Keen On Democracy

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

Just be yourself many career coaches tell us. But for the psychologist and entrepreneur Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, the reverse is true. Don't Be Yourself Chamorro-Premuzic advises in his new book, arguing that authenticity Is overrated and what to do instead. Drawing from extensive behavioral science research, Chamorro-Premuzic contends that success comes not from unleashing your unfiltered self but from understanding where “the right to be you ends and your obligation to others begins.” Authenticity has not only become a privilege for the elite and a trap for everyone else, he argues, but increasingly impossible to distinguish from AI-generated fakery. So don't be yourself, Chamorro-Premuzic suggests, in defiantly inauthentic advice for both our careers and our lives. 1. Strategic Self-Presentation Beats Radical HonestySuccess comes from “strategic impression management” rather than authentic self-expression. The person who confidently claims “I've done this a hundred times” gets the job over the honest candidate who admits they'll need to learn.2. Authenticity Is a Luxury for the PowerfulThe more status and power you have, the less you need to care what others think. For everyone else, “telling women they can just be themselves” while incompetent male leaders act without restraint perpetuates inequality.3. Self-Delusion Can Be a Competitive Advantage“B**********g others will be a lot easier if you can b******t yourself first.” While self-awareness helps build competence, overconfidence often wins in systems that confuse confidence with competence—though this benefits individuals at society's expense.4. AI Forces Us to Fake AuthenticityAs AI becomes better at mimicking humans, we're paradoxically pressured to be more deliberately “human”—inserting typos in emails, swearing strategically, creating “artificial hallmarks of authenticity” to prove we're not machines.5. Focus on Your Obligations to Others, Not Your Right to Self-ExpressionThe fundamental shift Chamorro-Premuzic advocates: stop asking “how can I be more myself?” and start asking “what do others find valuable?” Your freedom to be yourself ends where your responsibility to others begins.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 unites America, it used to be said, is a common commitment to “freedom”. But in our disunited times, it's worth remembering that two incompatible versions of freedom have actually divided rather than brought the United States together. As the historian Nicholas Buccola notes in his intriguing new book One Man's Freedom, these competing freedoms are represented in the thinking of the two icons of modern American conservatism and liberalism: Barry Goldwater and Martin Luther King. For Goldwater, freedom meant liberation from government interference—the right to be left alone to pursue economic success without federal meddling. For King, it meant empowerment—ensuring people had genuine capacity to participate fully in society. And as Buccola demonstrates, these competing visions persist in today's debates over everything from healthcare to voting rights. When conservatives champion ‘medical freedom' to refuse vaccines while liberals demand ‘reproductive freedom' through government-protected abortion access, they're not just disagreeing on policy—they're wielding incompatible definitions of freedom itself. When some see voter ID laws as protecting electoral freedom while others view them as destroying it, they're replaying the Goldwater-King divide: Is freedom merely the absence of federal interference, or does it require active measures to ensure everyone can meaningfully participate? Two freedoms, two Americas—no wonder the United States now feels so bitterly divided. 1. Freedom Isn't One ThingGoldwater championed “negative freedom” (freedom from government interference), while King advocated “positive freedom” (empowerment to actually participate in society). Both men claimed to seek “authentic liberalism,” but their visions were fundamentally incompatible. You can't just say you're “for freedom” without specifying which kind.2. Goldwater's Consequential SilenceThroughout his career, Goldwater had numerous opportunities to speak out on civil rights from his libertarian perspective but repeatedly chose silence. His refusal to use what King called “the moral power” of leadership to support racial justice—even while claiming personal opposition to segregation—helped set a pattern for the modern conservative movement's approach to race.3. The 1964 Pivot PointThe 1964 Republican Convention was a watershed moment when race and “extremism” tore the party apart. When Goldwater sided with the far right and voted against the Civil Rights Act in the name of “freedom,” it drove Black Republicans like George Parker from the party and reshaped American political coalitions in ways that persist today.4. Economics Was Central to the DivideKing saw Goldwater's economic philosophy as almost as dangerous as his stance on civil rights. While Goldwater focused on protecting economic freedom from “big government,” King advocated for an economic bill of rights that would address inequality across racial lines. This wasn't just about race—it was about whether economic empowerment is necessary for genuine freedom.5. These Divisions Persist in 2025The Goldwater-King debate isn't historical trivia. Today's arguments about the role of government, economic inequality, and racial justice still break along these same philosophical lines. When politicians invoke “freedom,” they're usually choosing sides in this 60-year-old debate without acknowledging that their opponents are using the same word to mean something entirely different.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 a couple (here and here) of shows recently about the war on cars. But we never discussed the connections, both literal and metaphorical, between the damage of “Big Car” and “Big University” . According to the tenured Emory law professor Deepa Das Acevedo, what she calls in her new book, The War on Tenure, is really an attempt to transform the modern university into an academic version of Uber. By getting rid of tenure, Acevedo argues, academia is creating a new precariat of adjunct professors who are living in their cars. What she calls the “uberification” of academia is, so to speak, driving an assault not just on tenure, but on free thought and intellectual innovation. The war on tenure, then, is part of the broader neo-liberal project to replace full-time jobs with precarious labor. Academics - you have nothing to lose but your cars!1. The Charlie Kirk Fallout is a Watershed MomentIn just one month, an estimated 40-60 professors have been fired over social media posts about the assassination - with perhaps 10-15 being tenured faculty. This represents potentially half the number of academic freedom-related terminations that occurred over the entire previous 20-year period (2000-2020).2. Rich Universities Are Leading the Race to the BottomContrary to expectations, it's not cash-strapped colleges but wealthy universities with substantial endowments that are most aggressively replacing tenure-track positions with contingent adjunct labor - choosing to spend their resources elsewhere while casualizing their core academic workforce.3. Academic Job Markets Are Essentially MonopolisticThe entire state of Georgia has only 5-6 positions for a labor law professor. This extreme scarcity means academics can't simply “get another job” like workers in other industries - making job security through tenure essential for attracting people to spend 8-10 years training for these positions.4. The “Lazy Professor” Myth is Unsupported by DataResearch shows tenure doesn't reduce productivity - highly productive scholars remain productive after tenure, while those who did minimum work continue at that level. People become academics for reasons beyond job security, contradicting the stereotype of post-tenure retirement.5. Academic Precarity Has Reached Crisis LevelsAdjunct professors are literally living in cars while teaching classes. When academics lose stable employment, they typically exit the profession entirely rather than finding another academic position, creating a brain drain that threatens the future of higher education and research.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 of the most painful lessons of the Kirk assassination is that conservatives are running rings around progressives in political mobilization - especially of young Americans. So how to make the left relevant in America again? For the philosopher Michael Brownstein, co-author of Somebody Should Do Something, progressives need to learn to lose both cleverly and loudly. And they can learn from NRA on this. Despite holding positions unpopular with most Americans, Brownstein acknowledges that the NRA created a powerful social identity around gun ownership and leveraged it for decades of legislative victories through masterful political strategy and organization. Drawing from social science research on collective action, Brownstein argues that highly theatrical defeats—like the recent Texas Democrats' walkout or John Lewis' bloody fate on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in 1965—can catalyze change by forcing opponents into untenable positions. The key isn't winning every battle, but making individual actions visible enough to shift social norms and inspire others, especially the young, to join the cause. So lose often and lose loudly, Brownstein says. It's a winning strategy. 1. Individual Actions Are Social Signals, Not Just Drops in the Bucket When you install solar panels or drive an electric car, the impact isn't just environmental—it's social. Research shows your neighbors are far more likely to adopt these behaviors after seeing you do it. Stop calculating carbon molecules; start thinking about social influence.2. The “Do-Gooder's Dilemma” Is a Corporate Invention From “jaywalking” (coined by 1920s car companies) to “personal carbon footprints” (popularized by BP), industries have systematically shifted responsibility for systemic problems onto individuals. Recognizing this manipulation is the first step to effective collective action.3. Losing Loudly Can Be More Powerful Than Winning Quietly The Texas Democrats knew they'd lose their walkout fight. John Lewis knew he'd be beaten at Selma. But theatrical defeats that force opponents to reveal their brutality or absurdity can shift public opinion more effectively than quiet procedural victories.4. Study Your Enemies' Playbook The NRA succeeded for decades despite holding unpopular positions by creating a powerful social identity around gun ownership. Progressives should learn from these organizing tactics rather than dismissing them.5. Beware the “Anti-Incrementalism Bias” Revolutionary change like Prohibition often fails because it lacks public buy-in. Lasting progress—like Social Security—comes from incremental victories that build over time. Don't let perfect be the enemy of good.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

“Forget it, Jake. It's Chinatown,” were, of course, the closing words from Polanski's 1974 movie, Chinatown. But the point of Jeff Chang's new biography of Bruce Lee, Water Mirror Echo, is that by 1973, when Lee died, Asian America was more than just Chinatown. Lee made Asian America, Chang argues, by giving Asian Americans dignity. Chang shows how Lee's journey from segregated Seattle and San Francisco neighborhoods to global stardom paralleled the rise of Asian American political consciousness. His films weren't just action movies but anti-colonial spectacles - kicking down “No Chinese and Dogs” signs, fighting for workers against bosses, defending communities against gentrification. After Bruce Lee, chinatown became more, so much more, than just chinatown.1. Lee was an “anchor baby” who embodied the immigrant struggle Born in San Francisco in 1940 during Chinese Exclusion, Lee lived in segregated neighborhoods and learned firsthand what it meant to be a racialized minority - making him a powerful symbol for those Trump-era immigration debates Chang references.2. His movies were explicitly political, not just action films From labor solidarity in The Big Boss to anti-colonialism in Fist of Fury to fighting gentrification in Way of the Dragon, Lee's films consistently championed underdogs against oppressors.3. Lee's rise paralleled the birth of “Asian American” identity Just as the term “Asian American” emerged in Berkeley in 1968, Lee was transforming from Hollywood sidekick to global hero, giving form to a new political consciousness that refused second-class status.4. Hollywood's racism forced Lee to find stardom in Asia After losing the Kung Fu role to David Carradine in yellowface, Lee had to return to Hong Kong to be seen as a leading man - becoming Asia's biggest star in six months.5. Hip-hop embraced Lee through shared spaces of segregation Inner-city theaters showed both Blaxploitation and kung fu films to the same audiences, creating an unexpected solidarity between Black and Asian communities that continues through artists like Wu-Tang Clan.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 1990, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur called Jim Fruchterman chose purpose over profit. In his new book, Technology for Good, Fruchterman explains how nonprofit leaders like him are using software and data to solve our most pressing social problems. Thirty five years ago, when his investors vetoed a reading machine for the blind because the market was only $1 million annually, Fruchterman walked away from his $25 million-funded AI company to start his first nonprofit. Today, he's still on the front line of the battle to show that technology's greatest potential lies not in making billionaires richer, but in serving the 90% of humanity that big tech conveniently ignores.1. When profit and purpose clash, profit usually wins Fruchterman argues that when companies face a choice between social good and making money, they “pretty much always pick making more.” His own experience—investors vetoing a reading machine for the blind despite having the technology ready—exemplifies this. Even OpenAI, which started with a nonprofit mission, ultimately flipped to prioritize profit when Sam Altman was briefly fired then reinstated.2. The nonprofit sector is 15 years behind in technology adoption While companies like Uber and banks have essentially become software companies, most nonprofits are still operating with outdated technology. This creates what Fruchterman calls a “target-rich environment” for improvement—nonprofits don't need cutting-edge AI to transform their operations, just the basic data and software tools that for-profit businesses mastered years ago.3. Effective altruism has gone “out of control” Some philanthropists focus so narrowly on measurable impact that they dismiss causes like women's rights or education as “immoral” investments compared to deworming programs. Fruchterman advocates for diversity in philanthropic approaches, arguing that the complexity of global problems requires varied solutions, not just those with the cleanest metrics.4. U.S. foreign aid primarily benefits Americans Contrary to isolationist arguments, 80% of U.S. foreign aid money goes to American staff and American products. Cutting aid doesn't help American farmers—it just leaves their grain piling up in silos. Fruchterman sees nonprofit work as “market development capital for the capitalist system,” turning aid recipients into future customers.5. Mental health represents AI's most promising social application Within five years, Fruchterman believes AI could revolutionize mental health support—not because the technology is revolutionary, but because “we'll never have enough people to help solve our mental health issues.” While big tech's algorithms have exacerbated mental health problems for profit, the same tools could be redesigned to provide accessible support at scale.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 not exactly news that the Nazis didn't like the Jews. But according to the Rutgers historian Jochen Hellbeck, author of World Enemy Number One, the Nazi obsession went so far as to believe that the Soviet Union was owned and operated by a global cabal of Jews. And so, Hellbeck argues, it was not the Western powers but Communist Russia that Nazi Germany viewed as an existential threat—in fact, “World Enemy No. 1.” Jewish revolutionaries, the Nazis believed, had seized power in 1917 and were preparing the Soviet state to destroy Germany and the world. This paranoid delusion drove Nazi Germany's most catastrophic decision: launching Operation Barbarossa in 1941. While Hitler made tactical alliances and fought on multiple fronts, Hellbeck demonstrates through his meticulous archival research that the destruction of “Judeo-Bolshevism” remained the Nazis' primary ideological mission. Drawing on overlooked Soviet sources, including war correspondent Ilya Ehrenburg's writings, Hellbeck shows how this twisted worldview shaped not just propaganda but military strategy, ultimately leading to both the Holocaust and Germany's catastrophic defeat on the Eastern Front.1. The Nazis saw “Judeo-Bolshevism” as one unified threat The Nazis genuinely believed Soviet communism was a Jewish conspiracy for world domination. They conflated Russians, Bolsheviks, and Jews into a single enemy - viewing Karl Marx's Jewish heritage as proof that communism itself was a Jewish plot to destroy Germany.2. This obsession drove Nazi military strategy, not just propaganda Hitler's decision to invade the Soviet Union wasn't merely opportunistic. German military planning for attacking the USSR, including detailed preparations for different rail gauges and propaganda leaflets, began in the mid-1930s - showing this was a long-term ideological priority, not a tactical decision.3. Soviet sources deserve serious historical consideration Western historiography has often dismissed Soviet wartime accounts as propaganda. But Hellbeck's research, particularly examining war correspondent Ilya Ehrenburg's work against German documents, shows these Soviet sources accurately documented Nazi atrocities and mindsets without fabrication.4. Ordinary Germans, not just the SS, committed atrocities The Wehrmacht's brutality on the Eastern Front wasn't limited to special units. Hellbeck found that whenever German soldiers felt threatened, they defaulted to extreme racial violence - a pattern that intensified as the Red Army approached Germany in 1944-45.5. The war's memory continues shaping current conflicts The different ways Eastern and Western Ukraine remembered WWII (Soviet liberation vs. Soviet occupation) contributed to the country's political divisions. Putin's Russia still invokes the “Great Patriotic War” to justify current actions, showing how WWII's contested legacy remains politically explosive.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 numbers are mind blowing. According to Roadkill authors Henrietta Moore and Arthur Kay, cars have killed more people than both world wars combined. That's how toxic our relationship with cars has been over the last century, they argue. The UN figures they cite—60 to 80 million direct deaths since the automobile's invention—don't even include premature deaths from air pollution or the millions seriously injured. Yet we've become “car blind,” Moore and Kay contend, unable to see how we've surrendered 80% of urban public space to vehicles that sit idle 96% of the time, creating what they call a hidden “car industrial complex” that reshapes cities in its image. So what to do? They advocate for “choice not obligation”—redesigning cities so people can drive if they want but aren't forced to. They point to successful experiments from Barcelona's superblocks to Dallas's highway cap parks, where reclaimed streets have actually increased business revenue by up to 34% in some cases. Their goal isn't to ban cars but to stop letting them dominate every aspect of urban planning and life.1. The Deadly Math of “Car Blindness” Cars have directly killed 60-80 million people since their invention—more than WWI and WWII combined. Yet we've normalized this death toll and become “car blind” to how thoroughly automobiles dominate our lives, with 80% of urban public space dedicated to vehicles that sit unused 96% of the time.2. Electric and Self-Driving Cars Aren't Silver Bullets Moore and Kay argue that EVs and autonomous vehicles like Waymo don't solve the fundamental problem: they're still cars taking up urban space. Plus, EVs bring their own issues—from lithium extraction devastating places like Chile's Atacama Desert to the question of whether electricity generation is actually clean.3. “Choice Not Obligation” - A New Freedom Framework The authors aren't advocating car bans but rather redesigning cities so driving becomes optional rather than mandatory. They argue true 21st-century freedom means being able to walk to school safely, access nearby shops, and move through cities without car dependence—not just the 20th-century freedom to drive anywhere.4. Global South Solutions Leading the Way Surprisingly, innovations aren't coming from Copenhagen but from places like Nairobi's matatu system (on-demand informal transit) and Dallas's highway “cap parks.” These demonstrate that car reduction isn't just for wealthy European cities but can work across diverse economic contexts.5. Follow the Money - It Actually Works When done properly, reducing car dominance boosts business. Times Square restaurants saw revenue jump 34% after pedestrianization. The key is integrated planning with communities rather than top-down mandates, ensuring alternatives exist before removing parking.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 the $320,000 question both parents and students are asking themselves: Is that four-year liberal arts degree really worth it? According to Brandeis University President Arthur Levine, it's a question they should, indeed, be asking. In his co-authored book The Great Upheaval, Levine argues that the United States is experiencing a profound transformation not seen since the Industrial Revolution—when America's classical colleges adapted to meet the needs of an emerging industrial economy. So what, exactly, does that mean for a useful liberal arts education today? Should students really invest their time in women's studies in our AI age of Claude and ChatGPT?1. America is experiencing its second great transformation in historyLevine argues we're in a shift from national analog industrial economies to global digital knowledge economies—comparable only to the Industrial Revolution. This creates massive winners and losers, with educational level becoming the primary dividing line in society.2. The $320K liberal arts degree must prove its worthTraditional liberal arts education isn't enough anymore. Levine is reforming Brandeis's curriculum to combine “durable life skills” (critical thinking, communication) with practical “career skills,” creating a second transcript to show employers what graduates can actually do.3. Higher education is splitting into two unequal systemsWe're developing one system for the wealthy (traditional campus experience) and another for working people (online education). Only 20% of college students now fit the traditional model of 18-24 year-olds attending full-time on campus.4. Universities are under political attack because they represent changeThe populist backlash against “elite” institutions isn't really about ideology—it's about anger from those left behind by economic transformation. Universities are being scapegoated as symbols of a changing world that has hurt many working-class Americans.5. Federal policies are actively damaging higher educationInternational student visa denials, research funding cuts based on forbidden words, and threats of deportation for student activists are isolating America and weakening universities' capacity to innovate and compete 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

Some liberals might shake their virtuous heads and tut-tut disapprovingly. But, as the Brookings scholar William Galston argues, Donald Trump's Old Testament politics of retribution has exposed the limitations of liberal thought. In his new book, Anger, Fear, Domination, Galston argues that liberals must recognize the dark passions driving politics and incorporate them into their own language. The power of political speech, Galston reminds us, depends on the recognition and promise of human passion. Those passions don't have to be so hatefully retributive as Trump's, of course. But contemporary liberals, Galston argues, must recognize that humans aren't simply calculating machines and shape their language accordingly. Only then, he warns, will they be able to take on and defeat the dark passions currently corroding American politics. 1. Liberals Have Been Politically Naive About Human Nature Galston argues liberals have expected “dark passions” (anger, fear, domination) to disappear through rational discourse and commercial interests, but these emotions are “perennial” and “part of our nature.” Trump succeeded because he understood this; liberals failed because they were surprised by it.2. Trump's Politics Are Fundamentally About Retribution, Not Policy His famous CPAC line “I am your retribution” wasn't campaign rhetoric—it was a governing philosophy. Trump genuinely believes his supporters have been wronged and that “revenge and retribution represent justice the old-fashioned way.”3. Political Speech Can Either Inflame or Soothe These Passions Galston advocates for leaders who use rhetoric like “foam on a runway fire”—dampening rather than stoking destructive emotions. He points to FDR's “only thing we have to fear is fear itself” as an example of transforming paralyzing fear into productive confidence.4. History Has No Predetermined Direction Unlike Hegelian or Marxist narratives, Galston argues there's no “History with a capital H” moving inexorably toward liberal democracy. Regression is always possible, and believing in historical inevitability is one of liberalism's dangerous illusions.5. Americans Are Growing Tired of Constant Political Combat Despite polarized extremes, Galston detects a “rising sense that we need civil peace” and believes many Americans are “yearning” for a peacemaker who can restore “domestic tranquility”—creating an opening for the right kind of leader.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 happening. The question is whether it's a dream or a nightmare. This week, OpenAI introduced Pulse, an AI assistant that knows what we want to do and think before we do. That Was The Week publisher Keith Teare welcomes Pulse as a “habit” that will “shape your day.” Unlike the techno-teleological Keith, however, I'm less enamored by Pulse. Do we really want a proactive AI assistant that not only controls what Keith calls the “front door” but every other door (and window) in our lives? Keith describes this as the “consumer install moment” - Sam Altman's $10 trillion bet on ‘Abundant Intelligence.' But what, exactly, is so abundant about this personalized machine intelligence that installs itself into our lives? Having a smart assistant determine our daily calendar might actually make us dumber. Such an “agentic” future is certainly no friend of human agency. Yeah, it's happening. The end of the beginning or the beginning of the end?* The “Front Door” Battle is On: OpenAI's Pulse represents a strategic shift from reactive search to proactive assistance, with tech giants racing to control the primary interface through which we interact with information and make decisions.* Privacy Becomes an Afterthought: While OpenAI claims privacy protections, most users don't understand what data these AI assistants access. The $200/month price point currently limits exposure, but mass adoption will create unprecedented privacy challenges.* The Infrastructure Gold Rush: Sam Altman's 10-gigawatt power deals and NVIDIA's GPU dominance reveal the massive energy and capital investment required to scale AI - with an $800 billion gap between current investment and projected revenue.* “Consumer Pull” is Driving the Boom: Unlike previous tech bubbles, AI demand from actual users (not just hype) is outstripping supply, forcing companies to race to build data centers and power infrastructure to meet real usage.* The “Idiocracy Trap” Question: As AI assistants take over more cognitive tasks - from scheduling to decision-making - we face a fundamental question about whether this technology will enhance human intelligence or create dependency that makes us collectively dumber.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 Trump is doing is not popular”. For the This Old Democracy podcaster and veteran Democratic activist Micah Sifry, that's the good news of Trump's sub-40% approval rate. The bad news, Sifry warns, is that the Dems remained a weak, divided party struggling to counter the MAGA-controlled Republicans. Learning from the campus success of Charlie Kirk, he says, the Democrats need to rediscover what once made them a party of the vibrant counterculture. And that certainly isn't going to happen if grey functionaries like Schumer and Jeffries retain control of an increasingly gerontocratic party. He favors economic populism over identity politics, arguing that progressives made a “gigantic mistake” by favoring the woke politics of the university over working-class concerns. And so the New York based Sifry is cautiously optimistic about Zohran Mamdani whose primary victory, he is convinced, demonstrated that young voters will turn out for dynamic candidates who offer both generational change and credible ways to address economic anxiety. 1. Trump's Weakness Creates Democratic Opportunity Sifry argues that Trump's sub-40% approval rating means 50-60% of Americans are politically available to the opposition. The challenge isn't Trump's popularity (he's not popular) but Democrats' failure to effectively organize and mobilize this majority.2. Democrats Must Use Their Leverage or Lose It Rather than capitulating on government funding, Sifry advocates that Chuck Schumer and Senate Democrats should force shutdowns when necessary. Trump backs down when faced with sufficient pushback, as evidenced by his quick reversal on tariffs when markets crashed.3. Generational Change Is Already Underway Mamdani's primary victory over Mario Cuomo signals the end of the Biden-Clyburn-Pelosi era. Young voters (under 40) turned out in unprecedented numbers, suggesting the Democratic Party's old guard has lost touch with a crucial demographic.4. Economic Populism Beats Identity Politics Sifry admits progressives made a “gigantic mistake” by centering identity hierarchies that marginalized working-class concerns, particularly young men. He advocates for Bernie Sanders-style economic populism that focuses on class and corporate power rather than cultural issues.5. Charlie Kirk Built What Progressives Lack Despite disagreeing with Kirk politically, Sifry acknowledges he created a successful youth movement through genuine debate, chapter-based organizing, and relationship building. Progressives have no equivalent infrastructure for engaging and converting opponents through sustained conversation and local organizing.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

Jacob Ward warned us. Back in January 2022, the Oakland-based tech journalist published The Loop, a warning about how AI is creating a world without choices. He even came on this show to warn about AI's threat to humanity. Three years later, we've all caught up with Ward. So where is he now on AI? Moderately vindicated but more pessimistic. His original thesis has proven disturbingly accurate - we're outsourcing decisions to AI at an accelerating pace. But he admits his book's weakest section was “how to fight back,” and he still lacks concrete solutions. His fear has evolved: less worried about robot overlords, he is now more concerned about an “Idiocracy” of AI human serfs. It's a dystopian scenario where humans become so stupid that they won't even be able to appreciate Gore Vidal's quip that “I told you so” are the four most beautiful words in the English language. I couldn't resist asking Anthropic's Claude about Ward's conclusions (not, of course, that I rely on it for anything). “Anecdotal” is how it countered with characteristic coolness. Well Claude wouldn't say that, wouldn't it?1. The “Idiocracy” threat is more immediate than AGI concerns Ward argues we should fear humans becoming cognitively dependent rather than superintelligent machines taking over. He's seeing this now - Berkeley students can't distinguish between reading books and AI summaries.2. AI follows market incentives, not ethical principles Despite early rhetoric about responsible development, Ward observes the industry prioritizing profit over principles. Companies are openly betting on when single-person billion-dollar businesses will emerge, signaling massive job displacement.3. The resistance strategy remains unclear Ward admits his book's weakness was the “how to fight back” section, and he still lacks concrete solutions. The few examples of resistance he cites - like Signal's president protecting user data from training algorithms - require significant financial sacrifice.4. Economic concentration creates systemic risk The massive capital investments (Nvidia's $100 billion into OpenAI) create dangerous loops where AI companies essentially invest in themselves. Ward warns this resembles classic bubble dynamics that could crash the broader economy.5. “Weak perfection” is necessary for human development Ward argues we need friction and inefficiency in our systems to maintain critical thinking skills. AI's promise to eliminate all cognitive work may eliminate the mental exercise that keeps humans intellectually capable.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 where exactly is Trump's America? According to the Brookings fellow Jonathan Rauch, the world's largest economic, military and cultural power is “half way to Hungary” - the small, landlocked Central European country run by an equally small and landlocked man called Viktor Orban. For Rauch, this suggests that America is on its way to becoming the sort of pathetically petty patrimonial state that the wannabe dictator Orban is trying to establish in Hungary. But the idea of the world's dominant superpower being “halfway to Budapest” sounds more like the title of a characteristically absurd central European novel. It suggests that Trump's America is, in fact, currently lost in the mid-Atlantic. It's nowhere. And if making America great again really does require borrowing anything from a country as small and landlocked as Hungary, then I fear for the historical significance of both Trump and his MAGA movement. Surely they could come up with a more original playbook than that?1. America is Following the “Hungarian Playbook” of Modern Authoritarianism Rauch warns that Trump is deploying Viktor Orbán's four-part strategy: sue critics into bankruptcy, use regulatory power to threaten licenses, buy out media outlets, and intimidate advertisers. This represents a new form of authoritarianism that doesn't require tanks or military coups.2. The Rise of the “Woke Right” - Postmodern Tactics Adopted by Conservatives The right has borrowed from postmodern philosophy the idea that there's no objective truth, only power and narrative control. This creates a “postmodern right” that focuses on winning stories rather than establishing facts - exemplified by claims about vaccine dangers or election fraud.3. Constitutional Crisis is Already Underway, Not Coming Rauch argues we're not heading toward a constitutional crisis - we're already in one. He points to executive orders targeting political enemies and the “naked politicization” of prosecutorial systems as evidence that democratic norms have already been breached.4. 2028, Not 2026, Will Be the Real Test While Rauch expects the 2026 midterms to be relatively fair (70-80% likelihood), he's deeply concerned about 2028. The administration won't have enough time to fully implement election interference by 2026, but 2028 could see systematic attempts to rig the democratic process.5. Resistance Requires Slowing Down Authoritarian “Shock and Awe” The most effective resistance strategy is to slow down Trump's rapid implementation of authoritarian measures through litigation and civil society pushback. Early capitulation doesn't work - it only invites more demands. The key is preventing the normalization of antidemocratic behavior.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

Donald Trump made his own controversial case against the United Nations at the UN today, lecturing world leaders that “the UN is supposed to stop invasions, not create them and not finance them.” But he was beaten to this anti-UN manifesto by the New York City based journalist Seth Barron, who wrote “The End of the UN ” cover story for Tablet magazine this month. While Barron's historically grounded critique is more academically rigorous than Trump's, it essentially makes the same realpolitik argument: that there's an irreconcilable contradiction between American interests and multilateral governance. Barron blithely suggests it's time for the United States to withdraw from the UN entirely. But as I pressed him, without success, in our conversation, what then would replace international institutions when it comes to resolving seemingly intractable conflicts in Ukraine, Gaza, and beyond? 1. The UN Is Already Dead in PracticeBarron argues the UN has lost all meaningful influence and relevance. He compares it to the Roman Senate, which continued meeting for 200 years after Rome's collapse in 476 AD, discussing wars and public works they had no power to conduct. The UN, he suggests, has become a similar zombie institution.2. Peacekeeping Missions Have Been Catastrophic FailuresFrom Somalia (1993) and Rwanda (1994) to Bosnia (1995) and Haiti, Barron cites repeated examples where UN peacekeepers either failed to prevent massacres or, in Haiti's case, became predators themselves—with Sri Lankan peacekeepers systematically raping Haitian children while building brothels.3. International Law Is a Fiction Used by the PowerfulBarron argues that without enforcement mechanisms, international law becomes merely “a cudgel by powerful countries to throw their weight around.” He notes that the International Criminal Court typically prosecutes African leaders from weak nations while ignoring crimes by major powers.4. Israel Has Become the UN's ScapegoatSince 2015, the UN has passed 173 resolutions condemning Israel compared to just 27 against Russia and 12 against Syria. Barron sees this as evidence of institutional anti-Semitism and argues that post-colonial nations use Israel as a “whipping boy” to deflect from their own human rights violations.5. No Viable Alternative to National SovereigntyWhen pressed on what would replace the UN, Barron offered no clear answer beyond bilateral agreements and regional arrangements. He dismissed the idea that global challenges like climate change require international cooperation, arguing that agreements like the Paris Accords are toothless without enforcement mechanisms. Barron's critique has some merit but offers no constructive vision for addressing genuinely global problems in an interconnected world. 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 the prize-winning author of Dreamland and The Least of Us, Sam Quinones is one of the most acclaimed authorities on America's deadly drug epidemics. So it might seem a little surprising that his follow-up to these two best-sellers is a book in praise of the bass horn, a relatively unglamorous musical instrument that he neither plays nor learned in marching band. But it all makes perfect sense. In The Perfect Tuba, Quinones resurrects the American Dream in the form of the bass horn (tuba) which he describes as the “tuba civil rights movement”. It's the story of how to forge fulfillment from the bass horn, high school band and hard work. This isn't just Quinones' journey. It's a map of how America can get from fentanyl to fulfillment. 1. You Don't Find Your Passion—You Forge It Through Hard Work Quinones discovered that fulfillment doesn't come from finding something you're naturally drawn to, but from working so hard at something that you become good enough to love doing it. This creates a cycle where competence breeds passion, leading to deeper engagement and growth.2. Band Teaches What Sports Can't: True Community Values While athletics get the glory, band programs create lasting life skills. In schools with 66% dropout rates, band students had 100% graduation rates. Twenty years later, former band members showed strong family and professional lives because band teaches accountability, precision, collaboration, and finding joy in small accomplishments.3. The "Tuba Civil Rights Movement" Challenges Low Expectations Tuba players have fought against being seen as limited—both the instrument and the people who play it. This mirrors broader social justice themes: when we expect little from people or communities (like Roma, Texas), we waste hidden talent that just needs proper cultivation and support.4. Hard Work Is the Antidote to America's Addiction Economy Quinones sees tuba players as the opposite of addicts. Instead of seeking happiness through consumption (buying something external), they find fulfillment through creation (developing internal capabilities). This offers a model for moving from quick dopamine hits to sustained contentment.5. Democracy Requires Orchestral Thinking, Not Solo Performance Real democracy sounds like a band—people with different roles working toward shared goals, not wanting to let others down, and being accountable for their part. The collaborative discipline learned in music programs teaches essential democratic values that social media and individual achievement culture are eroding.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

I suspect both left and right have the Kimmel-Kirk story wrong. Rather than being about free speech versus hate speech, it's actually the story of the end of the television era and the rise of open internet platforms like YouTube and Substack. So when Keith Teare asks who is for free speech in his latest That Was The Week newsletter, what he's really saying is that free speech has never been freer. Anyone can say anything they want, he says. The only real question is whether anyone is actually listening. So the Kimmel-Kirk story is really about the shift in broadcast business models and the future of paid content. Getting fired from ABC might be the best thing that ever happened to a generic tv comic like Jimmy Kimmel. What he now needs to figure out is how to monetize his instant global fame. 1. The Cancellation Paradox Getting "canceled" from traditional media might now be a career accelerator rather than a death sentence. Kimmel has instant global recognition - the hardest thing to achieve in the creator economy - and can now build a direct audience relationship without network interference.2. Television is Already Dead (But Nobody Wants to Admit It) When late-night TV audiences are "well under 100,000 people" watching live, we're witnessing the final death throes of broadcast television as a relevant medium. The controversy feels big because it's symbolic, not because TV actually matters anymore.3. The Real Battle is Platform Independence vs. Platform Dependence The fundamental shift isn't about what you can say, but about who controls your ability to monetize what you say. Traditional media creates "intellectual codependency" between talent and publishers - breaking free requires becoming your own platform.4. Attention is the New Scarce Resource As Keith Teare notes, "anyone can say anything they want" - distribution is infinite. The challenge isn't getting a voice; it's getting an audience. Controversy, even negative controversy, solves the attention problem that most creators struggle with for years.5. Both Sides Are Fighting Yesterday's War While left and right argue about speech policing, the real action is in the economic disruption of media business models. YouTube, Substack, and other platforms are quietly becoming the new infrastructure for public discourse - making the entire "who controls traditional media" debate irrelevant.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