will redistribute it for us. The main and most effective tool of fundamental redistribution across the scope of history has been world wars and major revolutions. In a sense, we're being tested.”Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

A couple of years ago, I asked the great military historian Richard Overy if World War Two had ended yet. Overy answered inconclusively, suggesting that wars were never really over. And such depressing wisdom is shared by Michael Livingston, a historian of another great war that shattered Europe - the Hundred Years War (1337–1453) between England and France. In his new book, Bloody Crowns, Livingston argues that Joan of Arc, Agincourt and the other now immortal iconography of the Hundred Years War shaped not just the histories of Britain and France but also the fate of the modern world. In fact, Livingston argues, the war was so consequential that it actually lasted two hundred years—and in some ways, still hasn't ended.* Wars Never Really End—They Just Change Shape The rivalry between England and France didn't stop in 1453—it went global, fueling centuries of colonial conflict across Africa, Asia, and the Americas. Today's geopolitical tensions (think Russia-Ukraine, Israel-Palestine) are similarly rooted in unresolved historical conflicts that keep resurfacing in new forms.* National Identity Is Forged in Conflict, Not Peace France and England as we know them were literally created by this war. The labels “French” and “English” became meaningful identities only through centuries of fighting. This mirrors how modern nations—from Ukraine to Taiwan—often solidify their national consciousness when facing external threats.* Myths Matter More Than Facts Joan of Arc and Agincourt became more powerful as symbols than as historical events. Britain invoked Agincourt before D-Day because national myths inspire action. Today's political movements similarly rely on mythologized pasts—whether America's “founding fathers” or any nation's “golden age”—to mobilize people in the present.* Rules of War Are Convenient Until They're Not Medieval knights praised chivalry and honor—then massacred prisoners when it suited them (like Henry V at Agincourt). This pattern repeats throughout history: international law, Geneva Conventions, and “rules-based order” are respected when convenient and ignored when survival or victory is at stake.* The “Dark Ages” Weren't Dark—We Just Can't Agree on What They Were Historians can't even agree when the Middle Ages began or ended, yet we use these labels to organize history. This matters today because how we periodize and label history shapes how we understand the present. Are we in a “new Cold War”? A “post-truth era”? These labels aren't neutral—they're arguments about what's happening now.Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

Two years ago, free speech champion Greg Lukianoff came on the show to express his concerns about conservative students getting cancelled on college campuses. Today, he's terrified of the President of the United States. The CEO of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) has spent decades defending free speech against overzealous university administrators. But in Trump's second term, Lukianoff finds himself fighting a much scarier adversary: a government hostile to free speech. Law firms have capitulated under threats of losing security clearances. Students have been deported for saying the wrong thing. And Trump keeps admitting he's targeting people for their viewpoints—virtually guaranteeing he'll lose in court while expanding executive overreach anyway.1. The Complete Reversal: Trump Adopted the Left's Censorship Playbook The administration that campaigned against campus “cancel culture” now deploys the exact tactics it once condemned—misinformation claims, hate speech codes, viewpoint-based punishments. “They rediscovered hate speech” after Charlie Kirk's assassination, Lukianoff notes, using it as justification to silence critics despite previously arguing hate speech should be protected.2. Law Firms Chose Cowardice Over Principle Major law firms immediately capitulated to Trump administration threats of losing security clearances and federal building access—effectively ending their ability to practice. Only Covington & Burling fought from the start, and those who resisted have largely won in court. “It's cowardice and self-interest, to be honest,” Lukianoff says. “They try to make it sound like this is an existential battle... And it's like, yeah, that's why you fight then.”3. Trump's Own Admissions Guarantee He'll Lose in Court Trump can't help himself: he publicly admits he's targeting people for their viewpoints, which is “the sine qua non of what you're not allowed to do under the First Amendment.” His ego and need for credit constantly undermine his administration's legal strategy. “Trump wants credit for all of this stuff,” creating a paper trail of constitutional violations.4. Students Are Being Deported for Protected Speech FIRE is challenging Marco Rubio's use of obscure 1950s-era powers that allow the Secretary of State to deport non-citizens based solely on his opinion that they're “adverse to foreign policy.” The only previous court challenge ruled these provisions unconstitutionally broad—by Trump's own sister, a federal judge who died in 2023.5. The Real Red Line: When Trump Ignores the Courts “Our big red line is if he just stops following the courts entirely,” Lukianoff warns. The nightmare scenario isn't losing cases—it's Trump pulling an Andrew Jackson moment, saying “the court made the ruling, let it enforce it,” and simply continuing anyway. Nine months into the term, Lukianoff won't say it's likely, but he won't rule it out either: “Would I be totally shocked? Unfortunately, no.”Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

What the former Finance Minister of Chile Andres Velasco has called the Deliveroo effect is most evident in Poland. Despite unprecedented economic growth and prosperity, Velasco explains, Poles remain miserable. The problem, he suggests, is that we've become so used to the magical efficiencies of the digital revolution, that we expect instant miracles in both our political and economic lives. That's one of the core issues Velasco, now Dean of Public Policy at the London School of Economics, and a group of leading public policy experts address in an intriguing collection of essays entitled The London Consensus. What the authors - who include Philippe Aghion, the 2025 Nobel Prize winner in economics - explore is how to come up with economic principles for the 21st Century that make us both happier and more prosperous, while confronting an existential challenge like climate change that didn't even register in last century's Washington Consensus. But democracy, Velasco warns, can't work like a delivery app. We've layered regulations and participatory processes that slow everything down—making it nearly impossible to build housing in California or infrastructure anywhere in the West—while personalized technology trains us to expect results immediately. This fundamental mismatch between our expectations and reality is fueling authoritarian populism, eroding trust in experts like Velasco, and Aghion, and leaving entire regions behind in a Deliveroo stew of economic failure and cultural resentment. 1. The “Deliveroo Effect” Is Breaking Democracy We've become so accustomed to instant digital gratification that we expect the same speed from politics and economics. But democracy requires deliberation, participation, and time—creating a dangerous mismatch between expectations and reality that fuels populism and dissatisfaction. Even prosperous countries like Poland, the second-fastest growing economy since 1990, remain bitterly divided.2. The Washington Consensus Got Politics Catastrophically Wrong The 1989 economic framework naively assumed you could “sort out the economics” and democracy would naturally follow. It ignored local ownership of policies and believed growth alone would create liberal democracies. China's experience—getting rich without democratizing—proved this assumption completely wrong. The London Consensus puts politics at the center.3. Markets Need States, Not “Free Markets” Versus Government The old ideological battle between markets and socialism was never productive. Markets can't function without capable states to enforce rules, regulate finance, and provide infrastructure. The real debate isn't whether to have government intervention, but what kind—finding the delicate balance between competition and regulation that fosters innovation without allowing excessive monopoly power.4. “Left-Behind Regions” Are Driving Political Upheaval Trade and technology create geographically concentrated losses—the Rust Belt, northern England—that go beyond economics. These regions experience social breakdown, population flight, and feelings of abandonment that translate directly into votes for demagogues and populists. Compensating losers from globalization wasn't just economically smart; it was politically essential.5. We Need a “Good Jobs Agenda,” Not Just Growth Following economists like Dani Rodrik and Daron Acemoglu, the London Consensus argues that policy should be evaluated through the lens of job quality, not just GDP growth. Technology isn't destiny—it can be directed toward complementing human skills rather than destroying jobs. Every policy, from trade to AI regulation, should ask: will this create quality jobs with decent pay, benefits, and worker agency?Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

In the midst of today's AI hysteria, have we forgotten about blockchain technology and the seductive Web3 promise of decentralization? Robbie Bach, longtime Xbox chief and lieutenant of former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, certainly hasn't. In his new novel, The Blockchain Syndicate, the prescient Bach imagines not only a giant political crypto grift, but also warns about the siren song of Distributed Autonomous Organizations (DAOs). No, blockchain might not be as sexy or lucrative as LLMs these days - but Web3 still matters even if, as Bach suggests, its promise of a decentralized network remains more seductive than substantive.1. Crypto as “Giant Grift” Bach views cryptocurrency as a highly risky, speculative investment vehicle comparable to commodities like gold or silver, but warns there's “definitely a giant grift” happening, with vulnerable people—particularly older investors putting their savings at risk—being exploited by those taking advantage of the crypto craze.2. AI Bubble Will Burst (But Not Catastrophically) Bach believes we're in an AI investment bubble where valuations are unsustainable. He predicts a “sorting” of winners and losers over the next 12-18 months, with many AI investments failing to pay out, though he avoids the term “explosive pop” in favor of a more gradual reckoning.3. Blockchain: Powerful Tool, Double-Edged Sword Despite AI hype, Bach argues blockchain remains highly relevant and current. He sees it as neither inherently good nor bad—just a tool that can be used for legitimate purposes or criminal ones. He's particularly intrigued by its dual nature: ultimate transparency yet also ultimate obfuscation through anonymity.4. Microsoft's Secret Weapon: Adaptability Bach credits Microsoft's longevity to its ability to make “tectonic shifts” across generations—from DOS to Windows, to cloud computing, to AI. He argues this skill at navigating massive transitions under Gates, Ballmer, and Nadella is more impressive than any single product innovation.5. FBI and CIA Are Irreplaceable Bach emphasizes that regardless of political views about current leadership, institutions like the FBI and CIA are essential for national security with no viable replacement. If they're not working well, the solution is to fix them, not abandon them—a theme central to his thriller's premise.Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

Bubble or not? But the debate that's been raging over the current AI exuberance might be missing the bigger point. Yes, of course, it's a trillion-dollar speculative bubble built around AI start-ups that mostly remain unprofitable. But as I note in my weekly tech conversation with That Was The Week publisher Keith Teare (who is significantly more optimistic than me), it's more than just another Silicon Valley bubble. From the Trump family's multi-trillion dollar cryptocurrency speculation to an increasingly pervasive online sports gambling culture (especially amongst young Americans), the new epidemic in America is one of speculation. A hundred years after the Roaring Twenties we are back where we started. I don't know how it will end. Maybe there will be a 21st century version of Warren Harding's Teapot Dome Scandal, maybe another Wall Street Crash. But I guarantee you two things: It will end, and that ending won't be pretty - neither for America nor for the world. I'm even betting on it. 1. The Speculation Epidemic Goes Beyond AI This isn't just about artificial intelligence. From Trump family cryptocurrency ventures to the explosion of online sports gambling among young Americans, speculation has become the defining characteristic of American economic culture. AI is merely the most visible manifestation of a broader shift toward betting on the future.2. The State and Silicon Valley Have Merged Under the Trump administration, particularly with David Sacks as AI and crypto czar, government and tech investors have formed an unprecedented partnership—or as I suggest, a “marriage.” Regulatory barriers are being removed to facilitate rapid AI infrastructure development, marking a shift toward economic nationalism where the state's fate is tied directly to tech industry success.3. This Bubble is Different (But Still a Bubble) Unlike the dot-com boom or tulip mania, today's AI investments are backed by massive actual revenues—NVIDIA generated $130.5 billion with 114% year-over-year growth. The money isn't entirely self-generating; real revenue exists alongside speculative investment. Yet trillion-dollar valuations for unprofitable startups like OpenAI and Anthropic still raise legitimate bubble concerns.4. Venture Capital Doesn't Scale—And That's Normal As venture capitalist Rulof Botha notes, VC isn't really an asset class because only the top 10% of funds make money. Too much capital is chasing too few potential winners. This has always been true of venture capital, and most AI investments will fail. The question is whether AI will be like the internet (transformative) or interactive TV (a dud).5. The Ending is Inevitable and Uncertain Keith and I agree corrections will happen, but disagree on the scale and meaning. Keith sees “systemic uplift” with temporary setbacks. I see potential catastrophe—perhaps a 21st-century Teapot Dome scandal or another Wall Street Crash. What's certain: this speculative fever will end, and given historical precedent, that ending is unlikely to be gentle.Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

What's the point of going to college? There used to be an obvious answer to this: to acquire the knowledge to get a better job. But in our AI age, when smart machines are already challenging many white collar professions, the point of college is increasingly coming into question—especially given its time and financial commitment. According to Caroline Levander, author of the upcoming InventEd, the American ‘tradition of innovation' can transform college today. Levander, who serves as Vice President for Global Strategy at Rice University, argues that colleges must transform themselves from museums into startups. Indeed, the ideal of failure, so celebrated in Silicon Valley, must become a pillar of reinvented universities. And students too, who Levander has suggested have become increasingly conservative in their attitude to personal risk, must also learn to embrace not just innovative technological tools but also the messiness of personal disruption. That should be the point of college, Levander says. To learn how to productively fail. 1. Universities Must Choose: Museum or Startup? Levander argues universities exist on a continuum between museums (curating and preserving accumulated wisdom) and startups (messy, high-risk spaces for creating new knowledge). Most institutions haven't intentionally decided where they belong on this spectrum, but they need to embrace a more dynamic, startup-oriented position to remain relevant.2. Student Risk Aversion is the Real Crisis Today's students are increasingly conservative, focused on maximizing GPAs and taking “safe” courses rather than exploring creatively. Universities must build a “growth mindset” that encourages failure and experimentation—treating creativity as a muscle to develop rather than a fixed trait like eye color.3. Disciplinary Diversity is America's Innovation Secret Just as biodiversity sustains ecosystems, disciplinary diversity fuels innovation. Breakthrough moments are unpredictable—Steve Jobs in calligraphy, investor Bill Miller in a philosophy seminar on John Searle. Closing departments and narrowing curricula amounts to “eating our seed corn” and threatens America's competitive advantage.4. The Dropout Myth Misses the Point While figures like Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, and Sam Altman dropped out successfully, Levander asks: “How do we create more Steve Jobses who find the university not a place to leave, but a place to continue building creative capability?” The goal is to institutionalize and scale what now happens by happenstance.5. Attacking Universities Threatens National Innovation The current political assault on university funding—particularly research dollars—isn't just bad for Harvard or Rice. It threatens America's entire innovation economy, since universities remain the primary incubators for industry-creating discoveries that drive national prosperity and competitiveness. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

What unites Rudy Giuliani and Hunter Biden? According to the New York Times reporter Kenneth Vogel, they are both on the payroll of corrupt foreign interests. In his new book, Devils' Advocates, Vogel reveals the hidden story of Giuliani, Biden and the other Washington insiders who sold access to American foreign policy. From the Balkans to Brazil, shadowy foreign players have discovered that the path to influencing Washington runs through well-connected Americans willing to take their money. Vogel exposes how shadowy figures like lobbyist Robert Stryk—who has openly admitted that he'd work for Kim Jong-un or the Taliban if they paid—have turned foreign influence into a lucrative industry. The Trump family's multi-billion-dollar cryptocurrency ventures and Hunter Biden's Romanian land deals represent the same often questionably legal phenomenon: foreign interests paying for perceived access to power. As enforcement weakens and the regulatory regime loosens, this shadow diplomacy system is shaping U.S. foreign policy in ways that rarely receive scrutiny, despite laws designed to ensure transparency. From Ukraine and the Republic of Srpska to Qatar and Saudi Arabia, Washington insiders are shaping US foreign policy in ways that benefit corrupt foreign interests rather than the American people. 1. Foreign Influence Is Bipartisan The corruption isn't limited to one party. Hunter Biden and Rudy Giuliani both profited from foreign interests seeking access to American power, proving this is a systemic problem that transcends partisan politics.2. Trump's Transactional Approach Created More Access Points Trump's openly transactional style and willingness to upend traditional diplomatic channels opened unprecedented opportunities for foreign interests to buy influence through his family's cryptocurrency ventures and close associates—potentially on a scale never seen before.3. The Scandal Is What's Legal Most of this activity doesn't violate laws—that's the problem. As long as lobbyists register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, they can work for almost anyone. The system's weaknesses allow personally enriching behavior that contradicts American ideals about democracy and human rights.4. Small Countries, Big Money, Global Implications Even minor players like the Republic of Srpska and Albania spend millions on Washington lobbyists. Their goals aren't just local—they're reshaping the world order, challenging NATO, international treaties, and aligning U.S. policy with interests favorable to Russia and China.5. Enforcement Is Weakening When It Should Strengthen At the very moment foreign interests are pouring more money into influence campaigns, enforcement is going in the opposite direction. Attorney General Pam Bondi—herself a former foreign lobbyist for Qatar—has moved to decriminalize enforcement of the Foreign Agents Registration Act, the primary tool for regulating foreign lobbying.Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

How to Save the American experiment? That's the question the Yale historian John Fabian Witt asks this week in both a New York Times feature and his just published new book, The Radical Fund. Sometimes, Witt suggests, we need what he describes as a “calamity” to recognize and protect the American experiment in democracy. In the 1920s, the historian reminds us, this happened with the emergence of the Garland Fund, a charitable organization set up in 1922 which spawned many of the most profound economic and civil rights reforms of the mid century. Founded by Charles Garland, a disillusioned yet idealistic Harvard heir who refused his million-dollar inheritance, the Fund brought together unlikely bedfellows—from the ACLU and NAACP to labor unions—creating what Witt calls an “incubator” for progressive change. Drawing striking parallels between then and now, Witt argues that strategic philanthropy and what he calls “cross-movement dialogue” can reinvigorate American democracy in a similarly turbulent age of cultural anxiety, political distrust and violent division. History may not repeat itself, Witt acknowledges, but it rhymes. And the real calamity, he warns, would be the end not of history, but of the almost 250 year-old American experiment in political and economic freedom. * The 1920s-2020s Parallel Is Uncanny: Both eras feature post-pandemic societies, surging economic inequality, restrictive immigration policies, rising Christian nationalism, and disruptive new information technologies. Understanding how America navigated the 1920s crisis without civil war offers crucial lessons for today.* Small Money, Strategic Impact: The Garland Fund operated with just $2 million (roughly $40-800 million in today's terms)—a fraction of Rockefeller or Carnegie fortunes—yet proved transformative. Success came not from sheer dollars but from bringing together feuding progressive movements (labor unions, civil rights organizations, civil liberties groups) and forcing them into productive dialogue.* Incubators Matter More Than Calamities: While crises like the Great Depression provided energy for change, the Fund created the institutional forms and intellectual frameworks that shaped how that energy was channeled. They pioneered industrial unions, funded the legal strategy behind Brown v. Board of Education, and staffed FDR's New Deal agencies with their “brain trust.”* Cross-Movement Dialogue Is Transformative: The Fund's greatest achievement was convening conversations among groups that disagreed fundamentally—labor versus racial justice organizations, communists versus liberals. These uncomfortable alliances produced the cross-racial labor movement and civil rights strategies that defined mid-century progressivism. Today's left needs similar bridge-building across fractured movements.* We Need New Categories for New Economics: The institutions that saved 1920s democracy—industrial unions, civil rights organizations, civil liberties groups—are each in crisis today. The gig economy, AI, and virtual work demand fresh thinking, not just recycling 1920s solutions. Witt suggests progressives must incubate new organizational forms for 21st-century capitalism, just as the Garland Fund did for industrial capitalism.Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

For financial journalist Elizabeth MacBride, the New American economy is like the old one - only worse. Describing it as the “Frankenstein version of neo-liberalism”, MacBride explains that business has overtaken government to create ever-more-powerful bankers like Larry Fink and Jamie Dimon. But all is not lost. In her upcoming new book, Capital Evolution, co-authored with the VC Seth Levine, MacBride argues that there's a new consensus taking shape - what she calls “Dynamic Capitalism” - which balances profits with purpose. So if we can get beyond today's neo-liberal Frankenstein moment, she promises, America will be able to address the great 21st-century challenges of inequality and climate change. I have to admit I'm not convinced. Rather than capital evolution, I see the growing political power of Wall Street players like Dimon and Fink. We shall see. But when a Wall Street CEO like Jamie Dimon announces $10 billion bets on national security (as he did early this week), it's no surprise that the loudest calls these days are for revolution rather than evolution. Nor is it surprising that a 21st century version of Frankenstein - Mary Shelley's apocalyptic 1818 warning about the destructive consequences of industrialization - will be appearing on Netflix next month. 1. Business Has Overtaken Government in Power and InfluenceMacBride argues that CEOs like Jamie Dimon and Larry Fink now wield more power than most elected officials, yet remain fundamentally unaccountable. When Dimon announces $10 billion investments in national security, the lines between Wall Street and Washington have clearly blurred—perhaps irreversibly.2. We're Living in a “Frankenstein Version of Neo-Liberalism”The current system isn't classic neoliberalism but a corrupted mutation where government has been “co-opted and turned into a tool for punishing people.” The small-government ideology has created not freedom but a punitive state that serves corporate interests while abandoning its regulatory role.3. “Dynamic Capitalism” Requires Long-Term Sacrifice—But Who's Really Sacrificing?MacBride believes trauma from climate change, inequality, and COVID is creating willingness for short-term sacrifice for long-term stability—similar to the post-WWII generation. But as the interviewer notes, when titans like Dimon and Fink talk about sacrifice, they only get richer. The question remains: whose sacrifice?4. Trust Is the Currency of the New Economy—And It's in Short SupplyIn an age when institutions have weakened, MacBride advocates “trust but verify” as the operating principle. She argues figures like Dimon and Fink are “generally trustworthy” even if not “morally authoritative.” The interviewer's skepticism about figures like PayPal's Dan Schulman highlights how fragile this trust actually is.5. New Coalitions Are Forming, But Revolution May Trump EvolutionMacBride sees evidence of consensus-building around stakeholder capitalism and long-term thinking, particularly among Democrats after their electoral losses. But her optimism about “capital evolution” may be wishful thinking when the loudest calls are for revolution, not gradual reform.Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

Churchill described Communist Russia as a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma. For Pulitzer Prize winning Princeton historian, Paul Starr, America might be the new Soviet Union. It's a such contradiction, in fact, that he entitles his new book American Contradiction, in an attempt to describe the dominant narrative of “revolution and revenge” from the 1950s to today's America. But unlike Churchill, who unwrapped the Russian enigma through national interest, Starr finds only more contradictory contradictions about America. The civil rights revolution triggered the Goldwater/Reagan/MAGA revenge. Obama's hope intensified the reactionary backlash. Economic progress created deeper cultural despair. Each new development triggers an old question, each fresh solution an even staler problem. After 250 years tracing America's conflicts from slavery through Trump, the distinguished historian admits he has no idea how it ends (or even begins). Perhaps that's the biggest contradiction of all: a brilliant, yet paralysing diagnosis that offers no cure, an explanation of everything, everywhere all at once that leads us back to the original contradiction. Futile snakes and ladders. A never ending game of one step forward and one step back. 1. The Diagnosis Without a Cure Starr traces America's current divisions back to the founding contradiction between freedom and slavery, through civil rights, to today's Trump era. But after 500 pages and decades of study, he admits he has no solutions - not even a “solutions chapter.” His analysis is comprehensive yet paralyzingly circular.2. Nixon: The Forgotten Liberal? The most surprising historical insight: Richard Nixon implemented affirmative action, desegregated Southern schools, and pushed for guaranteed income and universal healthcare. Starr argues Nixon was temperamentally like Trump but substantively “the last liberal president” - a paradox that complicates standard political narratives.3. “Wokeism is to Trumpism as a Flea is to an Elephant” When pressed on whether progressive cultural politics contributed to the backlash, Starr dismisses “cancel culture” concerns as trivial compared to Trump using state power against media outlets. He signed the Harper's Letter but won't seriously examine the left's role in alienating working-class voters.4. The “Sleepwalking” Theory Starr's one semi-original contribution: 1990s Democrats didn't understand they were creating conditions for their own defeat. The 1965 immigration reformers had “no idea” of long-term implications. Free trade's concentrated devastation of Midwest communities was unforeseen. But he stops short of saying these were mistakes.5. Obama Made Everything Worse Perhaps the most deflating revelation: Starr thought Obama's election would end America's racial contradiction. Instead, it “intensified racial feeling” and triggered the revenge cycle. He's now “sobered” by this mistake and doesn't expect to see resolution in his lifetime - essentially admitting his life's work has led nowhere.Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

At 85, the venerable Jeffrey Archer has lived through enough crises to stay calm and carry on whatever the stormy political weather. The best-selling author—who has sold 275 million books and, as a Conservative MP and party chairman, served Margaret Thatcher for 11 years—speaks with the authority of someone who witnessed the Iron Lady's firm politics up close and personal. But Mrs Thatcher isn't the only British grande dame who Archer now mourns. His latest William Warwick thriller End Game, set against the backdrop of the 2012 London Olympics, is the story of a plot against Queen Elizabeth II, the beloved monarch who, in contrast with Mrs T, unified Britain. And then there's what Archer definitely calls his “final novel”—a World War II story to be published next year that he believes will be “bigger than Cain and Abel.” But he also weighs in on today's political chaos in Britain and America: Trump's absurd contradictions, the chilling specter of Farage and Robinson, Starmer's political problems, and why Maggie would have known exactly how to handle them all.1. Archer's Final Chapter At 85, Archer announces his next book will be his last. After 50 years and 275 million books sold, he's on the 17th draft of a WWII novel about September 15, 1941—a day when the war “could have ended” if Hitler hadn't changed his mind three times. He believes it's “bigger than Kane and Abel.”2. Thatcher Would Have Dominated Trump Archer, who served Thatcher for 11 years, believes she would have “handled Trump very well” and that “Trump would be in awe of her.” He compares it to her successful management of Reagan, Gorbachev, and Chirac—knowing exactly “what to do with each one.”3. Farage Could Be 30 Seats From Power Archer reveals he warned David Cameron a decade ago to neutralize Farage by making him a Lord. Cameron ignored the advice when Farage polled at 0%. Now Farage leads in polls and could be “only 30 seats short of forming a government”—despite having no one in his party with governing experience.4. Britain Has Peaked Archer sees 2012's Olympics as Britain's high-water mark. Since then: five Conservative leaders in six years, Starmer's rapid collapse, potential bankruptcy from an aging population, and a declining interest in the monarchy among young people. “Top people are not going into politics anymore.”5. AI Threatens the Next Generation of Writers While grateful his 50-year career predated artificial intelligence, Archer worries about the future. He's discussed with his children ensuring no AI-generated “Jeffrey Archer” books appear after his death, calling it “a cop-out.” The odds for aspiring writers have never been tougher: 1,000 manuscripts submitted weekly, only one published.Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

History rarely repeats itself, especially speculative bubbles. As it becomes increasingly obvious that today's AI bubble will dramatically burst, the real question is not when but how.What makes this boom profoundly different from the DotCom crash of the nineties is OpenAI's attempt to create an AI private monopoly by positioning itself at the center of trillions of dollars worth of self-serving “deals”. Sam Altman wants to simultaneously be the gambler, the slot machine owner, and the house. It's a gamble that is, of course, brazenly rigged: he's trying to simultaneously make OpenAI too important to fail and too well-financed to go public.That Was The Week's Keith Teare cutely describes this imperial play as “Come To Daddy.” But it's more complicated—and more dangerous. By weaving OpenAI into the heart of America's AI economy, Altman isn't just building a company; he's constructing a systemic chokepoint not just for Silicon Valley and Wall Street, but possibly for an entire global economy dependent on AI exuberance for growth. If there's a historical analogy, it's the banking crisis of 2008. The US government bailed out the banks because they were supposedly too big to fail. The same will likely happen with the coming AI crash, especially given bipartisan American hysteria over the China threat —only this time, the crisis will center on OpenAI as both the dominant cause and the primary casualty of the crash. Here history might, indeed repeat itself: privatized gains during the boom, socialized losses during the bust.Sam is dealing. Heads he wins, tails we all lose. Yes, the house always wins, especially when it is powered by OpenAI chips and wearing a ChatGPT hoodie.1. OpenAI's Platform Play Is Eliminating StartupsOpenAI's developer day introduced an agent development platform, embedded ChatGPT applications, and Sora video generation—directly competing with dozens of startups. Keith Teare observed that over half of the 58 AI companies showcased at Andreessen Horowitz the next day had lost their competitive positioning overnight. OpenAI is no longer just a product company; it's becoming a comprehensive platform that absorbs innovation opportunities across the AI landscape.2. Potential Market Dominance Raises Competition QuestionsStatistics from SQ Magazine claim OpenAI controls 88% of global AI interactions, with Anthropic at 8% and Google under 3%. While these figures require verification, such concentration would represent one of technology's most rapid consolidations and raise fundamental questions about competition and innovation in the AI sector.3. “Industrial Policy by Private Contract” Signals New State-Corporate PartnershipOpenAI's relationship with the Trump administration suggests an emerging model of state capitalism without direct government funding. The state facilitates deals between major players and benefits through future taxation and ownership stakes in certain projects. OpenAI has become strategically essential for U.S. economic competitiveness against China—suggesting that no future administration, Republican or Democrat, could allow the company to fail. This creates an implicit government backstop without traditional public investment.4. Infrastructure Funding Remains the Critical ChallengeAI requires approximately 10 gigawatts of power annually for the next decade—translating to trillions in data centers, chips, and energy costs. Recent deals involving Nvidia, AMD, and Oracle's $500 billion Stargate project are down payments, not solutions. Energy costs remain a key constraint, with nuclear and solar options still expensive relative to demand.5. The Speculative Age Concentrates WealthAndreessen Horowitz's Alec Danco describes our current “speculative age” as defined by timing and short-term positioning. Unlike previous tech booms where retail investors could buy stock, OpenAI equity remains inaccessible to most, concentrating wealth among institutional investors and insiders while speculative energy redirects into prediction markets and gambling.Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

Tom Brokaw famously described America's World War II servicemen as the “Greatest Generation”. But according to the historian David Nasaw, the Americans who fought in the Second World War are better understood as The Wounded Generation. His eponymous new book describes the pain and hardships that 16 million veterans endured upon their return home - a tragic story of PTSD, racism and family breakup. Brokaw celebrated the nobility with which these ex-soldiers got on with civilian life without either complaining or even talking about the war. But for Nasaw, this silence wasn't just stoicism—it was often undiagnosed and sometimes even untreatable trauma.1. WWII Was America's Longest and Most Brutal War The average soldier served nearly three years in uniform (compared to less than one year in WWI), with 75% deployed overseas. Combat on the European front was relentless, especially in the final year, with severe manpower shortages keeping GIs on the front lines for weeks or months without relief.2. Millions Returned with Undiagnosed PTSD Veterans came home with what we now recognize as PTSD, but it was neither diagnosed nor treated. Unable to talk about their experiences, many self-medicated with alcohol. The silence wasn't stoicism—it was trauma. Writers like Salinger and Vonnegut could only process their experiences through fiction years later.3. The GI Bill Excluded Most Black Veterans While celebrated as transformative legislation, the GI Bill's benefits were distributed by local officials. In the South, this meant Black veterans were systematically denied college access (segregated schools were full) and unemployment benefits (they were told to return to sharecropping). Only Northern Black veterans like Harry Belafonte, John Coltrane, and Tito Puente could fully access their benefits.4. America Faced Its Worst Housing Crisis Ever No homes had been built during the Depression or the war years, creating unprecedented shortages when 16 million servicemen returned. This housing crisis, combined with fears of renewed economic depression, added to veterans' anxiety about rebuilding their lives. Politicians like JFK and Jacob Javits fought hard for veterans' housing subsidies.5. The War's Aftermath Lasted Decades 1946 saw record divorce rates and increased lynchings as racial tensions exploded. Veterans who liberated concentration camps or survived POW camps (especially in the Pacific) carried lifelong trauma. Nasaw's central message: wars don't end with peace treaties—the harm to soldiers and civilians lasts for generations.Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

According to the platform economist Sangeet Paul Choudary, author of Reshuffle, today's AI hype is a feature rather than a bug in Silicon Valley. It's a deliberate mechanism to attract capital in an “attention-poor, capital-heavy economy” while distracting from the lack of short-term business results. So who will ultimately win and who will lose in today's AI arms race? While Choudary predicts power will concentrate around infrastructure players like Nvidia and enterprise workflow companies like Microsoft and Google, he warns that OpenAI risks becoming “the Cisco of this revolution” unless it moves beyond the commoditizing model layer. More troubling, for Choudary, is AI's societal impact. We cannot trust Big Tech with our “agentic future,” he cautions—particularly as technologies like OpenAI's Pulse preview eliminate the last vestige of user agency that we still possess. While pessimistic about US and Chinese models built on data hoarding and state-backed monopolies, the Dubai-based Choudary sees promise in India's stack experiment, where digital public infrastructure allows users to own their data and get paid when AI trains on it.1. The Algorithm Creates a New Class Divide The critical inequality today isn't traditional capital vs. labor—it's between those who work “above the algorithm” (designing systems, like Uber data scientists) and those working “below it” (controlled by systems, like Uber drivers whose rates and job access are algorithmically determined).2. AI Hype is a Feature, Not a Bug In an attention-poor, capital-heavy economy, hype serves as a mechanism to attract investment. Companies selling distant AGI narratives and engaging in circular deals (OpenAI-Nvidia-Microsoft-Oracle) are propping up valuations while actual business results remain uncertain. A market correction is “long overdue.”3. Power Will Concentrate at Two Layers of the AI Stack Winners will emerge at the infrastructure level (Nvidia for chips/inference) and the customer workflow level (likely Google or Microsoft with their enterprise relationships). The middle layer—the model itself—is already commoditizing. OpenAI risks becoming “the Cisco of this revolution” unless it successfully moves up to the workflow layer.4. We Can't Trust Big Tech with Our “Agentic Future” Today we still have agency to click, even if our attention is manipulated. But as AI agents make decisions for us (like OpenAI's Pulse preview), we surrender that agency entirely, enabling even more extraction. Current business models are built on data hoarding—adding agent technology on top eliminates user agency completely.5. Four Distinct Geopolitical AI Models Are Emerging The US favors private enterprise (increasingly intertwined with government), China lets innovation happen then absorbs it into state control, India is building digital public infrastructure where users own their data and get paid for AI training, and UAE is converting oil reserves into compute power to sell AI services globally.Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

It's springtime for charlatans. At least according to Quico Toro, coauthor (with my old friend Moises Naim) of Charlatans, a new screed about how grifters, swindlers and hucksters are bamboozling the media, the markets and the masses. If you listen to Toro, you wouldn't want to get out of bed in the morning. Everywhere - on our screens, in our churches, even in the White House - there lurk charlatans intent on stealing our souls. As you can tell from my rat-a-tat scepticism, I'm not totally convinced by such hysterical fearmongering. Though he's probably right that social isolation and AI-powered scams are making us sitting ducks for scammers. Anyway, at least there's no chapter about huckster podcasters in Charlatans. So you are safe here from bamboozlers of all stripes. 1. The Harm Standard Is Everything Quico's core thesis: charlatans aren't just persuasive people you disagree with - they leave a trail of destroyed lives. No harm = not a charlatan (even if you find them distasteful, like the astrology businesswoman he mentions).2. Your Deepest Beliefs Are Your Biggest Vulnerabilities Charlatans don't create new beliefs - they identify what you already passionately believe in (religion, crypto, politics, health) and exploit that commitment to manipulate you. The stronger your conviction, the easier you are to con.3. Technology + Social Isolation = Charlatan Playground AI and algorithms can now identify and target “marks” with unprecedented precision. Combined with loneliness and screen-mediated relationships (no flesh-and-blood friends to reality-check you), we're more vulnerable than ever.4. Not All Grifters Are Criminals Motivations vary: money, sex, power - the “dark triad.” Some are outright thieves (Madoff, SBF), others are narcissists or sexual predators using their influence. But they share antisocial personality traits and lack of remorse.5. Even Legitimate Movements Get Hijacked The Falwell Sr. vs Jr. example: sincere ideological movements (even ones you disagree with) can be credible, but charlatans infiltrate and weaponize them. Brexit, prosperity gospel, anti-vax - all started somewhere and got exploited.Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

Next Monday is Columbus Day. Or should it be Indigenous People's Day? According to the historian Matthew Restall we should be celebrating both Columbus and Indigenous People on Monday. The author of the timely The Nine Lives of Christopher Columbus, Restall places Genoa's most famous sailor as a prisoner of history - endlessly protean to reflect each era's changing values. The many lives of Columbus, then, is a mirror of how we have thought differently about him over the last 500 years. As history's greatest saint and sinner, Christopher Columbus might be the ultimate Rorschach test. Tell me what you'll be celebrating next Monday and I'll tell you who you are. Happy hols!1. Columbus Was a “Manic Narcissist” Who Believed He Was God's Agent Restall discovered Columbus wasn't likable—he descended into believing he was divinely chosen and could even be found in the Old Testament. This grandiosity was partly his undoing as a colonial administrator.2. Columbus Failed as a Colonizer and Administrator Unlike the conquistadors who came after him, Columbus lacked political and diplomatic skills. He was “just a sailor”—son of a weaver, grandson of a cheesemaker—and Spanish authorities quickly sidelined him. He died in 1506, only 13 years after his first voyage, with a declining reputation.3. The Columbus Day Debate Is About Different Columbuses Italian-Americans defend a 19th/20th century “Italian-American Columbus”—a symbol of immigrant achievement—while Indigenous Peoples' Day supporters condemn the “historic Columbus” who began a colonization process that killed 70-90% of indigenous populations within a century. These groups are talking past each other about entirely different figures.4. Conquistadors Were “Armed Entrepreneurs” Running Investment Companies Spanish conquistadors functioned like venture capital firms—assembling ships, soldiers, and supplies as investments, seeking returns through plunder and enslaved people, then winning authority positions to generate more profit while paying a 20% tax to the crown.5. Columbus's One Success: Founding a Noble Dynasty That Still Exists Despite his failures, Columbus achieved his main ambition—establishing an aristocratic dynasty. The title “Admiral of the Ocean Sea” granted in 1493 is still held today by the 20th admiral, a Spanish naval officer and businessman named Don Cristóbal Colón.Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

Last weekend, the English reggae band UB 40 played in the Orpheum in Los Angeles and included in the set their 1980 song “Tyler”. Tyler is guilty white judges said soWhat right do we got to say it's not soTyler is guilty white judges said soWhat right do we got to say it's not soTyler is guilty white judges said soWhat right do we got to say it's not soTyler is guilty white judges said soWhat right do we got to say it's not soIn the audience was the song's muse Gary Tyler who, as a sixteen year old in 1974, was put on death row for a crime he didn't commit:Appeal to the governor, of LouisianaYou may get an answer the process is slowFederal court won, too much to openHe's been there for five years and they won't let him goThis week, Tyler released his autobiography, Stitching Freedom, in which he tells the story of the 41 years he spent in Angola high security prison for his “crime”. Yes, the process was slow - shamefully slow. It's the shockingly true story of injustice, defiance and hope in Louisiana's bloodiest prison. Tyler is free now, living in Los Angeles, having successfully stitched his life together. He doesn't seem to have forgiven the system for this injustice (why should he?), yet the one thing that 41 years in Angola clearly didn't destroy was Gary Tyler's humanity. So I guess there's hope in this tragic story. 1. A 16-Year-Old Scapegoat for Racial Violence Gary Tyler was arrested at age 16 during a racial confrontation at a newly integrated Louisiana school in 1974. After a 13-year-old white boy was fatally shot during the chaos, police brutally beat Tyler to extract a confession he never gave, then charged him with first-degree murder despite no evidence linking him to the crime.2. Political Prisoners Saved His Life In Angola's death row, Tyler found unexpected mentors - former Black Panthers and civil rights activists who recognized his case as part of systemic injustice. These older inmates taught him to channel his anger into education and activism, helping him write letters that would eventually bring national attention to his case through organizations like Amnesty International.3. Finding Purpose in America's Bloodiest Prison Despite facing execution, Tyler transformed his imprisonment into service. He became president of multiple prison organizations and, most meaningfully, a hospice volunteer caring for dying inmates - including some of the very men who had mentored him. This work became his “sense of redemption” and healing.4. Justice Denied, Freedom Granted Tyler was never exonerated. Despite multiple appeals reaching the Supreme Court and three favorable parole board recommendations, politics kept him imprisoned. He was finally released in 2016 only because of new Supreme Court rulings against juvenile life sentences - not because the system admitted its mistake.5. Stitching a Life Back Together Tyler discovered quilting in prison, initially resisting it as “feminine” before recognizing it as both a way to help dying inmates leave something for their families and a metaphor for his own healing. Now a professional artist in Pasadena, he literally and figuratively pieces together a life that was torn apart, remaining optimistic that struggle against injustice must continue.Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe