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Our 249th episode with a summary and discussion of last week's big AI news!Recorded on 06/17/2026Note: work has kept me from publishing episodes promptly, apologies! I'll get back on schedule soon.Hosted by Andrey Kurenkov and Jeremie HarrisFeel free to email us your questions and feedback at andreyvkurenkov@gmail.com and/or hello@gladstone.aiRead out our text newsletter and comment on the podcast at https://lastweekin.ai/In this episode:Anthropic cut off access to Fable 5 and Mythos 5 after a US government order tied to alleged jailbreaks, prompting debate over inconsistent policy, export controls, and the practicality of preventing jailbreaks.SpaceX completed an IPO at a roughly $1.75T valuation and then moved to acquire AI coding startup Cursor for $60B, positioning xAI with Cursor's talent, data, and product to compete more effectively in coding.Infrastructure and business updates include Anthropic pursuing direct US data center leases backed by Google, leaked documents showing OpenAI's revenue growth alongside large losses, and chatbot market share shifting with ChatGPT below 50% as Gemini and Claude gain.Projects and policy highlights include OpenRouter's Fusion multi-model synthesis, new open releases from Moonshot, Qwen, and NVIDIA, DOJ support for xAI's unpermitted gas turbines in Memphis, and a Munich court ruling Google liable for false AI Overview statements.Timestamps (note - these don't take into account dynamically inserted ads and therefore may be off by a couple of minutes):(00:00:10) Intro / Banter(00:03:38) Ad break + news previewTools & Apps(00:04:52) Anthropic cuts off Fable 5 and Mythos 5 access following government order | The Verge + All the news about Anthropic's new AI fight with the White House(00:25:53) Facebook's new AI Mode search gets its info from public posts | The VergeApplications & Business(00:27:00) SpaceX to acquire the AI coding startup Cursor for $60 billion(00:35:42) Anthropic pursues data center leases, seeks financial backing from Google, The Information reports | Reuters(00:40:10) Leaked financial docs show OpenAI is losing billions of dollars a year - Ars Technica(00:46:00) ChatGPT's market share slips below 50% for first time | TechCrunch(00:50:34) ‘Tell Him He's a Piece of Shit': Meta's New AI Unit Is a Total Mess | WIRED(00:56:23) Sakana AI Commercializes AB-MCTS in Sakana Marlin, an Enterprise Agent Generating Up to 100-Page Research Reports With Slides - MarkTechPostProjects & Open Source(00:59:36) Surpassing Frontier Performance with Fusion — OpenRouter Blog(01:03:00) Moonshot AI Releases Kimi K2.7-Code: a Coding Model Reporting +21.8% on Kimi Code Bench v2 Over K2.6 - MarkTechPost(01:08:34) Meet Qwen-RobotSuite: Three Embodied AI Models for VLA Manipulation, Video World Modeling, and Navigation - MarkTechPost(01:11:29) Nemotron 3 Ultra: Open, Efficient Mixture-of-Experts Hybrid Mamba-Transformer Model for Agentic Reasoning(01:17:31) ProCUA-SFT Technical ReportPolicy & Safety(01:20:33) DOJ Lawyers Argue xAI Is ‘Vital' for National Security in NAACP Lawsuit | WIRED + People Living Near xAI's Dirty Data Centers Are Pissed About the SpaceX IPO(01:25:29) A Court Has Ruled That Google Is Liable for False Statements Generated by AI Overviews | WIRED(01:28:47) Why Do Naive SFT Filters For Safety Properties Fail?Research & Advancements(01:34:14) From AGI to ASI(01:39:44) Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index v4.1: a shift toward agentic workloads(01:42:12) SIA: Self Improving AI with Harness & Weight UpdatesSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

On this episode of Christopher Lochhead: Follow Your Different, we welcome back Ray Wang, Chairman and CEO of Constellation Research, and widely regarded as one of the most insightful technology analysts in the world. In a recent conversation with Christopher Lochhead, Ray Wang shared his unfiltered perspective on the biggest developments shaping the technology landscape today. From the historic SpaceX IPO to the transformative acquisition of Cursor, Ray Wang offered sharp analysis that cuts through the noise and gets to what actually matters for businesses and investors navigating an AI-driven world. The conversation covered topics that most analysts are still catching up on, including why knowledge workers need to rethink their value, what Data Inc companies actually are, and why the context layer above large language models may be the most important competitive battleground of the next decade. What makes Ray Wang’s perspective so valuable is not just his breadth of knowledge but his ability to synthesize experience into wisdom, which is precisely the distinction he draws when talking about why AI cannot replace truly seasoned professionals. You're listening to Christopher Lochhead: Follow Your Different. We are the real dialogue podcast for people with a different mind. So get your mind in a different place, and hey ho, let's go.   Ray Wang on AI, Knowledge Work, and the Commoditization of Expertise Ray Wang makes a clear and compelling distinction between knowledge and wisdom. He argues that knowledge has become a commodity, but wisdom, the ability to take insights and turn them into meaningful action, remains deeply human and increasingly valuable. As AI automates deterministic, repetitive tasks, what rises in importance is judgment, the capacity to learn from failure and connect dots in ways that no model trained exclusively on successful outcomes can replicate. This reframing is critical for anyone worried about AI displacing their career. Ray Wang points out that AI systems today learn only from success, with no real failure database informing their outputs. That gap is where experienced professionals earn their keep. Businesses are increasingly paying for people who have lived through cycles of failure and recovery, not simply those who can recite information retrieved from a search index.   The SpaceX IPO and What Ray Wang Says It Means for the Future of Markets Ray Wang describes the SpaceX IPO as a completely new playbook, one that flipped conventional wisdom about how public offerings should be structured. Rather than allocating the vast majority of shares to institutional investors through a traditional roadshow, SpaceX directed somewhere between 20 and 30 percent of the offering toward retail investors. Ray Wang sees this as Elon Musk rewarding the individual investors who stayed loyal through years of volatility, particularly the Tesla shareholders who held on despite relentless short-selling pressure. Beyond the allocation strategy, Ray Wang highlights how Musk essentially told the markets to take it or leave it at a fixed price, bypassing the typical price-discovery process. The Nasdaq inclusion guaranteed a floor without needing the traditional green shoe option to do the heavy lifting. Ray Wang believes this model could influence how future high-profile tech companies, including OpenAI and Anthropic, approach their own public offerings, fundamentally shifting leverage away from Wall Street banks and toward founders and retail participants.   Ray Wang Explains Data Inc Companies and the Context Layer That Defines AI Competitive Advantage Ray Wang has been developing a framework he calls the Data Inc company, a concept centered on the idea that businesses that treat data as their primary asset, combined with strong distribution, will dominate the AI era. According to Ray Wang, unique data sets that no competitor can access or replicate are the foundation of next-generation competitive moats. Companies that fail to own their data and build derivative products from it will find themselves structurally disadvantaged as AI capabilities become more broadly available. Taking that framework one step further, Ray Wang agrees that the real battleground is not the large language model itself but the contextual layer that sits above it. This semantic and contextual wrapper, built from proprietary data and accumulated organizational knowledge, is what gives AI outputs meaning and reduces hallucinations. Swapping out one LLM for another becomes straightforward when this context layer is robust, much like swapping one database for another in a well-architected system. Ray Wang adds one more dimension that elevates the entire conversation: persistent memory. The ability for AI systems to retain learnings across interactions and pass that accumulated intelligence to downstream systems is, in his view, the true home run of enterprise AI. Decision velocity, powered by a rich contextual layer and persistent memory, is what separates companies that merely adopt AI from those that build genuine exponential advantage from it. To hear more from Ray Wang and his thoughts about the Future of Tech, download and listen to this episode.   Bio R “Ray” Wang (pronounced WAHNG) is the Founder, Chairman, and Principal Analyst of Silicon Valley based Constellation Research Inc. He co-hosts DisrupTV, a weekly enterprise tech and leadership webcast that averages 50,000 views per episode and authors a business strategy and technology blog that has received millions of page views per month.  Wang also serves as a non-resident Senior Fellow at The Atlantic Council's GeoTech Center. Since 2003, Ray has delivered thousands of live and virtual keynotes around the world that are inspiring and legendary. Wang has spoken at almost every major tech conference. His ground-breaking bestselling book on digital transformation, Disrupting Digital Business, was published by Harvard Business Review Press in 2015.  Ray's new book about Digital Giants and the future of business titled, Everybody Wants to Rule the World will be released July 2021 by Harper Collins Leadership. Ray Wang is well quoted and frequently interviewed in media outlets such as the Wall Street Journal, Fox Business News, CNBC, Yahoo Finance, Cheddar, CGTN America, Bloomberg, Tech Crunch, ZDNet, Forbes, and Fortune.  He is one of the top technology analysts in the world.   Links Follow Ray Wang! Website | Twitter | LinkedIn | Constellation Research | DisrupTV   We hope you enjoyed this episode of Christopher Lochhead: Follow Your Different™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, X (formerly Twitter), Instagram, and subscribe on Apple Podcast / Spotify!

Bio: Sean Duffy is the Co-founder and CEO of Omada Health, a between-visit care provider that addresses cardiometabolic conditions like diabetes, hypertension, prediabetes, and obesity, as well as musculoskeletal issues. He has dedicated his professional life to bridging technology, design, and care delivery to transform care experiences for patients. As a former MD/MBA candidate at Harvard, he also holds a BS in neuroscience from Columbia University. He has written extensively about digital health and the future of healthcare in The New England Journal of Medicine, The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, and TechCrunch, among other publications. Prior to Omada, Sean worked at both Google and IDEO.Company: Omada Health (Nasdaq: OMDA) is reverse engineering the way healthcare is delivered in America, putting the space between doctor visits–where health is won or lost–at the center of care. Today's healthcare system poorly serves chronic conditions that require ongoing support outside of the exam room, like obesity, diabetes, hypertension, cholesterol, and musculoskeletal conditions. Omada's virtual-first model combines human-led care teams, connected devices, and AI-enabled technology to deliver personalized care at scale, including support for GLP-1 therapy. Omada has served more than two million members since launch across 2,000+ employers, health plans, pharmacy benefit managers, and health systems. Learn more at omadahealth.com.

“The Gross National Product measures everything except that which makes life worthwhile.” — Robert F. Kennedy, University of Kansas, March 18, 1968 It is June 5, 1968. An eleven-year-old English boy is watching the assassination of Bobby Kennedy on his black and white television. That little boy is Tim Jackson — now one of Britain's most influential critics of capitalism. He had no idea then that RFK would change his life. It happened years later, when Jackson discovered a speech Kennedy gave in Kansas in the spring of 1968. It was a speech that changed the way Tim Jackson thought about economics. The March 1968 speech, one of the first of RFK's presidential campaign, was delivered at Phog Allen Fieldhouse, University of Kansas. It opened with a joke at the expense of rival Kansas State University. Then Bobby turned deadly serious. For the first time (at least for a Presidential candidate), he attacked the very idea of the Gross National Product itself. RFK argued that GDP quantifies all the worst stuff including air pollution, cigarette advertising and jails. But it doesn't measure the health of our children, the quality of their education, or the joy of their play. It quantifies everything except that which makes life worthwhile. Then fetishizes the data. Worse than wrong, Bobby Kennedy suggested, GDP makes data evil. For Jackson, who has spent his career mulling over the idea of economic growth, RFK's Phog Allen Fieldhouse speech came as a revelation. Indeed much of his later thinking, including his 2021 award-winning book Post Growth: Life After Capitalism, is indebted to this March 1968 speech. Almost sixty years later, in our ever-more-quantifiable age of data-centres, it's a speech that appears uncannily prescient. Both Tim Jackson and Bobby Kennedy are right to remind us that there is an alternative to quantifying progress. There is, indeed, life after GDP. And it can't be measured. Five Takeaways •       An 11-Year-Old Watching the Assassination on His Birthday: Tim Jackson was born on June 4. On the night of June 4–5, 1968, after the California primary, RFK was shot at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. Jackson — watching on a black and white television in the UK — remembers thinking: oh no, not again. His aunt had just sailed for America from Southampton. Is this the country she is going to? Two high-profile assassinations. Violence as a condition of American political life. He had no idea then that RFK would become important to him professionally two or three decades later. •       The Kansas Speech: GDP Measures Everything Except What Makes Life Worthwhile: The speech RFK gave at Phog Allen Fieldhouse, University of Kansas, March 1968 — one of the first of his presidential campaign — opened with a joke at the expense of rival Kansas State University and became one of the most prescient political speeches of the 20th century. Kennedy attacked GDP directly: it counts air pollution, cigarette advertising, and the jails for the people who break the law. It does not count the health of our children, the quality of their education, or the joy of their play. It measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile. •       The Two Wrong Turns of Post-War Capitalism: Jackson's account: fossil fuels made mass production possible; the Great Depression revealed the danger of overproduction; the post-war solution was to persuade people that having more stuff is what matters. Two big mistakes were embedded in that solution. First: material consumption is not all we are — we have social, relational, spiritual needs that GDP ignores. Second: more production does more environmental damage. Both wrong turns are what Kennedy was already diagnosing in Kansas in 1968. Both are what we are now living with in extremis. •       The Trillionaire and the 2 Billion: The interview is recorded the day after the world's first trillionaire arrived on the scene. Jackson's response: this is an obscene amount of money for one person to have, while 2 billion people lack access to clean water and electricity. The same structural observation could be made about the 1850s: monarchs parading luxury while the people around them starved. The trillionaire is not a new phenomenon. He is the latest expression of an economic system that was always building toward this endpoint. •       They Created a Desert and Called It Peace: In the Kansas speech, RFK quoted Tacitus on Rome: “they created a desert and called it peace.” Jackson applies it directly to today's America: what is it to be a citizen of the affluent West only on the back of a flattened Gaza, a distant war, the creation of violence to preserve a failing hegemonic empire? Bobby was saying: we have values around social justice. We have a fragile planet. These are what matter. Bernie Sanders said the same things. AOC picked up the mantle. The message is unchanged. It is still Kansas, 1968. About the Guest Tim Jackson is Professor of Sustainable Development at the University of Surrey and Director of the Centre for the Understanding of Sustainable Prosperity (CUSP). He is the author of Post Growth: Life After Capitalism (Polity Press, 2021; winner of the 2022 Eric Zencey Prize for Economics) and Prosperity Without Growth (2009/2017; Financial Times book of the year). He is also an award-winning BBC radio dramatist. He lives in Guildford, Surrey. References: •       Post Growth: Life After Capitalism by Tim Jackson (Polity Press, 2021). •       RFK's University of Kansas speech, March 18, 1968 — delivered at Phog Allen Fieldhouse, Lawrence, Kansas. •       Tacitus, Agricola — “they created a desert and called it peace,” quoted by RFK in the Kansas speech. •       Kerry Kennedy, Ripples of Hope — referenced in the conversation. •       Andrew Keen's forthcoming book: Where Have You Gone, Bobby Kennedy? My Search for a Lost America — the RFK book this conversation feeds directly into. About Keen On America Nobody asks more awkward questions than the Anglo-American writer and filmmaker Andrew Keen. In Keen On America, Andrew brings his pointed Transatlantic wit to making sense of the United States — hosting daily interviews about the history and future of this now venerable Republic. With nearly 3,000 episodes since the show launched on TechCrunch in 2010, Keen On America is the most prolific intellectual interview show in the history of podcasting. WebsiteSubstackYouTubeApple Podcasts

“Just 25 literary agents represent more than half of all prizewinning novelists in the 21st century. The agent is the unacknowledged legislator of the literary field.” — Laura McGrath We think of publishers and editors as the ultimate tastemakers. As those godlike gatekeepers controlling what we read. But if you're looking for literary gods, Laura McGrath argues, then you need to look at literary agents rather than publishers or editors. Her ten-year project, Middlemen: Literary Agents and the Making of American Fiction, is the first serious scholarly account of the literary agent's astonishingly powerful role in shaping what America reads. Except, of course, the Middlemen are actually Middlewomen — since 80% of literary agents are women. The numbers are striking. Just 25 literary agents represent more than half of all prizewinning novelists in the 21st century. McGrath interviewed 75 of them over ten years. Shelley called poets the unacknowledged legislators of the world. McGrath's agents are the unacknowledged legislators of the literary field. They shaped postmodernism (Candida Donadio and Pynchon, Heller, Gaddis). They launched the debut novel as a literary form. They made the short story collection viable. And 25 of them control more than half of the prizes. So will AI replace the agent? In operations, perhaps, McGrath acknowledges — the slush pile is overwhelming and smart machine assistance is welcome. But in creative work — in the business of writing, editing, translation, cover design, and above all taste — she thinks not. No algorithm will ever learn the Catch-22 of publishing — separating the Thomas Pynchon or Joseph Heller from all the dross. And no bot (male or female) is ever going to host a three-martini lunch in Manhattan. Five Takeaways •       The Literary Agent as the New Gatekeeper: Replacing the Publisher: In the early 20th century, publishing was shaped by the taste of individual publishers: Bennett Cerf at Random House, Alfred and Blanche Knopf at their imprint, Max Perkins at Scribner's. Those days are over. Publishers are now conglomerates where individual editors may have excellent taste but no single figure shapes the house. Into that vacuum has come the literary agent — who now operates, McGrath argues, exactly as the great publishers once did: as the primary tastemaker, the person whose aesthetic and commercial judgment shapes what America reads. •       25 Agents, Half the Prizes, 80% Women: The Numbers: McGrath's most striking statistical finding: just 25 literary agents represent more than half of all prizewinning novelists in the 21st century. Twenty-five people. The field is 80% women — hence the tongue-in-cheek title — and 73% white. Agents tend, McGrath found, to represent authors who resemble themselves. One answer to the question “why is contemporary literary fiction so white?” is: because agents are. And agents, because they work on contingency fees rather than salaries, face severe financial pressures that concentrate power at the top of the profession. •       The Unacknowledged Legislators: Agents Shaped American Literary History: McGrath's book is full of literary history rewritten from the agent's perspective. Sterling Lord persisted past dozens of rejections to place On the Road for Kerouac. Candida Donadio — Pynchon's, Heller's, Gaddis's, and early Philip Roth's agent — championed maximalist, experimental writers whom no one was interested in, and built the social network of editor relationships that made postmodernism possible. The debut novel as a cultural form, the persistence of the short story collection despite poor sales, the rise of the New York novel — all are, in McGrath's account, partly agent-made. •       Can White Male Writers Not Get Published? No: Andrew raises the complaint he hears from white male writers: that they can no longer get published because of diversity initiatives. McGrath's answer is flat. No. She thinks it's silly. The number of books published each week is staggering. Being able to see some success on the part of writers of colour does not diminish the work white men are doing. The complaint, she notes, circulates every ten years, typically after a boom in support for writers of colour. We are in another round of this cycle. There will be another one in a decade. •       Will AI Replace the Literary Agent? In Operations, Maybe. In Taste, No: Andrew's closing question: will AI replace the middlemen? McGrath draws the distinction she heard at the US Book Show: AI in operations (slush pile management, contract tracking), yes, possibly. AI in creative work — writing, editing, translation, cover design, and above all taste — she hopes not. An algorithm is built on priors. It narrows the window of possibility endlessly, replicating itself. That is not what a good literary agent does. A good literary agent is looking for books that surprise, frustrate, and thrill. No algorithm has learned to take an author out for a three-martini lunch. About the Guest Laura McGrath is an assistant professor of English at Temple University and a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow. She was formerly the associate director of the Literary Lab at Stanford University. She is the author of Middlemen: Literary Agents and the Making of American Fiction (Princeton University Press, April 28, 2026). She writes the textCrunch Substack on literary and publishing culture. References: •       Middlemen: Literary Agents and the Making of American Fiction by Laura McGrath (Princeton University Press, April 28, 2026). •       Earlier on KOA: Gayle Feldman on Nothing Random: Bennett Cerf and the Publishing House He Built — the companion episode referenced at the opening. •       Sterling Lord (agent for Kerouac), Candida Donadio (Pynchon, Heller, Gaddis, Roth), Andrew Wylie — agents profiled in the book. •       Andrew Keen, Cult of the Amateur (2007) — referenced as Andrew's own defence of gatekeepers. About Keen On America Nobody asks more awkward questions than the Anglo-American writer and filmmaker Andrew Keen. In Keen On America, Andrew brings his pointed Transatlantic wit to making sense of the United States — hosting daily interviews about the history and future of this now venerable Republic. With nearly 3,000 episodes since the show launched on TechCrunch in 2010, Keen On America is the most prolific intellectual interview show in the history of podcasting. WebsiteSubstackYouTube

“AI companies are taking advantage of our natural tendency to ascribe an inner life to our interlocutors. They profit when you think the chatbot cares.” — Kate O'Neill If we don't like someone, we call them a fascist. And if we like them, we say they are a humanist. The F and H words. Both meaningless in our sloppy, bot-infested age. But maybe I'm just a cranky anti-humanist. Even anti-human — whatever that means. Or maybe I'm being harsh (moi?). Humanism certainly is all the rage in our AI age. Corporate consultant Kate O'Neill likes the word so much that she has built her brand around it. The self-styled “Tech Humanist” is the author of Tech Humanist, the host of the Tech Humanist Show, and a frequent speaker on the TED circuit. So how to use the H word without sounding like Claude or ChatGPT? O'Neill argues that what makes us human is our quest for meaning. The M word. That's what distinguishes us from the bots. But as Kazuo Ishiguro warns in Klara and the Sun, we are fast arriving at a point when the bots are better than us at extracting meaning from the world. So did Kate O'Neill pass the Keen Test (reverse of Turing)? Did the Tech Humanist say anything that would have eluded Claude? Or have we already arrived at Ishiguro's bleak terminus where the bots are more skilled at infusing the H word with meaning than we are? Five Takeaways •       What Is Tech Humanism? Aligning Business and Human Outcomes: O'Neill's definition: technology shapes human experiences at scale, and it does so almost always in service of a business objective that is accelerating its advance. The purpose of tech humanism is to find the business objectives that need to be met and align them with human outcomes that are rewarding and fulfilling for people. This means using technology to amplify the alignment between business and human outcomes — rather than simply making the business more successful. It is, she acknowledges, not the habit of most business leaders. But it is a habit that can be developed. •       You Sound Like a Bot: Andrew's Challenge: Andrew's opening challenge: O'Neill sounds exactly like a well-prompted language model. She uses the h word (humanism) and the m word (meaning). What is she saying that Claude couldn't say? O'Neill's answer: meaning is not a word but a phenomenon. It is what emerges from the combination of embodied sensory experience and language — the way humans encode meaningful experiences with language in their brains. As far as we know, this is a uniquely human capability. Machines process information statistically. Humans process it meaningfully. That distinction is, she argues, precisely the gap that matters. •       AI Companies Profit When You Think the Chatbot Cares: O'Neill's sharpest observation: we are constituted to look for inner life in the things we interact with. We give nicknames to our cars and talk to our toasters. At this early stage of interacting with large language models, it is entirely natural to assume there is a consciousness on the other side. The problem: AI companies are actively taking advantage of that natural tendency. They profit from it. The more people believe the chatbot genuinely understands them, the more they use it. That manipulation is real and it is working. Developing critical thinking about AI interactions is, O'Neill argues, now a form of self-defence. •       The Intersection of Meaning and Scale: O'Neill's key contribution to the tech humanism conversation: the problem with technology is not technology itself but the scale at which it operates. A single interaction with a biased algorithm is annoying. A billion such interactions, aggregated and accelerated by a business objective, reshapes society. The tech humanist's job is to ensure that when we deploy technology at scale, the outcomes remain aligned with human meaning rather than with the extraction of human attention. This, she says, is both a business problem and a civilisational one. The two are, in her view, inseparable. •       A Message to 2126: What We Valued About Ourselves: Andrew asks O'Neill: it is 2126. Humans and machines are indistinguishable. What do you say to whoever is listening? O'Neill's answer: hello from the past. What we valued about ourselves was our ability to understand each other — intellectually, emotionally, sympathetically, empathetically. We could come into our interactions by holding space for what the other person feels and cares about. And we could, even when we disagreed, create more shared understanding by virtue of having the conversation. That is a beautiful thing, she says, whether we are distinctly human and distinctly machine or increasingly a blend of both. About the Guest Kate O'Neill is founder and CEO of KO Insights and is widely known as “the Tech Humanist.” She was one of the first 100 employees at Netflix and has held roles at Toshiba and founded the analytics firm [meta]marketer. She is named to the Thinkers50 global ranking of top management thinkers. She is the author of What Matters Next: A Leader's Guide to Making Human-Friendly Tech Decisions in a World That's Moving Too Fast (Wiley, January 2025), Tech Humanist (2018), A Future So Bright (2021), and Pixels and Place (2016). She advises Google, IBM, Microsoft, the United Nations, Harvard, and Yale. She hosts The Tech Humanist Show on YouTube. References: •       What Matters Next: A Leader's Guide to Making Human-Friendly Tech Decisions in a World That's Moving Too Fast by Kate O'Neill (Wiley, January 2025). •       Kazuo Ishiguro, Klara and the Sun (2021) — the novel discussed in the conversation's closing section. •       Victoria Hetherington, The Friend Machine — referenced by Andrew in the conversation on AI companionship. About Keen On America Nobody asks more awkward questions than the Anglo-American writer and filmmaker Andrew Keen. In Keen On America, Andrew brings his pointed Transatlantic wit to making sense of the United States — hosting daily interviews about the history and future of this now venerable Republic. With nearly 3,000 episodes since the show launched on TechCrunch in 2010, Keen On America is the most prolific intellectual interview show in the history of podcasting. WebsiteSubstackYouTube

“I considered it elder abuse. She put him through the paces, not only before the debate, but after. She should have gotten him out of there immediately.” — Sally Quinn on Jill Biden and the debate Today's guest is amongst America's most verbal octogenarians. No, not you-know-who. Sally Quinn is the illustrious Washington DC hostess, writer and commentator. The almost 85-year-old does improv comedy every Sunday, ballroom dancing every week and Zen Buddhist meditation every Monday night. Her novel, Silent Retreat, is now out in paperback. And she's working on her memoir, tentatively entitled Never Invite Sally Quinn. Certainly Jill Biden won't be inviting Sally Quinn any time soon to one of her tête-à-têtes. Quinn's account of what went wrong with the Biden presidency is sharply personal. Her late husband, legendary Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee, had dementia. She watched his cognitive decline from inside, and the parallels with what she observed in Biden were, she tells me, too close for comfort. Jill Biden's decision to keep Joe running after the debate, when she privately suspected he'd suffered a stroke, was, in Quinn's word, “elder abuse.” Silent Retreat, set at a monastery in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley, is about the sexiness of silence. A prize-winning reporter and the venerable Archbishop of Dublin fall in love in enforced silence. Anything but elder abuse. But autobiographical? Probably not. As Ben Bradlee used to tease her over breakfast, it's always been hard for not-silent-Sally to keep her mouth shut. Five Takeaways •       The Army Brat Who Became Washington's Most Powerful Hostess: Quinn grew up as an army brat, moving from posting to posting with her military father. She arrived in Washington after college, did a stint as social secretary to the Algerian ambassador, and was then hired by Ben Bradlee to write for the Washington Post's new Style section — the first style section in the history of American journalism. She and Bradlee eventually married. Their home in Georgetown became the hub of Washington's social and political life for decades. She describes herself not as a powerhouse but as someone who “really lucked out.” An army brat who knew how to work a room. •       Gerontocracy Is Real — But People Who Keep Going Are Different: Quinn agrees with Samuel Moyn that American gerontocracy is a genuine problem: people who lose their cognitive sharpness should not be running organizations or countries, and the tragedy is that no one can know in advance who will lose it and who won't. But she draws a distinction: the problem is not old people, it's old people who have stopped growing. She surrounds herself with younger people, particularly younger journalists, because of their energy, idealism, and optimism. She is still working full time. The issue is not age. It's vitality. •       Biden and Jill: Elder Abuse: Quinn's account of the Biden presidency is the most personal Andrew has heard. Her husband Ben Bradlee had dementia. She knows the signs. She watched Biden lose it, got a knot in her stomach every time he spoke publicly. The debate was her worst nightmare. Everyone in the White House knew what was happening and wasn't telling the truth. And Jill Biden — who now admits she thought he had had a stroke after the debate — raised his arm in a victory salute the next day and took him off to campaign in North Carolina. Quinn's verdict: “I considered it elder abuse.” •       Silent Retreat: A New Yorker Writer and an Archbishop Fall in Love in Enforced Silence: The novel grew from Quinn's own annual visits to a Trappist monastery in Virginia's Berryville. She is a woman who once failed to stay quiet for three days — or so her husband thought — and who found to her surprise that she loved it. The novel: a prize-winning reporter whose marriage is falling apart, and an Archbishop of Dublin whose faith is in crisis, check into the same monastery for a silent retreat. They can't speak to each other. They speak to the monk instead. The novel is told through those confessions. Kirkus: “an unholy brew of lust and faith.” Airmail: “a bodice ripper with a fillip of Roman Catholic ritual.” •       Improv, Ballroom Dancing, Zen Buddhism, and Dinner by Candlelight: Quinn's account of how she stays alive at 84 is the most energetic thing in this conversation. Improv comedy every Sunday for two and a half hours — performances after the class, with people half her age. Ballroom dancing every week. Zen Buddhist meditation every Monday night for two hours. Working out every day. Writing her Washington memoir. And hosting small dinner parties — six or eight people, candlelight, good food, a lot of wine — as a form of community-building in what she calls the toxic environment of today's Washington. The memoir's title: Never Invite Sally Quinn. Andrew has already secured an invitation to the next dinner party. About the Guest Sally Quinn is a longtime Washington Post journalist, columnist, television commentator, Washington insider, and one of Washington's legendary social hostesses. She is the author of Silent Retreat (Simon & Schuster), Finding Magic, The Party, Happy Endings, Regrets Only, and We're Going to Make You a Star. She was the founder and moderator of On Faith, the Washington Post's religion website. She lives in Georgetown, Washington DC. References: •       Silent Retreat by Sally Quinn (Simon & Schuster). In paperback. •       Episode 2945: Samuel Moyn on Gerontocracy in America — referenced at the opening. •       Ben Bradlee — Quinn's late husband, executive editor of the Washington Post during Watergate, referenced throughout. About Keen On America Nobody asks more awkward questions than the Anglo-American writer and filmmaker Andrew Keen. In Keen On America, Andrew brings his pointed Transatlantic wit to making sense of the United States — hosting daily interviews about the history and future of this now venerable Republic. With nearly 3,000 episodes since the show launched on TechCrunch in 2010, Keen On America is the most prolific intellectual interview show in the history of podcasting. WebsiteSubstackYouTubeApple PodcastsSpotify Chapters:...

SPECS AR glasses announced, more discoveries from WWDC26, Google's new Gemini speaker, Fox buying Roku, UK is banning social media for teens and kids, plus how Americans really feel about AI.Member Promo Code: IWANTCHAPTERS (Click above and the $2.50 promo will be auto applied!)Top Five Tech | Stephen's PodcastCreative Effort | Jason's PodcastWatch on YouTube!Show Notes via EmailEmail Us: podcast@primarytech.fm@stephenrobles on Threads@jasonaten on ThreadsSponsors:Claude AI - Ready to tackle bigger problems? Sign up for Claude todayat: claude.ai/primaryShopify - Sign up for your one-dollar-per-month trial and start selling today at: shopify.com/primaryNordLayer - Get up to 22% off NordLayer yearly plans plus 10% on top with the coupon code: PRIMARTYTECHNOLOGY10 at: nordlayer.com/primarytechnologyLinks from the showAllbirds Is Now Smartbird.Claude Fable 5 and Claude Mythos 5 AnthropicSPECS AR GlassesThe Google Home Speaker, with GeminiWWDC26: Design immersive environments for visionOS apps and the spatial web | Apple - YouTubeWWDC26: Rev up your CarPlay app | Apple - YouTubeSafari didn't have to go this hard in macOS 27 - YouTubeFox agrees to buy Roku. Here's what investors are missingSpaceX IPO closes up 19% and delivers the world's first trillionaire | TechCrunchSpaceX to acquire the AI coding startup Cursor for $60 billionSchlage's UWB-enabled smart lock launches this month | The VergeMatter 1.6 Announced With NFC Setup, Cross-Ecosystem Device Sharing, and Smarter Thermostats - MacRumorsBritain will ban under-16s from social media apps, including TikTok and YouTube : NPRHow Australia's social media ban has affected families six months on | Social media bans | The GuardianOnly 16 percent of Americans think AI will have a positive impact on society, a new study shows | TechCrunch (00:00) - Intro (02:12) - Smartbird (06:31) - Claude Fable (09:14) - Snap Specs (12:48) - Gemini Speaker (19:51) - Immersive Behind-the-Scenes (22:52) - iOS 27 CarPlay (28:28) - Fox Buying Roku (31:03) - SpaceX IPO (34:52) - Smart Home News (36:26) - Sponsor: Anthropic (39:09) - Sponsor: Shopify (40:40) - Sponsor: NordLayer (41:52) - UK Social Media Ban (58:22) - Did Siri AI Just Win? ★ Support this podcast ★

“Age is the modality in which class is lived in America today.” — Samuel Moyn Yesterday we had 91-year-old Mordecai Kurz on the show. Tomorrow, it will be 84-year-old Sally Quinn. But today's guest, the Yale legal historian Samuel Moyn, has a bit of a problem with old people. His new book, Gerontocracy in America, argues that the old folks are hoarding power and wealth in America. For Moyn, Dylan's Sixties anthem of “Forever Young” has soured into today's reality of “Forever Old.” In some ways, it's hard to argue with Moyn's thesis. Donald Trump is the oldest elected US president in history. Congress has been ageing for decades — and several Democratic members died in the run-up to the One Big Beautiful Bill vote, thereby facilitating its passage. The progressive heroine Ruth Bader Ginsburg stayed on the Supreme Court through a pancreatic cancer diagnosis and died in office, handing the right a supermajority and the end of abortion rights. Clarence Thomas, the RBG of nutcase conservatism, is on track to become the longest-serving Supreme Court justice in US history. And then there's that alte kaker Joe Biden, former dodder-in-chief, the only pol who gives Trump a youthful glow. Even Bob Dylan — who I saw in all his morbid brilliance in Berkeley last week (“but me, I'm still on the road”) — just celebrated his 85th birthday. Forever old, America. Happy 250th. Five Takeaways •       What Is Gerontocracy? Not a Problem With Old People: Moyn is careful to distinguish gerontocracy from old people. He is in his mid-fifties and can't attack old people generally. His target is the system: the structural overrepresentation of old people in power, and the structural disadvantaging of the young that results. Old people can be great. Some are, some aren't — just like everyone else. The problem is that when we defer to old people automatically — as a system rather than as a judgement about individuals — we replicate their mistakes alongside their wisdom. And cognitive decline is real, as Biden proved. “Age is the modality in which class is lived in America today,” Moyn writes, riffing on Stuart Hall's formulation about race. •       The Congress, the Courts, and the Deaths That Passed the Bill: Trump is the oldest elected US president in history — and if JD Vance were to succeed him, Vance would be the youngest president since Teddy Roosevelt. But Moyn's focus goes beyond the presidency. Congress has aged dramatically: the average senator and representative are significantly older than at any point in US history, and there is now only one member of Congress in their thirties. Several Democratic members of the House died in the months before the One Big Beautiful Bill vote, facilitating its passage. The gerontocracy is quite literally voting itself into power through death. •       The RBG Problem: Selfishness and the Supreme Court: Moyn's account of Ruth Bader Ginsburg is unsparing. She had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer — one of the deadliest — and allegedly survived it. She had become a progressive icon, “Notorious RBG.” But she chose to stay on the court rather than retire under Obama, and she died in office in 2020, allowing Trump to appoint Amy Coney Barrett and hand the right a supermajority that ended abortion rights. Moyn's verdict: she was selfish. He is also careful to note that the system should not depend on individual virtue — there will always be selfish people. The system must be reformed so that selfish choices are no longer possible. •       The Framers Designed Gerontocracy Into the Constitution: One of Moyn's most striking historical arguments: the framers deliberately empowered old people. The age minimums for federal office (35 for the presidency, 30 for the Senate) excluded 70% of the population at the time. The Senate was named after the Roman senatus — literally “old men” — and the concept went back to the Spartan council of elders. Alexander Hamilton argued in the Federalist Papers that federal judges should serve until they were “dodering” because the alternative was too much popular power. The gerontocracy is not an accident. It was designed. •       The Solutions: Vote at Six, Retire at Sixty, Tax the Family Home: Moyn's solutions are deliberately radical. On voting: lower the age, as David Runciman advocates to six, and reduce the number of elections because evidence shows the more elections, the greater the elder dominance. On political office: age limits, youth cohorts. On the courts: mandatory retirement — this requires creative interpretation of the constitution rather than amendment. On the economy: higher taxes on inherited wealth and housing assets — an incremental tax for staying in a large house you no longer need. On the title of the paperback: Andrew suggests “Forever Old.” Moyn will credit him if it's chosen. About the Guest Samuel Moyn is the Kent Professor of Law and History at Yale University. He is the author of Gerontocracy in America: How the Old Are Hoarding Power and Wealth — and What to Do About It (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, June 16, 2026), Humane: How the United States Abandoned Peace and Reinvented War, Not Enough: Human Rights in an Unequal World, and The Last Utopia: Human Rights in History. He is co-host of the Digging a Hole podcast and a frequent contributor to The Nation, The New Republic, and The New York Times. He lives in New Haven, Connecticut. References: •       Gerontocracy in America: How the Old Are Hoarding Power and Wealth — and What to Do About It by Samuel Moyn (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, June 16, 2026). •       Samuel Moyn, “The Old Guard: Confronting America's Gerontocratic Crisis,” Harper's Magazine, May 2026 — the excerpt from the book referenced at the opening. •       David Runciman — referenced for his advocacy of lowering the voting age to six. •       Stuart Hall — referenced for the formulation that class is lived through race, which Moyn repurposes for age. About Keen On America Nobody asks more awkward questions than the Anglo-American writer and filmmaker Andrew Keen. In Keen On America, Andrew brings his pointed Transatlantic wit to making sense of the United States — hosting daily interviews about the history and future of this now venerable Republic. With nearly 3,000 episodes since the show launched on TechCrunch in 2010, Keen On America is the most prolific intellectual interview show in the history of podcasting. WebsiteSubstackYouTube

This week, we revisit our conversation with Gary Swart. Gary is a General Partner with Polaris Partners, and until April 2014, he was the CEO of oDesk (now Upwork, NASDAQ: UPWK). Gary is a thought leader in entrepreneurship, on how best to hire and manage teams, and the future of work, including online work.   He is passionate about helping small businesses thrive, fueled by his extensive experience working with startups and small businesses and mentoring entrepreneurs and business school students. Gary has spoken at the Inc. Leadership Conference, The Economist's Ideas Economy panel, South by Southwest, TechCrunch 50, TiECon, GigaOM's Net: Work Conference, and at Harvard Business School, which teaches a case study on oDesk.   His commentary has appeared in a variety of publications, including Forbes, TechCrunch, The Washington Post, and The Next Web. He has also appeared on TV and radio shows, including the BBC, National Public Radio, CNBC, Bloomberg TV, and Startups Uncensored. Previously, Gary led SMB Sales for the Americas at IBM's Rational Software Product Group, and also served as VP of Worldwide Sales and Operations at Intellibank. Gary holds a B.S. in Business Administration from the University of Maryland.

The core structural shift highlighted in this episode is the commoditization of AI model platforms and concurrent consolidation at the vendor and platform layer, forcing Managed Service Providers (MSPs) to move their value proposition above reselling models to orchestrating, governing, and verifying AI outputs. The discussion references the rising concentration and valuation of platforms such as NinjaOne—a founder-led, profitable RMM platform with a $12.3 billion valuation and 70% year-over-year growth—and Pax8 building business toolkits that draw more operational functions onto their rails. At the same time, major AI developers like OpenAI are entering the channel more directly by launching partner programs aimed at MSPs and consultants. The most consequential development is the confirmed shift from reselling AI models to managing their outputs and risks. Glean surveyed 6,000 digital workers and found that while AI delivers approximately 11 hours of weekly time savings, nearly 6.4 hours are reclaimed by “bot sitting”—the human intervention required to supply context, verify, and correct AI outputs. This hidden labor raises a risk scenario: two-thirds of workers admit to releasing unchecked AI outputs, and Ivanti found that only 42% of IT environments actually have a named owner for each AI agent, despite 85% claiming so—a 43-point gap in accountability. Asana and Deloitte further reinforce the issue, reporting frequent cost overruns and unmanaged autonomous AI deployments among enterprise and SMB environments. Supporting developments underscore this governance and accountability gap. TechCrunch cited that ChatGPT's AI market share has dropped below 50% as the field becomes more interchangeable and less differentiated by underlying model. Vendors such as Anthropic and OpenAI, recognizing model commoditization, are seeking revenue through high-volume partner channels, blurring the lines between vendor and channel competitor. According to Asana, more than 80% of UK IT leaders encountered unplanned AI costs, and over half reported business harm from autonomous AI actions, shifting operational and liability risks squarely onto MSPs and IT service providers. Operationally, these trends compel MSPs to take explicit ownership of the orchestration and governance layer, rather than relying on tool reselling. The transcript advises mapping every AI-driven decision or output that reaches client endpoints and identifying who verifies these outputs before customer exposure. Failing to address these governance blanks does not avoid work but shifts it to unbilled, post-incident cleanup, often with financial, legal, or compliance consequences. Effective MSPs will need to price, document, and regularly review their verification, orchestration, and risk assumption, positioning these as standalone, billable services to manage risk and maintain margin as AI platforms commoditize and vendor dependencies rise. 00:00 Bigger Platforms, Unwatched AI 03:44 The Vendor Walks Into the Channel 05:56 Govern It or Absorb It 08:52 Why Do We Care?  Supported by:  ScalePad  Sign up for the SMB Online Conference: www.smbonlineconference.com

Our 248th episode with a summary and discussion of last week's big AI news!Recorded on 06/12/2026Note: we recorded just before the OTHER big news about Fable... we'll discuss it on the next episode.Hosted by Andrey Kurenkov and Jeremie HarrisFeel free to email us your questions and feedback at andreyvkurenkov@gmail.com and/or hello@gladstone.aiRead out our text newsletter and comment on the podcast at https://lastweekin.ai/In this episode:Anthropic released Claude Fable 5 (a safeguarded version of Mythos 5), showing major benchmark jumps and new risk findings in its system card (eval awareness, transgressive actions, CBRN concerns), alongside controversy over severe guardrails and silent downgrades.Apple announced Siri AI at WWDC, positioning a more capable conversational assistant integrated across iPhone features, reportedly built on a custom Gemini partnership; Google also rolled out Gemini 3.5 Live Translate and cut Google AI Plus pricing while bundling more storage.Business and infrastructure updates include OpenAI's confidential IPO filing amid an IPO race with Anthropic and SpaceX, Bezos-backed Prometheus raising $12B for “physical AI,” DeepSeek seeking a major external round, and Google paying SpaceX about $920M/month for GPUs.Open-source, safety, and policy developments feature new Gemma 4 and Diffusion Gemma releases, a lab letter urging DNA/RNA screening laws, Amodei calling for an FAA-like AI regulator and third-party testing, research on agent harms and RL “societal hacking,” and a dispute over music-label settlements with Suno/Udio.Timestamps:(00:00:10) Intro / Banter(00:01:11) News Preview(00:01:53) SponsorsTools & Apps(00:04:53) Claude Fable 5 and Claude Mythos 5 + Anthropic apologizes for invisible Claude Fable guardrails(00:27:06) Apple announces Siri AI and its next generation of Apple Intelligence | The Verge + I tried Siri AI, and so far it actually works(00:33:47) Gemini 3.5 Live Translate rolling out to Google Meet and Translate(00:35:39) Google just fired a warning shot in the AI subscription price wars | TechCrunchApplications & Business(00:37:55) OpenAI Confidentially Files for IPO on the Heels of SpaceX and Anthropic | WIRED (00:41:57) Jeff Bezos's Prometheus raises $12B to build an 'artificial general engineer' for the physical world | TechCrunch(00:45:39) DeepSeek slated to raise $7 billion in maiden funding round, sources say(00:48:18) Huawei-led team claims it post-trained DeepSeek's 1.6-trillion-parameter model — 1,000 Ascend 910C chips used in training(00:51:57) Google will pay SpaceX $920M per month for compute | TechCrunch(00:55:51) Elon Musk Shows Off AI Data Centers SpaceX Wants to Send Into Space - Business InsiderProjects & Open Source(01:01:14) Google's new Gemma 4 12B model is designed to run on any laptop with 16GB of RAM - Ars Technica(01:05:13) Google AI Releases DiffusionGemma, a 26B MoE Open Model Using Text Diffusion for Up to 4x Faster Generation - MarkTechPostPolicy & Safety(01:09:42) OpenAI and Anthropic Sign Letter to Prevent AI-Developed Biological Weapons | WIRED(01:14:04) Anthropic CEO publishes lengthy article: AI is moving too fast, and policies can't keep up. | PANews(01:20:18) Anthropic Urges Global Pause in AI Development, Flags ‘Self-Improvement' Risk - WSJ(01:24:46) When Benign Inputs Lead to Severe Harms: Eliciting Unsafe Unintended Behaviors of Computer-Use Agents(01:27:42) Large Language Models Hack Rewards, and Society(01:33:46) Senior US officials eye government shares in AI giantsSynthetic Media & Art(01:37:45) AFM Sues UMG, WMG Over Settlements With Suno and UdioSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

According to TechCrunch, a Grand Theft Auto V cheat service was hacked, exposing thousands of gamers. In this episode, host Paul John Spaulding, Kyle Haglund, VP, Audio Engineering at Cybercrime Magazine, and Sam White, Video Producer at Cybercrime Magazine, discuss this story, alongside several others making news in the gaming industry recently, including a report on the total number of gamers in the United States, and more. • For more on cybersecurity, visit us at https://cybersecurityventures.com

#266: Austen Allred is a technology entrepreneur, education innovator, and Y Combinator founder whose work has influenced the national conversation around workforce development, skills-based hiring, and alternative pathways to technology careers. He is the founder and CEO of Gauntlet AI an intensive AI engineering talent platform that partners with employers to identify and develop elite AI-native engineers. Previously, he co-founded Lambda School, later rebranded as BloomTech, one of the most recognized coding academies of the past decade, helping pioneer income-share agreements and raising more than $100 million from leading investors, including GV, Y Combinator, and Stripe.Before founding BloomTech, Allred co-founded the citizen journalism platform Grasswire and co-authored the bestselling growth-marketing book Secret Sauce. His perspectives on entrepreneurship, education reform, and the future of work have been featured in publications including Harvard Business Review, The Economist, WIRED, Fast Company, TechCrunch, and The New York Times. Today, he is widely recognized for his efforts to rethink how top technical talent is trained and deployed in the age of artificial intelligence.

“As early as 1805, you had orators getting up there — barely twenty years after American independence was recognised by Great Britain — saying: the Republic is over. We've had it. So there is a tradition of calling it the end times.” — Nathan Perl-Rosenthal It's less than three weeks until America's big birthday bash. But what exactly will be celebrated this 250th Independence Day? In The Long Revolution: Creating a United States After 1776, the historian Nathan Perl-Rosenthal read some 2,500 July 4 orations delivered in the hundred years after independence. And what he found is that most Americans didn't believe that the revolution was really over. Orators often unfavourably compared the American Revolution to the French, Spanish American, and European revolutions of 1830 and 1848. They argued bitterly about slavery. As late as the 1870s, leading orators were insisting that the revolution was unfinished because the truths of the Declaration of Independence had not yet been fully worked out. Fast forward to 2026 and Perl-Rosenthal suggests a return to the kind of sustained public dialogue that the oratorical tradition once represented. So put down your smartphones on July 4 and tell the world where America currently is and where it should go. The act of oration, Perl-Rosenthal suggests, is not just a civic act, but essential to the country's long revolutionary tradition. So happy birthday America. And many many more. Five Takeaways •       100,000 Orations: The Archive Nobody Knew About: In the first century after independence, an estimated 100,000 July 4 orations were delivered across the United States — roughly a thousand towns and villages, each holding an annual address for a hundred years. Of those, 2,500 survive in published form as pamphlets, now collected in a digital database at fourthofjulyorations.org. These are not peripheral documents. They were delivered by the most prominent public figures of their day — lawyers, clergymen, politicians — before large audiences. They are among the richest sources we have for what ordinary Americans actually thought about their revolution and their republic. •       The Revolution Was Ongoing: Most Orators Believed This Well Into the 1870s: The single most striking finding of Perl-Rosenthal's research: most orators, deep into the nineteenth century, did not regard the revolution as a completed historical event. They saw themselves not as commemorating it but as participating in it. As late as the 1870s, leading orators were insisting the revolution remained unfinished. One orator in Boston in 1870, in a debate about immigration policy and Chinese exclusion, argued that the revolution could not be over because the inalienable rights proclaimed in the Declaration had not yet been universally extended. The parallel to the immigration debates of 2026 is, Perl-Rosenthal suggests, striking. •       The Orations Were Critical, Not Triumphalist: Perl-Rosenthal went into the archive expecting, as he puts it, “rah America.” He found something quite different. Many orators compared the American Revolution unfavourably to other revolutions: to the French in the 1790s, to Spanish American revolutions in the 1810s and 1820s, to the European revolutions of 1830 and 1848. The comparisons often did not flatter America. Wealthy Bostonians giving the prestigious Boston oration — one of the oldest and most prominent in the country — would argue explicitly that the founders had failed to deal with slavery. The critical tradition was mainstream, not marginal. •       1876 as the Turning Point: When the Tradition Died: The July 4 oration tradition effectively ended after 1876. That year, Congress for the first time asked towns and cities to deliver historical rather than political orations — accounts of local history rather than arguments about the present. A tenfold increase in orations was followed by a rapid collapse of the tradition. The shift was significant: from argument to commemoration, from an ongoing political conversation to a museum piece. The practice of serious sustained public political dialogue — an hour or more, in public, about the state of the republic — has not recovered. •       A Low, Dishonest Period: What the Tradition Offers Now: Mark Lilla's blurb: “a low, dishonest period in our history. This surprisingly timely book reminds us of our responsibilities.” Perl-Rosenthal is not catastrophist about the current moment — he notes that orators were calling it the end times as early as 1805. But he is clear about what is missing: a forum for sustained public argument about where America is and where it should go. The smartphone generation, he acknowledges, is unlikely to sit through an hour-long oration. That, he suggests, is precisely the problem. About the Guest Nathan Perl-Rosenthal is a professor of history, French and Italian, and law at the University of Southern California. He has been a fellow at Harvard and Cambridge. He is the author of The Long Revolution: Creating a United States After 1776 (Basic Books, June 2, 2026), Citizen Sailors: Becoming American in the Age of Revolution (Belknap/Harvard), and The Age of Revolutions. His writing has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, The Nation, and the Los Angeles Times. He lives in Los Angeles and Cambridge, Massachusetts. References: •       The Long Revolution: Creating a United States After 1776 by Nathan Perl-Rosenthal (Basic Books, June 2, 2026). •       fourthofjulyorations.org — the digital database of 2,500 published July 4 orations referenced throughout. •       Eric Foner — Perl-Rosenthal's dissertation adviser at Columbia, referenced as still giving July 4 orations in his Connecticut town. •       Mark Lilla — referenced for his blurb: “a low, dishonest period in our history. This surprisingly timely book reminds us of our responsibilities.” About Keen On America Nobody asks more awkward questions than the Anglo-American writer and filmmaker Andrew Keen. In Keen On America, Andrew brings his pointed Transatlantic wit to making sense of the United States — hosting daily interviews about the history and future of this now venerable Republic. With nearly 2,900 episodes since the show launched on TechCrunch in 2010, Keen On America is the most prolific intellectual interview show in the history of podcasting. Website

“We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars,” Oscar Wilde wrote in his 1892 play Lady Windermere's Fan. This week, Elon Musk managed — not for the first time — to be simultaneously in the stars and the gutter. SpaceX's IPO valued his rocket company at $2 trillion — making Musk, officially, a trillionaire, the richest person in the world by a very large margin. The space Musk — the defiant genius who bet everything on a reusable rocket and the promise of a cosmic monopoly — is astonishing. The Wall Street Journal called the IPO a Goldilocks debut with Musk starring as the three bears. But there is another Musk — the one in the gutter, promoting white nationalist violence from his platform on X. This week Musk not only stoked the anti-immigrant riots in Belfast but reiterated his support for the English white supremacist gangster Tommy Robinson. So is this another Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Robert Louis Stevenson's 1886 novella? Keith Teare, publisher of That Was the Week, certainly thinks so. While Keith is in awe of Musk's entrepreneurial genius at SpaceX, he seems to excuse Musk's support for Tommy Robinson's paramilitarism. “I'm not even sure I like him,” Keith confesses in his musings on “civilisation.” Nor do the rest of us. But I wonder if this good/bad Elon narrative is too convenient. There is an uncomfortable symbiosis between Musk's journey to SpaceX and to white nationalist violence. For all the utopian cornucopia of space, our earthly reality is one of scarce land and fear of immigrants — Trump, Tommy Robinson, and this weekend's Swiss referendum on capping its population at 10 million. For all the Muskian promise of cosmic abundance, today's Muskian politics is paranoid and exclusionary. So maybe it's not just Elon. Everyone these days is simultaneously in the gutter and looking up at the stars. Five Takeaways •       SpaceX: From El Segundo Warehouse to $2 Trillion Juggernaut: SpaceX is 25 years old. It started in a warehouse near Los Angeles, in an area with a concentration of rocket scientists. Musk bet almost all of his Tesla gains on the idea of a reusable rocket — and nearly lost everything. Then a rocket worked. Since then: iterative improvement, the rockets getting bigger and more reliable, a virtual global monopoly on delivering payloads to space, Starlink (satellite internet that actually works at gigabit speeds), and NASA subcontracting its launches. Now: $2 trillion at IPO, Musk a trillionaire. Wall-to-wall applause from the startup world. Wall-to-wall pylon on social media. Both simultaneously true. •       The Grimace vs the Applause: Andrew vs Keith's Media Diet: Keith says most commentators are grimacing at the valuation and Musk's net worth. Andrew says the serious press — the Wall Street Journal, even the New York Times — is largely applauding. The exchange reveals the media bifurcation: mainstream outlets cover the achievement; social media — X, Facebook, LinkedIn — is wall-to-wall outrage about a trillionaire in a world of growing inequality. Keith's verdict on Musk: he doesn't care whether people like him. Neither, in Keith's view, should we. You judge him not on likability but on criteria: civilization or net worth. Different criteria, different judgment. •       California and Europe: The Failure of Government: Fareed Zakaria in the Washington Post: California is a case study in failed government. Andrew had Jonathan Weber on the show this week — City on the Edge, the historic dysfunctionality of San Francisco city government. Fukuyama is trying to be optimistic about Europe's liberal future. Keith's counter: Fukuyama ignores the structural problem — top-heavy EU bureaucracy that overrides countries, producing dislike of the EU in every European nation, even France, which built it. Populism, Keith argues, is not the disease. It's the symptom. The disease is twenty years of bad policy. •       Bernie Sanders Finally Had an Insight: The Sovereign Wealth Fund: Sanders has proposed a sovereign wealth fund owning 50% of all high-growth AI companies, giving every citizen ownership shares. Keith, who last week said 50% wasn't enough, this week credits it as the first genuine insight Sanders has had. The kicker: David Sacks — arch right-winger, former PayPal Mafia, Andreessen Horowitz — agreed on his podcast and said it should be 75%. Keith's observation: when David Sacks and Bernie Sanders can agree on the direction, left-right labels stop helping. The question is just how to make capitalism's gains flow to everyone. •       Planning Beats Complaint: Keith's editorial closer. The choice is not between liking Musk and hating Musk, not between celebrating SpaceX and resenting its valuation. The choice is between complaining and planning. John O'Farrell, former general partner at Andreessen Horowitz, resigned and wrote an op-ed in the New York Times: “We can't let my former venture capital colleagues buy off democracy.” Gary Tan organised an Asian-American reaction against San Francisco's school board and won. Citizens who act beat citizens who complain. That's the week's lesson. That's Keith's lesson. Andrew is away next week. About the Guest Keith Teare is a British-American entrepreneur, investor, and publisher of the That Was the Week newsletter. He is a co-founder of TechCrunch and Andrew's regular TWTW co-host. References: •       That Was the Week by Keith Teare. •       Fareed Zakaria, “How California Became a Case Study in Failed Government,” Washington Post — referenced in the conversation. •       John O'Farrell, “We Can't Let My Former Venture Capital Colleagues Buy Off Democracy,” New York Times — referenced in the conversation. •       Francis Fukuyama on the liberal vision of Europe — referenced in the conversation. •       Episode 2938: Jonathan Weber on City on the Edge — referenced at the opening. About Keen On America Nobody asks more awkward questions than the Anglo-American writer and filmmaker Andrew Keen. In Keen On America, Andrew brings his pointed Transatlantic wit to making sense of the United States — hosting daily interviews about the history and future of this now venerable Republic. With nearly 2,900 episodes since the show launched on TechCrunch in 2010, Keen On America is the most prolific intellectual interview show in the history of podcasting. WebsiteSubstackYouTubeApple PodcastsSpotify Chapters: (00:31) - Introduction: SpaceX IPO, ...

“Power trumps money fundamentally. And I think we've seen the extent to which these companies are very subservient to the US government. Because the US government can break them in an instant.” — Jack Watling on whether Anthropic and OpenAI can become geopolitical players In Cormac McCarthy's 2005 novel No Country for Old Men, an ageing Texas sheriff finds himself outmatched by a killer operating by a logic the old rules can't contain. It's the story of a man shaped by one world, and then trying to operate in an entirely different system. That's also the situation facing many statesmen today who are having to operate in an international system where the old rules no longer apply. The British military strategist Jack Watling argues in his new book Statecraft: The New Rules of Power in a Divided World that we have moved from a monopolar world to one of intensely multipolar competition where adversaries can subvert all the premises of another state's strategy. These disruptive rules of the 21st century multipolar international system aren't entirely new. There are, for example, eerie similarities with the chaotically multipolar system that led to the First World War. But they are new to the leaders who have to apply them. So, for example, they are having to deal with Vladimir Putin who is locked into an eighth-century Orthodox Holy Russian Empire fantasy. Or with the impulsive and disruptive Donald Trump whose only goal, it sometimes seems, is to subvert all the rules of the old world. These are Jack Watling's new rules of power in a divided world. New statecraft for old men. Or maybe old statecraft for new men. Five Takeaways •       The Rules Are New to the Leaders, Not the World: Watling's thesis: many of the principles in his book are old, as a historian he knows that. But they are new to the current crop of political leaders because they were formed in a monopolar world where America had primacy, crises were resolved, and the status quo was restored. We are now in a period of intense interstate competition where changes are permanent — the interventions that are being made fundamentally shift the trend. That does require a new way of thinking. The tragedy is that the leaders who most need to think in new ways — Putin and Trump in particular — are the least capable of it. •       Putin vs Trump: Two Different Kinds of Fallibility: Putin has locked himself into a rubric of looking at the world through the lens of the Orthodox Holy Russian Empire — a framework that doesn't align with how anyone else reads the map. He's not a pragmatic dealmaker; when you get him to the table, as Trump found in Alaska, he starts referring back to the eighth century. Trump is very different: much less cautious, much more impulsive, skilled at making the conversation happen on his terms by disrupting everything around him. The problem with impulsive rather than deliberate is that he has no clear idea of where he wants to get to. Both fallible. Neither predictable. •       The WWI Parallel: Over By Christmas: Watling's most sobering analogy: when we look at 1914, nobody thought it would become what it became. The assumption was over by Christmas. It grew out of any capacity to control it. Today, the rules between the great powers don't reflect where power actually sits. The capacity for a conflagration — Taiwan being the obvious tipping point — to suddenly trigger a series of escalations around the world is very real. We have to be cognisant that risk is latent in the system. The outcome we most wish to avoid is also the most mutually calamitous one. That's not a guarantee it won't happen. •       Power Trumps Money — Even Trumpian Power Trumps Trumpian Money: Andrew asks whether Anthropic and OpenAI could become geopolitical players — more powerful than middle powers like Brazil or Japan. Watling's answer: no. Russian oligarchs made this mistake in the 1990s. They thought that because they had huge amounts of money and controlled valuable resources they could play geopolitically. They were very quickly subsumed by the state. These tech companies are very subservient to the US government, which can break them in an instant. The pun lands perfectly: even Trumpian power trumps Trumpian money. •       How Smaller States Build Leverage: Stay Off the Menu: One of the book's central arguments: how do smaller states shape world events when dwarfed by superpowers? Watling's answer: leverage is not just military. It is economic, informational, reputational. The UK spends billions on aircraft carriers it struggles to support at sea — a good illustration of how a state can mistake the form of power for its substance. Smaller states that build genuine leverage — through control of chokepoints, indispensable relationships, asymmetric capabilities — can stay off the menu even in a world dominated by great powers. That requires statecraft. Not just military spending. About the Guest Jack Watling is Senior Research Fellow for Land Warfare at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) in London. He works closely with the British, Ukrainian, and American military and advises governments on security and strategy. He was formerly a Global Fellow at the Wilson Center in Washington, D.C. He is the author of Statecraft: The New Rules of Power in a Divided World (Pan Macmillan, 2026) and The Arms of the Future: Technology and Close Combat in the Twenty-First Century. Originally a journalist, he has contributed to Reuters, The Atlantic, Foreign Policy, and The Guardian. References: •       Statecraft: The New Rules of Power in a Divided World by Jack Watling (Pan Macmillan, 2026). •       Episode 2935: Michael Mandelbaum on The American Way of Foreign Policy — referenced in the conversation. •       RUSI (Royal United Services Institute), Whitehall, London — Watling's institutional base. About Keen On America Nobody asks more awkward questions than the Anglo-American writer and filmmaker Andrew Keen. In Keen On America, Andrew brings his pointed Transatlantic wit to making sense of the United States — hosting daily interviews about the history and future of this now venerable Republic. With nearly 2,900 episodes since the show launched on TechCrunch in 2010, Keen On America is the most prolific intellectual interview show in the history of podcasting. WebsiteSubstackYouTubeApple Podcasts

What if you never made a cold call, never sent a cold email, and still built a global agency with 140 clients across four continents? In this episode, Joel Strauss, founder of Strauss Communications, shares how being fired at the start of Covid with zero clients led to building a boutique PR agency that has now worked with over 140 companies across four continents. Almost every single one came through a relationship. Joel's story has three chapters: starting the business, scaling it, and saving it. Each one hinged on a personal relationship at exactly the right moment. Including the meeting in Madrid that pulled his agency back from the brink after October 7th changed everything overnight.   [00:03:30] What He Does and Who He Serves Runs Strauss Communications, a boutique PR agency for tech startups Services cover organic media coverage, content, and social media 95% of clients are tech companies; most are referred through relationships [00:04:30] How He Got Into PR Idealized politics; left after nearly two years deeply unhappy Quit, traveled South America, then went on a boys' trip to Montreal Met his brother's former roommate who connected him to a PR firm in Tel Aviv He packed up everything in New York and moved within two weeks [00:06:00] The Introduction That Started Everything His brother's former roommate saw a fit between his background and the agency The firm had political and tech clients; Joel had just enough experience to be relevant That one connection opened the door to a new industry and a new country Every step of his career since traces back to that trip to Montreal [00:07:00] What Inspires Him Gets a bird's eye view of tech across fintechs, AI, semiconductors, and more Works directly with founders, CMOs, and CEOs of innovative companies Has helped companies go from unknown to dominant positions in their markets [00:08:30] Client Impact A niche plywood replacement client started getting people knocking on their door from PR alone Several clients successfully raised investment rounds after investors cited media coverage All contracts are month to month; some clients have stayed for over three years Retaining clients through results rather than contracts is the proof of delivery [00:11:30] Starting the Business: The Boss Who Fired Him Was called into a hearing to be fired at the start of Covid Kept his cool and told his boss he understood and didn't take it personally That same boss became a mentor and referred several of his first clients Joel's wife co-founded the business with him; their relationship has been foundational [00:13:00] Scaling the Business: A Former Colleague A former colleague he stayed close with over the years eventually joined his team That person brought in key client relationships that led to major results The companies he helped raise in the US all came through this one relationship Maintaining cordial connections over time is what made it possible [00:13:30] Saving the Business: The Madrid Meeting After October 7th, Israeli tech clients sent staff into reserve duty overnight Lost half the client base almost overnight A founder from South America emailed out of nowhere; they met in Madrid by chance That relationship became a client and turned the company around [00:17:00] Vision Going Forward Wants to scale without sacrificing service quality Growing through relationships rather than cold outreach remains the core model Using AI to handle busy work so the team has more time with clients Boutique, high-quality, and relationship-driven is the identity they will not trade away [00:19:30] What Makes Them Different Most agencies charge $15,000 to $25,000 a month and put junior staff on accounts At Strauss Communications, senior people handle everything Contracts are month to month; they have to earn it every single time That pressure is what keeps the work sharp and the results consistent [00:20:00] Why He Started His Own Agency Was hired in-house at a tech company and told to bring in expensive PR firms It was him landing TechCrunch and Reuters; the firms were getting paid for his work Saw the gap and built an agency that actually delivered at the senior level [00:23:30] Thinking Broader Than Coverage Most agencies just pitch placements; Strauss Communications thinks strategically Also offers white papers and content with both PR and marketing value Measurable deliverables make it easier for marketing teams to justify the spend A webinar built from one piece of content recently generated 150 sign-ups [00:25:00] Final Word: Relationships Are a Cultural Advantage Noticed that relationship building is more open in Israel and Spain than in the US In the US, getting to the CEO requires going through several gatekeepers first Being of service and being known for it builds a reputation that compounds over time   KEY QUOTES "Every step of my story is intimately intertwined with personal relationships." - Joel Strauss "A lot of good and innovation can happen when people are more open to giving of themselves and giving their time." - Joel Strauss CONNECT WITH JOEL STRAUSS Website: https://www.strausscomms.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joelstrauss1   Thanks for tuning in! If you liked my show, please LEAVE A 5-STAR REVIEW, like, and subscribe! Find me on: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher

“That's not the America that I believed in and that I chose to merge my fate with.” — David Frum on Trump's predatory foreign policy What does it mean to be an American? It's a slippery question — especially for those of us born outside the United States. Take, for example, David Frum, the Toronto-born writer and Presidential speechwriter who coined the phrase “Axis of Evil” in 2002. Back then, it included Iran, Iraq and North Korea. Today, one wonders if Frum, who has written two powerful jeremiads about Donald Trump, would include what he calls this "fascoid" in this exclusive club. Frum still lives part of the year on Loyalist Parkway in Ontario — a road honouring British troops fleeing the American Revolution. From his deck, what remains of the Canadian in Frum gazes across Lake Ontario at the American shore. The lights on the other side of the lake, he admits, are more glittering. But unlike Nick Carraway in his favourite American novel The Great Gatsby, David Frum isn't seduced by all that glitters. Carraway, Frum says, is an unreliable narrator impressed by the gangster glamour of Jay Gatsby. But Gatsby, like Donald Trump, Frum reminds us, is a criminal. And Gatsby, perhaps also like Trump, is at least part of the answer of what it means to be an American. Five Takeaways •       Loyalist Parkway: Canada as the Product of the American Revolution: Frum spends part of the year on Loyalist Parkway in Ontario — a road named for the refugees who fled the American Revolution northward and settled across Lake Ontario. Canada, in his telling, is the product of what he calls the American civil war that nobody calls that: the revolution of 1776. It was, for the Loyalists, a shattering loss. From his house, he looks across the lake at the American shore. There is something brighter there, more glittering, more charged. That particular Canadian vantage point — attracted to and slightly outside of America — is where Frum and Zakaria both live. •       Predatory America: Trump vs the American Tradition: America is currently at war with Iran. Trump's stated aim, in Frum's analysis, is purely predatory — to take Iran's oil, enrich the United States by impoverishing Iranians, plunder like a bandit. He compares this to Trump's Venezuela policy. Frum's verdict: that is a president against the American tradition. George W. Bush — whatever the failures of the Iraq war — went to Iraq to overthrow a dictatorship and bring a better future. He went in the name of American ideals. Trump invokes no ideals. He just wants the oil. •       The Axis of Evil Defence: Andrew raises the uncomfortable parallel: Frum coined “axis of evil,” worked for Bush, helped set the fuse for the wars that led, arguably, to the current moment. Frum's defence is structural. The Iraq war of 2003 was the continuation of a conflict that began when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990. Bill Clinton nearly returned to war with Iraq in 1994 and struck it in 1998, for the same reason: Iraq's violation of the 1991 armistice. Bush was following that path. He went to war in the name of ideals. He didn't go to steal Iraq's oil. That is the American tradition, even in failure. •       Nick Carraway Is an Unreliable Narrator: The conversation's most surprising section: Frum on The Great Gatsby. Nick Carraway, Frum argues, is not a reliable guide to Gatsby's moral complexity. He is a narrator seduced by gangster glamour — who constructs moral explanations for an attraction he knows he shouldn't feel. The tell: Nick is horrified by the glamour one night, then thrilled the next morning to fly in Gatsby's private seaplane. Gatsby is a criminal. And Gatsby is, for Fitzgerald, a symbol of America: a self-invented person with a fabricated backstory, living on bootlegging and organised crime, staring across the water at a green light he can never reach. •       Looking Across the Lake: The Canadian Analyst of American Life: Frum's closing meditation: there is something about knowing America from the inside, but there is also something valuable about the critical distance of the outsider. He looks across Lake Ontario at the American shore from which the Loyalists fled — the shore they looked back at because there was something magical on the other side. Fareed Zakaria looks across the Atlantic from India. Both naturalized citizens brought to America by an idea of what it was. Both rethinking that idea now. Frum's plan for July 4: sitting on his deck in Ontario, looking across the water, wishing well to American democracy. About the Guest David Frum is a senior editor at The Atlantic and the host of The David Frum Show. He was a speechwriter and special assistant to President George W. Bush in 2001–2002. He is the author of Trumpocracy: The Corruption of the American Republic (HarperCollins, 2018) and Trumpocalypse: Restoring American Democracy (HarperCollins, 2020). He lives in Washington, D.C. and Wellington, Ontario. He is working on a memoir. References: •       The David Frum Show — Frum's show at The Atlantic, where his interview with Fareed Zakaria is referenced at the opening. •       The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald — the central text of the conversation's second half. •       Trumpocracy: The Corruption of the American Republic by David Frum (HarperCollins, 2018). •       Trumpocalypse: Restoring American Democracy by David Frum (HarperCollins, 2020). •       Loyalist Parkway, Ontario — the road where Frum lives part of the year, named for the refugees from the American Revolution. About Keen On America Nobody asks more awkward questions than the Anglo-American writer and filmmaker Andrew Keen. In Keen On America, Andrew brings his pointed Transatlantic wit to making sense of the United States — hosting daily interviews about the history and future of this now venerable Republic. With nearly 2,900 episodes since the show launched on TechCrunch in 2010, Keen On America is the most prolific intellectual interview show in the history of podcasting. WebsiteSubstackYouTubeApple PodcastsSpotify Chapters: 

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Amanda Silberling of TechCrunch joins Mikah Sargent this week! Anthropic launches Fable 5, its newest AI model. The FCC seeks to end the use of burner phones in the US. And everything Apple unveiled at WWDC 2026. Amanda talks about Anthropic's newest AI model, Fable 5, its first consumer-accessible version of its powerful Mythos model. Mikah shares a story from 404 Media about the FCC's push to end anonymous "burner phones," raising significant concerns about the privacy implications for people who rely on them for legitimate reasons. And Dan Moren of SixColors joins the show to break down WWDC 2026's latest announcements, including a revamped AI-powered Siri and a privacy-first approach to its new intelligence features. Hosts: Mikah Sargent and Amanda Silberling Guest: Dan Moren Download or subscribe to Tech News Weekly at https://twit.tv/shows/tech-news-weekly. Join Club TWiT for Ad-Free Podcasts! Support what you love and get ad-free audio and video feeds, a members-only Discord, and exclusive content. Join today: https://twit.tv/clubtwit Sponsors: joindeleteme.com/twit promo code TWIT bitwarden.com/twit hipebl.ai

Amanda Silberling of TechCrunch joins Mikah Sargent this week! Anthropic launches Fable 5, its newest AI model. The FCC seeks to end the use of burner phones in the US. And everything Apple unveiled at WWDC 2026. Amanda talks about Anthropic's newest AI model, Fable 5, its first consumer-accessible version of its powerful Mythos model. Mikah shares a story from 404 Media about the FCC's push to end anonymous "burner phones," raising significant concerns about the privacy implications for people who rely on them for legitimate reasons. And Dan Moren of SixColors joins the show to break down WWDC 2026's latest announcements, including a revamped AI-powered Siri and a privacy-first approach to its new intelligence features. Hosts: Mikah Sargent and Amanda Silberling Guest: Dan Moren Download or subscribe to Tech News Weekly at https://twit.tv/shows/tech-news-weekly. Join Club TWiT for Ad-Free Podcasts! Support what you love and get ad-free audio and video feeds, a members-only Discord, and exclusive content. Join today: https://twit.tv/clubtwit Sponsors: joindeleteme.com/twit promo code TWIT bitwarden.com/twit hipebl.ai

Amanda Silberling of TechCrunch joins Mikah Sargent this week! Anthropic launches Fable 5, its newest AI model. The FCC seeks to end the use of burner phones in the US. And everything Apple unveiled at WWDC 2026. Amanda talks about Anthropic's newest AI model, Fable 5, its first consumer-accessible version of its powerful Mythos model. Mikah shares a story from 404 Media about the FCC's push to end anonymous "burner phones," raising significant concerns about the privacy implications for people who rely on them for legitimate reasons. And Dan Moren of SixColors joins the show to break down WWDC 2026's latest announcements, including a revamped AI-powered Siri and a privacy-first approach to its new intelligence features. Hosts: Mikah Sargent and Amanda Silberling Guest: Dan Moren Download or subscribe to Tech News Weekly at https://twit.tv/shows/tech-news-weekly. Join Club TWiT for Ad-Free Podcasts! Support what you love and get ad-free audio and video feeds, a members-only Discord, and exclusive content. Join today: https://twit.tv/clubtwit Sponsors: joindeleteme.com/twit promo code TWIT bitwarden.com/twit hipebl.ai

Amanda Silberling of TechCrunch joins Mikah Sargent this week! Anthropic launches Fable 5, its newest AI model. The FCC seeks to end the use of burner phones in the US. And everything Apple unveiled at WWDC 2026. Amanda talks about Anthropic's newest AI model, Fable 5, its first consumer-accessible version of its powerful Mythos model. Mikah shares a story from 404 Media about the FCC's push to end anonymous "burner phones," raising significant concerns about the privacy implications for people who rely on them for legitimate reasons. And Dan Moren of SixColors joins the show to break down WWDC 2026's latest announcements, including a revamped AI-powered Siri and a privacy-first approach to its new intelligence features. Hosts: Mikah Sargent and Amanda Silberling Guest: Dan Moren Download or subscribe to Tech News Weekly at https://twit.tv/shows/tech-news-weekly. Join Club TWiT for Ad-Free Podcasts! Support what you love and get ad-free audio and video feeds, a members-only Discord, and exclusive content. Join today: https://twit.tv/clubtwit Sponsors: joindeleteme.com/twit promo code TWIT bitwarden.com/twit hipebl.ai

Amanda Silberling of TechCrunch joins Mikah Sargent this week! Anthropic launches Fable 5, its newest AI model. The FCC seeks to end the use of burner phones in the US. And everything Apple unveiled at WWDC 2026. Amanda talks about Anthropic's newest AI model, Fable 5, its first consumer-accessible version of its powerful Mythos model. Mikah shares a story from 404 Media about the FCC's push to end anonymous "burner phones," raising significant concerns about the privacy implications for people who rely on them for legitimate reasons. And Dan Moren of SixColors joins the show to break down WWDC 2026's latest announcements, including a revamped AI-powered Siri and a privacy-first approach to its new intelligence features. Hosts: Mikah Sargent and Amanda Silberling Guest: Dan Moren Download or subscribe to Tech News Weekly at https://twit.tv/shows/tech-news-weekly. Join Club TWiT for Ad-Free Podcasts! Support what you love and get ad-free audio and video feeds, a members-only Discord, and exclusive content. Join today: https://twit.tv/clubtwit Sponsors: joindeleteme.com/twit promo code TWIT bitwarden.com/twit hipebl.ai

“The same creative and political forces that gave rise to [San Francisco's] boom nearly engineered its collapse.” — Jonathan Weber In Hitchcock's Vertigo, the quintessential San Francisco movie, the villain points to an old painting of the city and tells Jimmy Stewart that San Francisco has changed. The real city has been lost, he says. Somebody has stolen San Francisco's soul. The veteran tech journalist Jonathan Weber is the latest writer to search for that soul. In City on the Edge: Technology, Politics, and the Fight for the Soul of San Francisco, Weber bemoans the disappearance of the real San Francisco — the city not just of the Beats and the Counterculture but also of ordinary teachers and policemen. We've had thirty years of boom, bust, and Big Tech. The ordinary folks of San Francisco have been replaced by a new class of tech bros. In 1992, just 2% of San Franciscans worked in tech. By 2019 it was 35%. As a longtime San Franciscan, Weber had a front-row seat on the dot-com mania, the rise of social media, Uber and Airbnb, the pandemic's great emptying of downtown, and now the AI boom driven by the San Francisco-based Anthropic and OpenAI. In City on the Edge, Weber argues that the same creative and political forces that gave rise to the boom — the counterculture's anarchic spirit, the city's love affair with eccentricity, the tech industry's utopian self-belief — also engineered its near-collapse. Digital vertigo, so to speak. Once again somebody has stolen San Francisco's soul. Five Takeaways •       From 2% to 35%: The Numbers Behind the Transformation: In 1992, just 2% of San Francisco workers were in tech. By 2019 it was 35%. The book traces how this happened: a city economically troubled in the early 1990s, still reeling from AIDS and the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, with its manufacturing base gone and its corporate headquarters thinning out. Into this vacuum came a group of free-thinking technologists immersed in the city's creative counterculture. They invented the contemporary internet. What followed was one of the most rapid urban transformations in American history. •       The Cacophony Society and the Founding of Burning Man: Before the tech boom, San Francisco in the early 1990s had a remarkable underground culture. Weber writes about the Cacophony Society — the group of anarchic free spirits who effectively founded the Burning Man festival. The Cacophony Society emerged from the counterculture of the 1960s through various evolutions — Situationist pranks, urban exploration, radical creativity. Burning Man began as their annual trip to the Black Rock Desert. The spirit of that founding: go somewhere, build something, be someone different, leave no trace. That spirit was the soul of the city too. •       The City of Nostalgia: Always Believing Yesterday Was Better: Weber takes his Vertigo reference seriously. San Francisco is structurally a city of nostalgia — people arrive with a fixed idea of what the city is, and it inevitably becomes something different. The gap between the idea and the reality generates permanent mourning. This is not unique to San Francisco — Trump has built a presidency on the idea that things were better in the 1950s — but it is intensified here by the height of the hopes people bring. The city means something bigger than itself. That is both its greatest asset and its permanent wound. •       The AI Boom and the Coming IPO Earthquake: The current AI boom is, in Weber's reading, likely to be the largest yet. OpenAI and Anthropic are both based in the city. When those IPOs happen, San Francisco real estate — already rising 25–50% in some neighbourhoods, Andrew notes — will go, in Weber's words, “really, really crazy again.” Hundreds of thousands of millionaires will be created overnight. The city is gradually becoming uniformly wealthy. Some of the old tensions may be less intense for that reason. But Weber does not think the cycles are over. The current boom will bust, as all booms do. What comes next is the question. •       Burning Man, the Internet, and the Future of Cities: Weber ends the book at Burning Man. His closing observation: when the internet arrived on the playa, Burning Man lost the sense that it was a separate world — a place where you could be a different person, because nothing from your regular life could reach you. Now everyone has a phone. The privacy is gone. The sense of separation is gone. For cities: part of the power of cities is that they bring people together, and good things arise from that friction. But if technology no longer requires you to be in the same place, cities become less essential. What is the future of the city in the age of technology? Weber doesn't have a tidy answer. Neither does anyone else. About the Guest Jonathan Weber is a veteran technology journalist and the author of City on the Edge: Technology, Politics, and the Fight for the Soul of San Francisco (Atria Books, June 9, 2026). He was the founding editor-in-chief of The Industry Standard, former editor-in-chief of the San Francisco Standard, and covered the technology industry for the Los Angeles Times. He lives in San Francisco. References: •       City on the Edge: Technology, Politics, and the Fight for the Soul of San Francisco by Jonathan Weber (Atria Books, June 9, 2026). •       David Talbot, Season of the Witch: Enchantment, Terror, and Deliverance in the City of Love — referenced in the conversation; Weber's recommended companion read on 1970s San Francisco. •       Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson, Abundance — referenced in the closing exchange. •       Joan Didion, Slouching Towards Bethlehem — the opening epigraph to Weber's book, referenced in the conversation. •       Alfred Hitchcock, Vertigo (1958) — Andrew's reference; the film's own meditation on San Francisco as a city of nostalgia. About Keen On America Nobody asks more awkward questions than the Anglo-American writer and filmmaker Andrew Keen. In Keen On America, Andrew brings his pointed Transatlantic wit to making sense of the United States — hosting daily interviews about the history and future of this now venerable Republic. With nearly 2,900 episodes since the show launched on TechCrunch in 2010, Keen On America is the most prolific intellectual interview show in the history of podcasting. WebsiteSubstack

Amanda Silberling of TechCrunch joins Mikah Sargent this week! Anthropic launches Fable 5, its newest AI model. The FCC seeks to end the use of burner phones in the US. And everything Apple unveiled at WWDC 2026. Amanda talks about Anthropic's newest AI model, Fable 5, its first consumer-accessible version of its powerful Mythos model. Mikah shares a story from 404 Media about the FCC's push to end anonymous "burner phones," raising significant concerns about the privacy implications for people who rely on them for legitimate reasons. And Dan Moren of SixColors joins the show to break down WWDC 2026's latest announcements, including a revamped AI-powered Siri and a privacy-first approach to its new intelligence features. Hosts: Mikah Sargent and Amanda Silberling Guest: Dan Moren Download or subscribe to Tech News Weekly at https://twit.tv/shows/tech-news-weekly. Join Club TWiT for Ad-Free Podcasts! Support what you love and get ad-free audio and video feeds, a members-only Discord, and exclusive content. Join today: https://twit.tv/clubtwit Sponsors: joindeleteme.com/twit promo code TWIT bitwarden.com/twit hipebl.ai

Amanda Silberling of TechCrunch joins Mikah Sargent this week! Anthropic launches Fable 5, its newest AI model. The FCC seeks to end the use of burner phones in the US. And everything Apple unveiled at WWDC 2026. Amanda talks about Anthropic's newest AI model, Fable 5, its first consumer-accessible version of its powerful Mythos model. Mikah shares a story from 404 Media about the FCC's push to end anonymous "burner phones," raising significant concerns about the privacy implications for people who rely on them for legitimate reasons. And Dan Moren of SixColors joins the show to break down WWDC 2026's latest announcements, including a revamped AI-powered Siri and a privacy-first approach to its new intelligence features. Hosts: Mikah Sargent and Amanda Silberling Guest: Dan Moren Download or subscribe to Tech News Weekly at https://twit.tv/shows/tech-news-weekly. Join Club TWiT for Ad-Free Podcasts! Support what you love and get ad-free audio and video feeds, a members-only Discord, and exclusive content. Join today: https://twit.tv/clubtwit Sponsors: joindeleteme.com/twit promo code TWIT bitwarden.com/twit hipebl.ai

Een AI-supportbot die zonder goede controle Instagram-accounts weggeeft, de Silent Ransom Group die data steelt en slachtoffers afperst zonder bestanden te versleutelen, en een GitHub-issue waarmee een AI-agent zijn eigen repository in gevaar kan brengen. Ronald, Marco en Jelle beginnen met drie verhalen waarin vertrouwen gevaarlijk ruim wordt uitgedeeld. Daarna duikt Ronald in YellowKey. Met een speciaal geprepareerde USB-stick kan een aanvaller Windows Recovery misleiden en de standaard BitLocker-bescherming van Windows 11 omzeilen. Minstens zo interessant is de ruzie eromheen: onderzoeker Nightmare-Eclipse zegt meerdere zero-days te publiceren uit frustratie over Microsoft, waarna een publiek conflict ontstaat over disclosure, verantwoordelijkheid en de macht van een grote leverancier. Marco bespreekt vervolgens een proof-of-concept voor adaptieve AI-wormen. In plaats van één vast ingebouwd aanvalspad gebruikt deze worm lokale AI-agenten om per doelwit een strategie te bedenken, fouten te herstellen en kennis met andere besmette machines te delen. Het is nog laboratoriumonderzoek, maar wel een ongemakkelijke vooruitblik op malware die ook redeneert. Tot slot gaat Jelle ouderwets Shodan-bingo spelen met automatic tank gauges: kleine systemen die brandstof- en vloeistoftanks meten en soms nog direct aan het internet hangen. Cyber-fysieke ellende hoeft niet te beginnen bij een energiecentrale; een vergeten meetkastje met een hardcoded creds is soms genoeg. *Bronnen* Meta AI-support en Instagram - 404 Media: https://www.404media.co/hackers-simply-asked-meta-ai-to-give-them-access-to-high-profile-instagram-accounts-it-worked/ - TechCrunch: https://techcrunch.com/2026/06/01/hackers-hijacked-instagram-accounts-by-tricking-meta-ai-support-chatbot-into-granting-access/ Silent Ransom Group en DNS fast flux - Resecurity: https://www.resecurity.com/blog/article/silent-ransom-group-srg-uncovering-dns-fast-flux-infrastructure - FBI: https://www.fbi.gov/file-repository/cyber-alerts/silent-ransom-group-targeting-law-firms-052325.pdf Claude Code GitHub Action - GMO Flatt Security: https://flatt.tech/research/posts/poisoning-claude-code-one-github-issue-to-break-the-supply-chain/ YellowKey en Microsoft - Ars Technica: https://arstechnica.com/security/2026/05/zero-day-exploit-completely-defeats-default-windows-11-bitlocker-protections/ - Windows Central: https://www.windowscentral.com/microsoft/microsoft-backs-off-legal-threats-against-windows-security-researchers Adaptieve AI-wormen - Paper, AI Agents Enable Adaptive Computer Worms: https://arxiv.org/abs/2606.03811 Automatic tank gauges - NSA: https://www.nsa.gov/Press-Room/Press-Releases-Statements/Press-Release-View/Article/4507204/nsa-joins-cisa-and-partners-to-release-guidance-on-hardening-automatic-tank-gau/ - BleepingComputer: https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/cisa-warns-of-cyberattacks-targeting-fuel-tank-monitoring-systems/

Amanda Silberling of TechCrunch joins Mikah Sargent this week! Anthropic launches Fable 5, its newest AI model. The FCC seeks to end the use of burner phones in the US. And everything Apple unveiled at WWDC 2026. Amanda talks about Anthropic's newest AI model, Fable 5, its first consumer-accessible version of its powerful Mythos model. Mikah shares a story from 404 Media about the FCC's push to end anonymous "burner phones," raising significant concerns about the privacy implications for people who rely on them for legitimate reasons. And Dan Moren of SixColors joins the show to break down WWDC 2026's latest announcements, including a revamped AI-powered Siri and a privacy-first approach to its new intelligence features. Hosts: Mikah Sargent and Amanda Silberling Guest: Dan Moren Download or subscribe to Tech News Weekly at https://twit.tv/shows/tech-news-weekly. Join Club TWiT for Ad-Free Podcasts! Support what you love and get ad-free audio and video feeds, a members-only Discord, and exclusive content. Join today: https://twit.tv/clubtwit Sponsors: joindeleteme.com/twit promo code TWIT bitwarden.com/twit hipebl.ai

Most startup advice assumes the biggest challenge is finding customers. But what happens when the demand is obvious and the real question is whether the technology can actually work at scale? In this episode of Fund/Build/Scale, I sit down with Stanford professor and Inception Labs founder and CEO Stefano Ermon to discuss how a breakthrough research paper evolved into a venture-backed AI company serving enterprise customers. Stefano explains why his team believed they needed a 10x advantage in speed, cost, or quality to compete with industry giants, and how they convinced investors to back an idea that was still largely unproven. We explore the realities of building a deep-tech startup, including raising capital before product-market fit, assembling a world-class founding team, learning enterprise sales as a first-time CEO, pricing a new category of technology, and competing with companies like Google, OpenAI, and Anthropic. Along the way, Stefano shares practical advice for technical founders trying to transform research into a business, de-risk ambitious ideas, and create evidence that investors can believe in before the market fully understands what they're building. In this episode: Why startups need a 10x advantage to stand out Turning a research paper into a venture-backed company Raising capital when the biggest risk is technical, not market demand Why Inception Labs built before talking to customers Learning enterprise sales as a first-time founder The challenge of pricing a fundamentally new technology What happened when Google announced its own diffusion models How deep-tech founders can de-risk ideas before fundraising The hiring lesson Stefano wishes he had learned earlier

“I never knew, and I was a bright kid. I didn't know who the mayor of New York was, but I could tell you the names of all the mafia guys on the corner.” — Vincent Coppola So we finally found a Coppola for the show. No, not Francis Ford. But somebody just as cool and even more authentic. The longtime Newsweek reporter Vincent Coppola grew up in Brooklyn three subway stops from Manhattan, but never went there until he was a teenager, nor even visited Central Park until his twenties. Coppola's version of Brooklyn, a teeming Italian ghetto squeezed between the banks of the polluted Gowanus Canal, no longer exists. Except in his exquisitely rendered new memoir, Gowanus Crossing: A Brooklyn Boyhood, which has the most delicious story about an Easter pie recipe you'll ever read. The Brooklyn of Vinnie's childhood was intact, insular, cut off from everywhere more than three stops away. It had its own government — the Mafia; its own religion — the Catholic Church; its own poisoned geography — the Gowanus Canal. A world inside a world. He didn't know who the mayor of New York was, but he knew the name of every wise guy on every street corner. To a kid, Gowanus was a magical place. The grown Vinnie (now called Vincent), having crossed his own Rubicon to attend Columbia journalism school, describes it as a “toxic snow globe.” Brooklyn über alles. Or, more authentically, al primo posto. Especially now, when only a real Coppola can resurrect it. Five Takeaways •       A Toxic Snow Globe: Cut Off Three Stops from Manhattan: Coppola grew up in an Italian enclave on the Gowanus Canal — a waterway that was, unbeknownst to its residents, one of the most polluted in America. The community was so insular that Coppola — a bright, bookish kid — never went to Manhattan until he was a teenager, never visited Central Park until he was in his twenties, though he was three subway stops away. He knew the names of all the Mafia guys on the corner. He did not know who the mayor of New York was. A toxic snow globe: its own rules, its own government, its own religion. Intact and entirely cut off from the rest of the world. •       The Mafia as Shadow Government: The Mafia was not background colour in Coppola's childhood. It was the actual government. Police from the 78th Precinct pulled up to the social club on Sundays; officers walked in and walked out with brown paper bags full of cash. Squad cars ferried a hitman — the bodyguard of Carmine Persico — as if they were taxis. This corrupted any childlike innocence about institutions. The stereotype of the nice policeman, the honest cop, the beloved priest: none of them applied. Because they were poor, nobody cared. Nobody cared about the canal being polluted until real estate people came in. •       The Predatory Priest and the Code of Silence: A local priest molested altar boys for decades, including Coppola's best friend. Nobody in the community knew. Coppola's observation: if the Mafia had known, they would have killed that man. It would have been that simple. Two oppressive codes of silence — the Mafia's omertà and the Church's own silence — operated in parallel. One protected criminals who were also community pillars. The other protected a predator. The community was too poor, too preoccupied, too isolated to see what was happening in front of their eyes. •       The Easter Pie Recipe: A Story About Secrets and Mothers: One of the great set pieces of the book. Coppola was obsessed throughout his life with a specific Easter pastry — pizza di grano, a grain pie — that the old neighbourhood women made and would not share the recipe for. He worked for Newsweek, had access to chefs everywhere, could not reproduce it. At his mother's funeral, an old neighbour pressed a piece of paper into his hand. Weeks later he found it in his jacket pocket and opened it. Not cash — the recipe. Written in Italian. Beginning: “under a full moon.” It was a hundred years old. He wasn't going to be baking under full moons. •       The Ghost Town: A Million-Dollar Desert: Coppola returned to Gowanus three weeks before the interview, invited to speak at a public library. His neighbourhood was blooming with skyscrapers and condominiums. And it was dead silent. When he grew up, the streets were teeming — children playing hopscotch, women gossiping on chairs outside, music, grilling on the corner, betting. He came back to a million-dollar ghost town. It broke his heart. The people he grew up with had been driven out — priced out of the place where they belonged. That is the elegy the book is writing. He hopes he preserved the best of that world. About the Guest Vincent Coppola is a journalist and the author of six books. A former reporter at Newsweek, he has written for Esquire, Rolling Stone, Men's Journal, and Atlanta magazine. He is a 1977 honours graduate of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. His essay on his mother's battle with cancer won the William Allen White Gold Medal. He is the author of Gowanus Crossing: A Brooklyn Boyhood (Henry Holt, June 9, 2026). He lives in Savannah, Georgia. References: •       Gowanus Crossing: A Brooklyn Boyhood by Vincent Coppola (Henry Holt, June 9, 2026). •       Frank McCourt, Angela's Ashes — the publisher's comparison: “Frank McCourt's gimlet eye with the exuberant menace of a Scorsese movie.” •       Carmine Persico — the mafioso boss referenced in the conversation; his bodyguard is a character in the book. About Keen On America Nobody asks more awkward questions than the Anglo-American writer and filmmaker Andrew Keen. In Keen On America, Andrew brings his pointed Transatlantic wit to making sense of the United States — hosting daily interviews about the history and future of this now venerable Republic. With nearly 2,900 episodes since the show launched on TechCrunch in 2010, Keen On America is the most prolific intellectual interview show in the history of podcasting. WebsiteSubstackYouTubeApple PodcastsSpotify Chapters: (00:31) - Introduction: the Brooklyn of Whole Foods vs the Brooklyn of the Gowanus Canal (01:20) - An Italian village plucked from the south of Italy and dropped in Brooklyn (02:04) - Vince, did you ever really leave? (02:27) - Stage four cancer: the trigger for the memoir (03:11) - The Gowanus C...

Beijing has criticized Washington for adding several Chinese companies to a list of entities allegedly supporting China's military, urging the United States to "correct its erroneous practices".中方批评美方将多家中国企业列入一份所谓的“涉军”实体清单，并敦促美方“纠正错误做法”。On Monday, the US Defense Department added several major Chinese companies, including Alibaba, Baidu and BYD, to the list, according to US media.据美国媒体报道，美国国防部于6月8日将阿里巴巴、百度、比亚迪等多家中国知名企业列入该清单。Responding at a daily news briefing in Beijing on Tuesday, Foreign Ministry spokesman Lin Jian said, "China has consistently and firmly opposed the US overstretching the concept of national security and formulating various types of discriminatory lists to go after Chinese businesses.中国外交部发言人林剑6月9日在北京举行的例行记者会上回应称，“中方一贯坚决反对美方泛化国家安全概念，划设各类名目的歧视性清单，无理打压中国企业。"We urge the US to correct its erroneous practices and stop its unwarranted suppression of Chinese enterprises," Lin said.“我们敦促美方纠正错误做法，停止对中国企业的无理打压，”林剑表示。China will take necessary measures to firmly safeguard the legitimate rights and interests of Chinese enterprises, he added.他补充道，中方将采取必要措施，坚定维护中国企业的正当合法权益。According to leading IT news portal TechCrunch, the list — known as the 1260H list, after the specific section of the 2021 National Defense Authorization Act that created it — "is just one tool that the US has used to place restrictions on Chinese tech".据美国知名科技资讯网站TechCrunch报道，这份所谓的“1260H清单”是根据美国《2021财年国防授权法案》第1260H条款设立，“仅仅是美国用来限制中国科技发展的工具之一”。The updated list, which supersedes an earlier 2025 version, now includes a broad swathe of China's top technology companies, according to Reuters.据路透社报道，更新后的清单取代了2025年的先前版本，如今涵盖了中国一大批顶尖科技公司。It also reported that other companies added include biotech enterprise WuXi AppTec, artificial intelligence-driven robotics company RoboSense Technology Co and Unitree, a leading Chinese maker of humanoid and quadruped robots.报道还指出，被新增列入的其他企业包括生物科技企业药明康德、人工智能驱动的机器人公司速腾聚创，以及中国领先的人形与四足机器人制造商宇树科技。Baidu said in a statement to Tech-Crunch that "the suggestion that Baidu is a military company is entirely baseless. We will not hesitate to use all options available to us to have the company removed from the list".百度在给TechCrunch的一份声明中表示，“所谓百度是一家军工企业的说法毫无根据。我们将毫不犹豫地利用一切可用手段将该公司从清单中移除。”Alibaba told TechCrunch that it "is not a Chinese military company nor part of any military-civil fusion strategy", adding that it will take all available legal action against attempts to misrepresent the company.阿里巴巴在给TechCrunch的声明中表示，其“既不是中国军工企业，也未参与任何军民融合战略”，并补充称，将对任何试图歪曲该公司的行为采取一切可用的法律行动。discriminatory list /dɪˈskrɪmɪnətəri lɪst/歧视性清单unwarranted suppression /ʌnˈwɒrəntɪd səˈpreʃən/无理打压1260H list /wʌn tuː sɪks əʊ eɪtʃ lɪst/ 1260H清单（美国防授权法案第1260H条）National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) /ˈnæʃənəl dɪˈfens ˌɔːθəraɪˈzeɪʃən ækt/国防授权法案quadruped robot /ˈkwɒdrʊped ˈrəʊbɒt/四足机器人military-civil fusion strategy /ˈmɪlɪtəri ˈsɪvəl ˈfjuːʒən ˈstrætədʒi/军民融合战略

The episode identifies a growing governance gap as a central structural issue for MSPs and IT service providers, driven by rapid AI adoption through subscription-based tools and platforms. Rather than being introduced as controlled, IT-led initiatives, AI services are entering organizations piecemeal—often through end users and business units—undermining established accountability and management practices. This dynamic is exemplified by ConnectWise's dismantling of its ASIO platform in favor of a new AI-native operating layer designed to unify PSA, RMM, security, and automation functions, and by clients independently layering on AI-powered tools without centralized oversight or cost control. A primary example of ungoverned risk involves unsustainable AI cost exposure. According to Axios and TechCrunch, an enterprise amassed around $500 million in a single month on Anthropic's Claude due to unlimited, unmonitored usage. Freshworks' survey of over 12,000 IT professionals quantifies the industry's operational friction, finding mid-market companies waste about 25% of AI budgets on complexity, for a total of $16 billion in annual waste. Despite 89% of respondents planning to increase AI spend, only 15% have actively integrated these tools into daily workflows—revealing widespread governance lag behind adoption. Supporting developments highlight the breadth and persistence of this governance deficit. Organizations such as the Linux Foundation have responded by forming the Tokenomics Foundation to standardize AI cost tracking. Meanwhile, AI tool adoption is occurring outside IT, leading to agent sprawl, unclear permissions, and cost scaling linked to agent behavior rather than headcount. Roll-up strategies in adjacent sectors—such as Thrive Holdings' $1 billion commitment to consolidate accounting firms under an AI operational platform—demonstrate capital's move toward operationally governed, AI-enabled service models, suggesting a parallel risk for IT providers. For MSPs and IT leaders, these trends underscore the urgency of operationalizing AI governance as a billable, contractual service rather than an informal or embedded support task. Risks include absorbing liability for unmanaged AI usage, exacerbated operational complexity, and relinquishing margin to platform or capital entrants. Practical steps involve conducting AI tool audits, inventorying agent access and spend, instituting usage controls, and reframing account segmentation around governance and liability exposure. MSPs who define, price, and contract for governance can mitigate inherited risk and avoid being displaced by vendors or capital-backed consolidators. 00:00 ConnectWise Rebuilds  03:59 Ungoverned Agents 06:06 Roll-Up Warning 09:38 Why Do We Care?    Supported by:  Moovila  ScalePad 

“The hyperreal is the real. The surreal is the real in The United States. We've reached that point. The absurd is the real. And so that's what I was trying to capture in the book.” — Ben Fountain Our absurdist-in-chief wants a $250 banknote with his face on it. But the satirist Ben Fountain gives the President something even more valuable. In his new novel Rasputin Swims the Potomac, Fountain delivers something quite priceless: a book that Trump deserves. In Fountain's novel, a sitting president, running for a third term, enlists a world champion professional wrestler, Grigory Yefimovich Rasputin, to help secure his re-election. Born Patrick Walsh Strickland in Buffalo, New York, Rasputin served in special forces in Afghanistan and Iraq, spent six years in a monastery, became fluent in Russian, and claims to be a real Russian monk. Evangelicals start defecting to Rasputin. A pandemic of “weeping sickness” sweeps the nation. It's almost as unbelievable as a sitting President wanting a $250 banknote glowing with his orange face. Fountain's parallels with late Tsarist Russia are hard to miss — the chasmic wealth inequality, the impossible get-rich schemes, the quack religions, the gilded decadence, the dying social classes, the mad politicians. It's scary stuff. Fountain says that we should even be careful taking his summer novel to the beach. Rather than Jaws-dropping, Rasputin Swims the Potomac, he warns, might bite us back. Maybe we should put Ben Fountain's face on that $250 bill. Five Takeaways •       The Hyperreal Is the Real: America Has Beaten Its Satirists: When Fountain sat down to write the book in early 2023, he was thinking about the blurring of the line between reality and fantasy in American life. Trump, throughout his career, has blurred that line to masterful effect. Fountain's question: what would be the next step on that continuum? His answer: professional wrestling — famously fake, scripted, and yet real, happening in real flesh and blood. Suppose a wrestler ran for president as his wrestling persona, with the fake baked in and everyone knowing it's fake. Suppose the country buys it. Because the hyperreal is the real. The surreal is the real. America has already reached that point. •       Why Wrestling, Not Politics: Jesse Ventura — “Jesse the Body” — ran for governor of Minnesota and won. But he ran as Jesse Ventura himself. Fountain's innovation: a wrestler who runs as his or her wrestling persona, with the character fully intact. Rasputin — born Patrick Walsh Strickland in Buffalo, special forces veteran, six years in a Russian monastery, world champion wrestler in Japan, legally changed name — never breaks character. He is the historical Rasputin, back from the dead, a holy man of the Russian Orthodox Church. Evangelicals start defecting to him because he's speaking their language. The fake is the real. •       Late Tsarist Russia and Contemporary America: Striking Parallels: Fountain read three or four biographies of the historical Rasputin. The deeper he got, the more striking the parallels. Late Tsarist Russia: extreme wealth inequality, get-rich schemes everywhere in St Petersburg and Moscow, quack religions and spiritualists plying their trade, extreme decadence among the upper classes. A social structure that could not be maintained. People's emotional responses to chaos. Fountain: not just in material terms but in terms of how people were feeling, the parallels to the United States are really striking. Gogol, not Baudrillard, is his natural ancestor. •       The Satirist as Realist: Andrew raises Baudrillard and hyper-realism. Fountain's response: he is a realist down to his bones. Whatever he does, it has to be anchored in some fundamental sense in the real world, as he understands it. American life has become such that the surreal is the real, the comical is the real, the absurd is the real. He didn't set out to write satire. He set out to write the story as genuinely and authentically as he could. The question of genre came afterwards, asked by other people. He is just a realist. It's just that American reality is Rasputin swimming the Potomac. •       Living in the Belly of the Beast: Dallas and North Carolina: Fountain lived in Dallas, Texas for forty-one years — what he calls the most American city of all, better and worse. In Dallas, the free market and capitalism are so much a part of daily consciousness that there's very little awareness that there might be different ways of living. Fountain: it's very conservative and very conservative. For someone to the left of Gandhi, his assumptions are always being challenged. He has to think about how he's thinking about things. That productive discomfort — not Brooklyn, not Los Angeles — is where this book comes from. About the Guest Ben Fountain is the author of Rasputin Swims the Potomac (Flatiron Books, June 9, 2026), Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk (National Book Critics Circle Award winner, National Book Award finalist), Beautiful Country Burn Again, and Brief Encounters with Che Guevara (PEN/Hemingway Award). He is the recipient of the Joyce Carol Oates Prize, the Thomas Wolfe Prize, and a Whiting Writers Award. He lives in New Bern, North Carolina. References: •       Rasputin Swims the Potomac by Ben Fountain (Flatiron Books, June 9, 2026). Named a Best Book of Summer by the LA Times, Kirkus, Publishers Weekly, Boston Globe, Newsday, and New York Post. •       Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk by Ben Fountain (2012) — the predecessor referenced throughout. •       Beautiful Country Burn Again: Democracy, Rebellion, and Revolution by Ben Fountain (2018) — his 2016 election nonfiction, referenced in the conversation. About Keen On America Nobody asks more awkward questions than the Anglo-American writer and filmmaker Andrew Keen. In Keen On America, Andrew brings his pointed Transatlantic wit to making sense of the United States — hosting daily interviews about the history and future of this now venerable Republic. With nearly 2,900 episodes since the show launched on TechCrunch in 2010, Keen On America is the most prolific intellectual interview show in the history of podcasting. WebsiteSubstackYouTubeApple PodcastsSpotify Chapters: (...

TClaude Outage Data Leak Fears, Microsoft GitHub Worm, IBM Hack Allegations, Meta AI Instagram Takeovers, and Canada's Bill C-8 David Shipley reports that Anthropic's Claude suffered a roughly two-hour outage affecting models including Opus, during which a user alleged receiving another customer's conversation; Anthropic says it has no evidence of a data leak and is investigating. A Team PCP self-spreading worm, Miasma, infected 73 Microsoft GitHub repositories across four accounts and now triggers via AI coding assistants when developers open cloned projects. A former IBM threat-intel executive, William Barlow, alleges IBM was hacked three times by foreign governments (including APT10 from 2013–2016) and concealed it; IBM denies wrongdoing and the claims are unproven. TechCrunch reports attackers hijacked Instagram accounts by persuading Meta's support chatbot to relink accounts to attacker emails, with ongoing reports despite Meta saying it's fixed. Canada's Senate passed critical-infrastructure cybersecurity law Bill C-8, mandating rules and incident reporting for telecom, finance, energy, and transportation. 00:00 Top Headlines Rundown 00:37 Claude Outage Data Leak Fears 02:17 Miasma Worm Hits Microsoft 03:52 IBM Breach Cover Up Claims 05:25 Meta AI Hands Over Instagram 06:40 Why Chatbots Fail Social Engineering 07:44 Canada Passes C-8 Cyber Law 09:58 Wrap Up and Sign Off

Our 247th episode with a summary and discussion of last week's big AI news!Recorded on 06/03/2026Hosted by Andrey Kurenkov and Jeremie HarrisFeel free to email us your questions and feedback at andreyvkurenkov@gmail.com and/or hello@gladstone.aiRead out our text newsletter and comment on the podcast at https://lastweekin.ai/In this episode:Anthropic released Claude Opus 4.8 with improved benchmark scores, discussed eval-awareness findings and welfare/corrigibility themes from its system card, and introduced Dynamic Workflows for long-running multi-agent tasks.Microsoft unveiled the always-on Microsoft Scout assistant built on OpenClaw plus new in-house MAI models (including MAI Thinking 1) and “frontier tuning,” emphasizing enterprise security architecture and model-from-scratch capability.Major business moves included Anthropic's $65B Series H at a $965B valuation alongside an IPO filing, a JPMorgan analysis arguing OpenAI needs major revenue growth to justify infrastructure spend, and Cognition raising $1B at a $25B valuation.Policy and security highlights covered Trump's voluntary pre-release government testing framework for powerful AI, Meta AI support being exploited to hijack Instagram accounts, tightened US Nvidia export controls and China's travel approvals for AI experts, plus expanded Glasswing/Mythos-style cyber and biodefense initiatives.Timestamps:(00:00:10) Intro / Banter(00:04:10) Sponsors(00:07:10) News PreviewTools & Apps(00:07:54) Anthropic releases Opus 4.8 with new 'dynamic workflow' tool | TechCrunch(00:22:37) Microsoft Scout is a new AI personal assistant built on OpenClaw | The Verge(00:26:55) Microsoft launches new MAI family of AI models at Microsoft Build | Mashable(00:37:43) Robinhood now lets your AI agents trade stocks | TechCrunch(00:40:49) OpenAI launches new Codex tools for white-collar work | TechCrunch(00:43:40) ElevenLabs' new music-generation model can switch genres mid-track | TechCrunchApplications & Business(00:44:35) Anthropic Hits $965 Billion Valuation, Surpassing OpenAI - WSJ(00:45:32) Anthropic Files to Go Public, Setting Stage for Huge I.P.O. - The New York Times(00:51:15) China's ByteDance Developing New AI Chips Like Those from Nvidia Partner Groq(00:55:00) Anthropic expands Mythos to 150 additional organizations(00:55:35) OpenAI needs a 26x revenue increase to justify its buildout(00:58:46) AI coding startup Cognition raises $1B at $25B pre-money valuation | TechCrunchProjects & Open Source(01:00:50) MiniMax-M3 debuts, eclipsing GPT-5.5 and Gemini 3.1 Pro on key benchmark performance for just 5-10% of the cost | VentureBeatPolicy & Safety(01:06:08) Trump Signs Executive Order Seeking Oversight of A.I. Models - The New York Times(01:11:45) Hackers Simply Asked Meta AI to Give Them Access to High-Profile Instagram Accounts. It Worked(01:13:058) Chinese AI experts in private firms now required to secure approval before international travel — Beijing enforces policy to secure top-tier talent, expands measures beyond government(01:17:53) U.S. Tightens Controls on Nvidia AI Chip Exports | Let's Data Science(01:21:47) OpenAI launches Rosalind Biodefense, offers federal agencies early access to its life-sciences model(01:24:00) Using LLMs to secure source code(01:26:19) Project Glasswing: An initial update(01:29:30) White House Approves $9 Billion for Spy Agencies to Catch Up on A.I.(01:32:11) US Law Enforcement Warns of ‘Anti-Tech Extremism' as AI Hatred GrowsSynthetic Media & Art(01:35:38) YouTube will now automatically label AI videos | TechCrunchResearch & Advancements(01:36:22) Why Larger Models Learn More: Effects of Capacity, Interference, and Rare-Task Retention(01:41:26) From Simulation to Enaction: Post-trained language models recognize and react to their own generationsSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

“AI represents successful capitalism. What we have alongside that is unsuccessful government. Government has no plan — left or right.” — Keith Teare It's the 82nd anniversary of D-Day. On June 6, 1944, there was an unambiguous end game — the defeat of Nazi Germany. But today, end games are more controversial, especially in terms of harnessing the AI revolution to benefit everyone. For Keith Teare, publisher of That Was the Week, the AI end game requires an “Institute of the Future.” Everyone from Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren to Elon Musk and Sam Altman should hammer out a plan to harness AI for the benefit of society. Keith offers the internet governance organisation ICANN as a model for this institute. It will shape the future for all of our benefit, he promises. So a D-Day for AI? I'm sceptical of this type of Brave New World-style technocracy. Firstly, Sanders, Warren, Musk and Altman agree on very little. And Musk and Altman hate each other. I'm also dubious that AI will or can benefit everyone. As Keith notes, some professions — teachers, for example — will be decimated by AI. Where I agree with Keith, however, is that we need a new politics for this new age. Political parties, rather than institutes, of the future. Innovation rather than ICANN. Five Takeaways •       The Anthropic IPO Slip — and Why SpaceX Now Looks Small: Anthropic accidentally filed for its IPO this week — what the New York Times described as a slip. The terms of SpaceX's unconventional $75 billion IPO were also revealed. Keith's observation: SpaceX now looks small by comparison. He tried to buy SpaceX shares this week through his brokerage and expects to get none — the demand will be way bigger than the supply, and the price will go up from the offering. San Francisco real estate is already feeling the Cerebras effect: 800 employees are now millionaires. The three big IPOs — Anthropic, OpenAI, SpaceX — will compound that on a much larger scale. •       Successful Capitalism, Unsuccessful Government: Keith's framework for the week: AI is capitalism working. Resources are directed to money-making opportunities via the profit motive, which coincides with innovation and, at least in the short term, creates lots of jobs. That is successful capitalism. Alongside it: unsuccessful government. The Trump administration went from hands-off to requiring all AI models to be submitted for a 30-day assessment before launch — in the same week. No plan. No endgame. Everyone has an opinion. Nobody states what outcome they want. •       Keith's PhD: Why Capitalism Is Never Static: Andrew challenges Keith's authority to pronounce on these matters. Keith reveals: he has a PhD from the University of Kent in Canterbury — on why capitalism is never static, and why new entrants always eclipse what went before. Andrew: that was the 1970s, Keith. Does a fifty-year-old PhD give you authority? Keith: it's a useless criticism. You could say that to anyone about anything. The exchange is revealing: the argument is not about credentials but about frameworks. And Keith's framework — capitalism as dynamic, government as static — has at least the virtue of consistency. •       Credit to Bernie and Warren: At Least They're Having the Conversation: Andrew expects Keith to trash Bernie Sanders (50% government ownership of AI companies) and Elizabeth Warren (high taxation of AI profits). Keith surprises him: at least they're having the conversation. His criticism is not that they're wrong to want wealth distribution but that their framing — tax, centralise, spend — is unattractive to most people and captured by the interests of the old economy: teachers' unions, trade unions, legacy coalitions that can't think freely about a future without teachers as they currently exist. •       An ICANN for AI: Keith's One Concrete Prescription: Andrew pushes Keith for one concrete thing politicians should do this year. Keith's answer: create an Institute for the Future. Bring Musk, Altman, Amodei, Sanders, Warren, and everyone else to the table with a clear mandate — define the future you want, agree actual outcomes, seek governmental authority to implement them. His model: ICANN, the global internet governance body, which disagrees constantly and still makes decisions. Andrew's verdict: Keith wants to create an ICANN for society. Interesting idea. History's jury is out. About the Guest Keith Teare is a British-American entrepreneur, investor, and publisher of the That Was the Week newsletter. He is a co-founder of TechCrunch and Andrew's regular TWTW co-host. He holds a PhD from the University of Kent. References: •       That Was the Week by Keith Teare. •       Noah Smith, “We Need Liberal Nationalism to Come Back” — referenced in the conversation. •       The Economist, “American Capitalism Has Taken an Apocalyptic Turn” — referenced in the conversation. •       Ben Thompson on Google becoming a capital company; John Battelle on Google reinventing itself from search to data infrastructure — both referenced. •       ICANN — the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, Keith's model for AI governance. About Keen On America Nobody asks more awkward questions than the Anglo-American writer and filmmaker Andrew Keen. In Keen On America, Andrew brings his pointed Transatlantic wit to making sense of the United States — hosting daily interviews about the history and future of this now venerable Republic. With nearly 2,900 episodes since the show launched on TechCrunch in 2010, Keen On America is the most prolific intellectual interview show in the history of podcasting. WebsiteSubstackYouTubeApple PodcastsSpotify Chapters: (00:31) - Introduction: D-Day, June 6, and the Anthropic IPO slip (02:26) - What is the endgame? AI is no longer just a tech story (03:46) - Successful capitalism, unsuccessful government (04:49) - Atomisation and the absence of proper conversation (05:33) - Andrew challenges Keith's authority (06:42) - Keith's PhD: capitalism is never static (07:13) - Bernie Sanders: 50% ownership of AI companies (07:30) - At least they're having the conversation (07:55) - The old economy framing: tax, centralise, spend (08:25) - What gives Keith the authority? (09:00) - Jack Clark and the call to slow down (10:00) - The Trump administration at war with itself (15:00) - Andrew Yang and universal capital distribution (20:00) - ...

“He didn't just say it, he meant it, he felt it — and the combination of the power guy, the ruthless power guy, and the profound idealist was fascinating, and also hard for him.” — Evan Thomas on Bobby Kennedy Who was the greatest riddle in 20th century American political life? Judging from the ever-expanding library of Bobby biographies, Robert Francis Kennedy ranks very high on that list. Indeed, according to Evan Thomas, one of RFK's most acclaimed biographers, this third Kennedy son is, indeed, the most sphinx-like riddle in 20th century America. In his classic 2000 biography, Robert Kennedy: His Life, Thomas unravels the good and the bad Bobby. But, rather than presenting parallel narratives, his portrait treats the Machiavellian and the idealist as the same riddle. Raised by his father to exercise raw power, RFK discovered that mid-century America wasn't living up to its own ideals. The contradiction of the ruthless Kennedy machine politician and the profound idealist was what continues to make him so intriguing to Americans of every political stripe. Bobby concurred with Churchill's dictum that courage is the greatest virtue because, without it, you can't have the other virtues. So he lived a life of ridiculous physical and moral courage — taking insane risks that would terrify ordinary mortals. And, of course, his most insanely courageous act was his last — running for President in 1968 knowing that he was likely to be assassinated. Where have you gone, Bobby Kennedy? A nation turns its lonely eyes to you. Five Takeaways •       The Central Paradox: Power Guy and Idealist in the Same Man: Bobby Kennedy was raised by his father to be the henchman of the Kennedy machine — doing the dirty stuff in Boston politics to keep Jack floating free and grand. He was pretty ruthless about it. At the same time, in mid-century America, he discovered that the country was not living up to its own constitution, and he wanted to make things right, and genuinely felt it. The combination of the machine politician and the profound idealist was what made him so endlessly fascinating. It also made him hard for himself: a man permanently at war with his own nature. •       Courage: The Only Word That Mattered: No word was more important to Bobby Kennedy than courage. Churchill: it's the greatest virtue, because without it you can't have the others. Kennedy believed in physical courage, emotional courage, mental courage. He was a runty little kid at the wrong end of the dinner table — Jack and Joe and Kick at the golden end with the father, Bobby with the nuns and the mum. He got kicked out of prep school for cheating. He was not the athlete, not the golden one. Real courage comes from suffering. It took courage just to overcome being the loser. That was the source. •       Making Up for Missing the War: Physical and Moral Courage: Bobby missed World War Two, basically. He got in at the very end and ended up scraping the deck of a destroyer in the Caribbean, far from combat. His brother Jack is a war hero on steroids — PT boat cut in half by a Japanese destroyer, rescues his men, written about in The New Yorker and Reader's Digest. Joe volunteers for a secret dangerous mission to replicate Jack's glory and dies. Pretty high bar of courage. Bobby spends the rest of his life making up for it — swimming the Colorado River, climbing Mount Kennedy in the Yukon, jumping overboard off the coast of Maine to save Jack's jacket. Sometimes stunts. But increasingly, moral courage — which is the greater thing. •       The Mob, Joe Kennedy, and the Beehive: When Bobby starts poking around in the mob as a Senate aide, J. Edgar Hoover is only too happy to point out: keep going here, you know where it's going to end up. With Joe Kennedy. Bobby's investigation of Giancana and Frank Sinatra starts grazing against his own father. Thomas's reading: whether conscious or unconscious, there is an element of rebellion. Bobby, appointed henchman, doing the dirty stuff for pop, resenting it, starts poking the beehive that might expose him. It never fully landed. But it started. And Hoover used it to blackmail the Kennedys. •       The Ripple of Hope, and RFK Jr. as Tragedy: Bobby's trip to South Africa — apartheid everywhere, the freedom movement barely existing, everybody in prison. His speech: every time somebody does something brave or heroic, it causes a ripple, and that gives you hope. A young Margaret Marshall, later Chief Justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, was in the audience. He gave us hope where there was none. That is the ghost Andrew went looking for at Hickory Hill and didn't find. The contrast with RFK Jr. is, for Thomas, simply sad. Poignant. His own family has disavowed him. Caroline Kennedy made a broadcast accusing him of crimes. The idea of Robert Kennedy Jr. is tragic. About the Guest Evan Thomas is an American writer and historian. He was Washington bureau chief of Newsweek for ten years and a writer and editor there for thirty-three years. He is the author of ten books, including Robert Kennedy: His Life (Simon & Schuster, 2000), Being Nixon, Road to Surrender, and, with Walter Isaacson, The Wise Men. He has taught at Harvard and Princeton. His biography of Churchill is forthcoming from Simon & Schuster in December 2026. References: •       Robert Kennedy: His Life by Evan Thomas (Simon & Schuster, 2000). •       The Wise Men by Evan Thomas and Walter Isaacson (Simon & Schuster, 1986) — referenced in the closing. •       Robert Coles — Bobby Kennedy's psychologist friend, referenced in the conversation. •       Hickory Hill, McLean, Virginia — the Kennedy family home Andrew visited on this trip to Washington DC. •       Bobby Kennedy's “Ripple of Hope” speech, University of Cape Town, South Africa, June 6, 1966. About Keen On America Nobody asks more awkward questions than the Anglo-American writer and filmmaker Andrew Keen. In Keen On America, Andrew brings his pointed Transatlantic wit to making sense of the United States — hosting daily interviews about the history and future of this now venerable Republic. With nearly 2,900 episodes since the show launched on TechCrunch in 2010, Keen On America is the most prolific intellectual interview show in the history of podcasting. WebsiteSubstackYouTube

SpaceX is finally going public, and it's bad news for anyone who wants to rein in Elon Musk. Sean O'Kane joins Paris Marx to discuss the flimsy sci-fi ideas Elon Musk is using to justify the company's massive valuation and the way corporate governance rules are shifting to give him even more power.Sean O'Kane is a senior reporter at TechCrunch.Tech Won't Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Support the show on Patreon.The podcast is made in partnership with The Nation. Production is by Kyla Hewson.Also mentioned in this episode:Paris asked listeners to fill out a survey. It will only take a few minutes!Sean wrote about the SpaceX IPO and the worrying ways it will increase Elon Musk's power.After recording, Sean also wrote about how SpaceX is getting a major boost from the Trump administration.SpaceX has made a deal with Anthropic.Musk has a poor environmental regulation record.OpenAI bought a tech podcast.Support the show

SpaceX is finally going public, and it's bad news for anyone who wants to rein in Elon Musk. Sean O'Kane joins Paris Marx to discuss the flimsy sci-fi ideas Elon Musk is using to justify the company's massive valuation and the way corporate governance rules are shifting to give him even more power.Sean O'Kane is a senior reporter at TechCrunch.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

“That kind of put soccer on my radar as a sport. I saw how deeply it meant to people, in a way I didn't appreciate prior to that. And then I was in London when the World Cup began, and I saw the opening match — Argentina and Cameroon, with Cameroon winning in an upset. Just the whole spectacle of it gave me an appreciation for the game.” — Brian Bunk, on Ireland, Italia '90, and the moment everything changed Not long now. Only seven days until the World Cup begins. Just enough time to read Brian D. Bunk's new The Shortest History of Soccer: From Ancient Kicking Games to the World's Most Popular Sport. History isn't Bunk with Brian. He looks a bit like Elton John, which is appropriate given that old Rocket Man was chairman of Watford and bankrolled the tiny English club to almost winning the league. Pop stars like Ed Sheeran (Ipswich) and Robert Plant (Wolves) love football, Bunk notes. Probably because it reminds them of where they came from. Bunk's thesis is that soccer's global dominance is not accidental. Born in the industrial communities of nineteenth-century England, the game gave workers a new identity, new evidence of their collective power, proof they'll never walk alone. That same logic explains why middle-aged men all over America religiously gather at their local bars to watch English teams with strange names like Ipswich Town and Wolverhampton Wanderers. Such is religion in our globalised post-industrial age. “Some people think football is a matter of life and death. I don't like that attitude. I can assure them it is much more serious than that,” the great Liverpool manager Bill Shankly quipped. That's the shortest of short histories of football. What the working-class Shankly meant was that it gives us social meaning — which is, indeed, more historically significant than the life or death of a single individual. Or even God. Football saves our souls, Brian Bunk concurs with Bill Shankly. Enjoy the World Cup. Five Takeaways •       Soccer Was Born in Industrial Communities for a Reason: The game emerged in industrial Britain in the second half of the nineteenth century not by accident but because industrialisation had shattered traditional community life. Mass migration to cities, technological disruption, the loss of familiar rhythms — all created a need for new kinds of identity and belonging. Soccer filled that need. It gave factory workers a team to follow, a ground to gather at, a shared identity that transcended ethnic and class lines. Bunk's argument: this community function is baked into the game itself, which is why it has replicated across every culture it has touched. •       Why Americans Love the Premier League: Bunk identifies the 1990s as the pivotal decade for American soccer. The 1994 World Cup on home soil. The women's World Cup. The formation of MLS. The arrival of the FIFA video game. The Premier League broadcasting deals with ESPN and Fox. All of these combined and snowballed. Add to that the NFL owners investing in English clubs, the celebrity ownership wave (Ryan Reynolds, Elton John), and the cultural footprint of shows like Ted Lasso and Welcome to Wrexham. The result: a generation of Americans for whom following the Premier League is a primary source of community. •       Maradona: All the Contradictions of Football in One Man: Asked which historical match he would most want to attend, Bunk chooses Mexico City, June 1986: Argentina vs England. Not for the Hand of God goal — which was cheating — but for the second goal, the one where Maradona picked up the ball in his own half, went past five English players, and scored what is generally considered the greatest goal in the history of the game. Bryon Butler's BBC radio commentary: “turning like a little eel.” Andrew's verdict: if any single figure captures all the genius, joy, turbulence, and tragedy of football, it is Maradona. •       The World Cup Returns to North America: In seven days, the 2026 FIFA World Cup begins in the United States, Canada, and Mexico — the first time the tournament has returned to North America since the USA hosted in 1994. The timing of Bunk's book is deliberate. Soccer is more popular in America than at any point in history, and the home World Cup is the event that could push it into the first tier of American sports culture. The Premier League, MLS, women's soccer, and now the World Cup: the game's US footprint is larger than it has ever been. •       Andrew's Game: Tottenham vs Benfica, April 1962: Andrew's own fantasy match, offered unprompted at the end: the first leg of the 1962 European Cup semi-final between Tottenham Hotspur and Benfica at the Est00e1dio da Luz in Lisbon on March 20, 1962, with Eusebio and Jimmy Greaves on the same pitch. Spurs lost 320131 on the night, went out 420132 on aggregate. Two clear penalties not given. Andrew's conclusion: had Spurs won that match, the history of European football — and possibly his own life — would have been different. He notes that he has a son, and that he should have called him Jimmy. About the Guest Brian D. Bunk is a Senior Lecturer in History at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where he teaches courses on world history, modern Europe, and the global history of soccer. He is the author of The Shortest History of Soccer: From Ancient Kicking Games to the World's Most Popular Sport (The Experiment, June 2026), Beyond the Field: How Soccer Built Community in the United States (University of Illinois Press, 2025), and From Football to Soccer: The Early History of the Beautiful Game in the United States (University of Illinois Press, 2021). He lives in Northampton, Massachusetts. References: •       The Shortest History of Soccer by Brian D. Bunk (The Experiment, June 2026). •       Beyond the Field: How Soccer Built Community in the United States by Brian D. Bunk (University of Illinois Press, 2025). •       Argentina vs England, FIFA World Cup quarter-final, Azteca Stadium, Mexico City, June 22, 1986 — the Hand of God game, referenced as Bunk's fantasy match. •       Tottenham Hotspur vs Benfica, European Cup semi-final, Estádio da Luz, Lisbon, April 1962 — Andrew's fantasy match. About Keen On America Nobody asks more awkward questions than the Anglo-American writer and filmmaker Andrew Keen. In Keen On America, Andrew brings his pointed Transatlantic wit to making sense of the United States — hosting daily interviews about the history and future of this now venerable Republic. With nearly 2,900 episodes since the show launched on TechCrunch in 2010, Keen On A...

“Get the f*** out of your house and join an organisation. Groups are how we make movements. They're how we make political and social change. They're how we transform. Nobody does anything of value alone.” — Yotam Marom If you're feeling politically powerless, you're not alone. Yotam Marom — full-time organiser, facilitator and veteran of Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter — has spent his adult life on the front lines of progressive movements. His new book, For Louder Days: Reaching Beyond the Politics of Powerlessness, explains why progressive movements keep losing — and what to do about it. Marom's diagnosis is that the left has developed a “politics of powerlessness” — an attachment to purity, insularity, and performing resistance rather than building power. In contrast, the right understands that people's pain is real, and channelling it into something organised is the only route to political change. The liberal model of showing up every few years, voting, and then going home is insufficient. And the left too often sabotages itself by dodging conflict and choosing righteousness over action. His prescription is to “get the f*** out of your house” and join an organisation. Groups are how societies change and where people find meaning, purpose, and connection. So go on the streets. Turn up the volume. Your days will be louder and more meaningful. Five Takeaways •       The Politics of Powerlessness: Why the Left Keeps Losing: Progressive and left movements have repeatedly put enormous numbers of people into the streets — and repeatedly failed to convert that energy into durable political power. Marom's explanation: a politics of powerlessness has taken hold. It prizes purity over winning, insularity over coalition, righteousness over effectiveness. It avoids conflict because conflict feels dangerous. It avoids leadership because leadership feels hierarchical. The result is movements that are morally serious and politically weak. The right, by contrast, is very good at taking pain and converting it into organised power. •       The Right Channels Pain. The Left Needs to Do the Same: Trump's most effective political move, in Marom's analysis: he tells people that they're being screwed — and he's right about that. Then he continues to screw them. But the left cannot simply counter this with policy arguments. The people who voted for Trump are not wrong that the system has failed them. Income inequality is growing. Politicians don't listen. There is no leverage. Marom's argument: the left needs its own version of this — speaking directly to people's pain and offering a genuine path to power. Bernie, AOC, and Mamdani know how to do this. They're not the only ones. •       Liberal Democracy Is Necessary but Insufficient: Voting, electoral participation, civic engagement — these are important and necessary parts of a healthy democratic society. But they are not sufficient to make big political change. The right understands this and has been exploiting it for a decade: the failure of the liberal establishment to deliver for ordinary people is the fuel for right-wing populism. Marom's answer is not to abandon liberal democracy but to supplement it with the kind of mass social movement that has historically produced the big political changes: the labour movement, the civil rights movement, the suffragette movement. •       Conflict and Leadership Are Good, Actually: Two of the left's most self-destructive habits, in Marom's experience as a facilitator: avoiding conflict and avoiding leadership. Groups that learn to face conflict with dignity and care come out with better strategies. Leaders who accept the responsibility of leadership — who are willing to be visible, to take risks, to be wrong in public — give movements something to coalesce around. The fetishisation of horizontalism and the terror of hierarchy have kept many progressive organisations small, fractured, and ineffective. Leadership is not domination. It is responsibility. •       Get the F*** Out of Your House: Marom's prescription for individuals who feel powerless: join an organisation. Not a party, not a mailing list — an actual organisation where people gather, disagree, decide things together, and act collectively. It doesn't have to be a national political organisation. It can be a union, a community organisation, a neighbourhood group, a mutual aid network. The point is the group. Groups are where political change happens. They are also where people find meaning, purpose, and connection. Nobody does anything of value alone. Not political change, and not a good life. About the Guest Yotam Marom is a full-time organiser and facilitator based in Brooklyn, New York. He has been active in movements since the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, played leadership roles at Occupy Wall Street, and co-founded IfNotNow and the Wildfire Project. He is the author of For Louder Days: Reaching Beyond the Politics of Powerlessness (The New Press, June 2, 2026). He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and children. References: •       For Louder Days: Reaching Beyond the Politics of Powerlessness by Yotam Marom (The New Press, June 2, 2026). •       Episode 2919: David Masciotra on A Country of Strangers — referenced at the opening. •       Episode 2903: Ece Temelkuran on Nation of Strangers — referenced at the opening. •       Christopher Clark, Revolutionary Spring: Europe Aflame and the Fight for a New World, 1848–1849 — referenced in the closing exchange. About Keen On America Nobody asks more awkward questions than the Anglo-American writer and filmmaker Andrew Keen. In Keen On America, Andrew brings his pointed Transatlantic wit to making sense of the United States — hosting daily interviews about the history and future of this now venerable Republic. With nearly 2,900 episodes since the show launched on TechCrunch in 2010, Keen On America is the most prolific intellectual interview show in the history of podcasting. WebsiteSubstackYouTubeApple PodcastsSpotify Chapters:  

A fundamental structural shift underway is the movement of AI from isolated features to operationalized, production-level workloads in MSP tooling and client environments. This transition is not primarily about the capabilities of individual AI models but about their integration into existing operational platforms and workflows. Companies such as PDQ, Senteon, Domotz, and Zoom are incorporating AI agents directly into management layers, endpoint automation, and workflow orchestration, thereby increasing both the scope and complexity of AI impact. The locus of value is shifting from features to workflow control and integration, creating new demands for governance, consumption monitoring, and exit strategies. The most consequential development referenced is the transition in AI billing and operational models from static user or seat licenses to variable, usage-based consumption. He cites TechCrunch's coverage of GitHub Copilot's move to token-based billing and Semafor's reporting of Uber's rapid exhaustion of its 2026 AI budget in four months due to unbounded consumption by generative tools. F5's State of Application Strategy report is referenced to confirm that multi-cloud and parallel model operations are now common, with significant instances of AI-related security incidents already reported. Secondary developments reinforce this structural realignment of risk and accountability. PDQ, for instance, is expanding multi-tenant management and integration capabilities, while Senteon enables endpoint hardening and drift control directly in Rewst's platform. Domotz's MCP server allows AI agents to operate across 40,000 networks globally, and Zoom is packaging AI context protocol features for workflow automation. Each of these changes is designed to increase operational efficiency, but also expand the surface area for unintended consequences, elevated operational complexity, and potential budget overruns. For MSPs and IT leaders, the operational implications center on governance, spend control, and clear accountability over AI-driven tools and workflows. The risk is that without adequate monitoring, policy setting, and contractual clarity—especially around data portability and exit costs—MSPs may face liability for unplanned consumption, misconfigured automation, or governance gaps. The evidence indicates the need to proactively audit AI integrations, set usage thresholds, instrument logging and budgeting controls, and renegotiate vendor contracts to ensure service boundaries and oversight mechanisms are in place before workflows become too deeply embedded. 00:00 MSP Stack Resets  04:09 AI Needs Governance 06:45 Govern AI or Pay 09:22 Why Do We Care?  Supported by:  Nerdio Zero Networks   

“Be optimistic about the boom, but don't buy the stock.” — Liaquat Ahamed on the AI bubble Yesterday, Alexander Starritt argued that the 2008 financial crash ruined the lives of his generation. But compared with the great crash of 1873, 2008 looks like a tremor. The Pulitzer Prize-winning economic historian Liaquat Ahamed has a new book out today, 1873, which presents this 19th century economic crash as the first truly global financial crisis. In 1870, three globalising infrastructure projects were completed in quick succession: the US transcontinental railroad, the Suez Canal, and the Trans-India railroad linking Bombay to Calcutta. Into this newly integrated global economy, the Franco-Prussian War injected a trillion-dollar-equivalent indemnity that the Rothschilds helped France raise — and the resulting dramatic capital flows produced three simultaneous bubbles in Berlin, Vienna, and New York. A French journalist named Jules Verne worked out that for the first time, you could circumnavigate the globe in less than eighty days. Around the world in one global economic crisis. The lesson for posterity, Ahamed warns, is that the authorities made a catastrophic error by doubling down on the gold standard, producing decades of deflation that triggered an anti-semitic and anti-globalist populism, and ultimately led to the Great Depression of the 1930s. So what does that tell us about today's AI boom, which is about to be rocketed by three trillion-dollar IPOs? Be optimistic about the boom, the wise Ahamed says. But don't buy the stock. Five Takeaways •       Jules Verne and the First Global Economy: In 1870, three iconic infrastructure projects were completed: the US transcontinental railroad, the Suez Canal, and the Trans-India railroad linking Bombay to Calcutta. A French newspaper noted that for the first time, a traveller could circle the globe in less than eighty days. Jules Verne read the article and found his next novel. The point for Ahamed: this moment marked the creation of a genuinely integrated global economy for the first time in history. And with global integration came the first global financial crisis. The boom of the 1850s and 1860s was not irrational. It reflected real economic growth. The crash came from what happened next. •       The Trillion-Dollar Indemnity and Three Simultaneous Bubbles: Under the peace treaty ending the Franco-Prussian War, France was required to pay Germany an indemnity worth the equivalent of $1.2 trillion in today's money. With the help of the Rothschilds, France raised this sum in six months. The resulting capital injection caused the Berlin and Vienna equity markets to rise 200–300 percent. Simultaneously, European capital fleeing the war flowed into US railroad construction, inflating that bubble further. A third bubble formed in foreign borrowing on the London capital markets, as money chased yield in countries that should never have been given credit. Three bubbles, one crash. •       The Wrong Lesson from 1873: Gold Standard Orthodoxy: When the crash came, the authorities made a catastrophic error: they concluded that the gold standard had worked because the 1850s and 1860s boom had happened under it. They failed to see that the crash itself was partly produced by the gold standard's rigidities. The resulting decade of deflation crushed farmers, debtors, and ordinary people across Europe and America, fuelling anti-globalist populism. The same orthodoxy — applied by Montagu Norman and others in the 1920s — helped cause the Great Depression. We always fight the last war. •       The Rothschilds: Scapegoated Despite Being Innocent: The Rothschilds were at the centre of the 1873 boom as the world's leading bond underwriters. Presciently, they kept a low profile during the most speculative phase of the bubble. When the crash came, they were viciously scapegoated — part of the wave of antisemitism that swept Europe in the wake of the depression. Ahamed's irony: the Rothschilds were blamed for a crisis they had been cautious enough to partially avoid. The story of 1873 is, among other things, a story of how financial panic turns into political persecution. •       The AI Boom: Be Optimistic, Don't Buy the Stock: Andrew's final question: should we buy Anthropic and OpenAI when they go public? Ahamed's answer, via the lesson of every bubble from 1873 to 1929 to the dot-com era: bull markets are usually driven by real fundamentals — until the last phase, when they become untethered. The 1920s were rational until 1927; the dot-com era was rational until 1997. The dilemma: the last irrational phase may still produce 40 percent gains. Ahamed's advice: be optimistic about the AI boom. It reflects real productivity growth. But don't buy the stock. About the Guest Liaquat Ahamed is a financial historian and investment manager. He graduated with degrees in economics from Cambridge and Harvard, worked at the World Bank in Washington, D.C., and had a twenty-five-year career as a professional investment manager based in London and New York before turning to writing. He is the author of 1873: The Rothschilds, the First Great Depression, and the Making of the Modern World (Penguin Press, June 2, 2026) and Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World (winner of the 2010 Pulitzer Prize, the Council on Foreign Relations Arthur Ross Gold Medal, and the Financial Times Best Business Book of the Year). He lives in Washington, D.C. References: •       1873: The Rothschilds, the First Great Depression, and the Making of the Modern World by Liaquat Ahamed (Penguin Press, June 2, 2026). •       Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World by Liaquat Ahamed (Penguin Press, 2009) — the Pulitzer Prize-winning predecessor, referenced throughout. •       Episode 2928: Alexander Starritt on Drayton and Mackenzie — directly referenced at the opening; the 2008 companion. •       James Surowiecki, “Why Stocks Keep Going Up,” The Atlantic — referenced in the final exchange. About Keen On America Nobody asks more awkward questions than the Anglo-American writer and filmmaker Andrew Keen. In Keen On America, Andrew brings his pointed Transatlantic wit to making sense of the United States — hosting daily interviews about the history and future of this now venerable Republic. With nearly 2,900 episodes since the show launched on TechCrunch in 2010, Keen On America is the most prolific intellectual interview show in the history of podcasting. WebsiteSubstack