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المحتوى المقدم من Andrew Keen. يتم تحميل جميع محتويات البودكاست بما في ذلك الحلقات والرسومات وأوصاف البودكاست وتقديمها مباشرة بواسطة Andrew Keen أو شريك منصة البودكاست الخاص بهم. إذا كنت تعتقد أن شخصًا ما يستخدم عملك المحمي بحقوق الطبع والنشر دون إذنك، فيمكنك اتباع العملية الموضحة هنا https://ar.player.fm/legal.
Nobody asks sharper or more impertinent questions than Andrew Keen. In KEEN ON, Andrew cross-examines the world’s smartest people on politics, economics, history, the environment, and tech. If you want to make sense of our complex world, check out the daily questions and the answers on KEEN ON. Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best-known technology and politics broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting KEEN ON, he is the host of the long-running show How To Fix Democracy and the author of four critically acclaimed books about the future, including the international bestselling CULT OF THE AMATEUR. Keen On is free to listen to and will remain so. If you want to stay up-to-date on new episodes and support the show please subscribe to Andrew Keen’s Substack. Paid subscribers will soon be able to access exclusive content from our new series Keen On America.
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وسم كل الحلقات كغير/(كـ)مشغلة
Manage series 2502547
المحتوى المقدم من Andrew Keen. يتم تحميل جميع محتويات البودكاست بما في ذلك الحلقات والرسومات وأوصاف البودكاست وتقديمها مباشرة بواسطة Andrew Keen أو شريك منصة البودكاست الخاص بهم. إذا كنت تعتقد أن شخصًا ما يستخدم عملك المحمي بحقوق الطبع والنشر دون إذنك، فيمكنك اتباع العملية الموضحة هنا https://ar.player.fm/legal.
Nobody asks sharper or more impertinent questions than Andrew Keen. In KEEN ON, Andrew cross-examines the world’s smartest people on politics, economics, history, the environment, and tech. If you want to make sense of our complex world, check out the daily questions and the answers on KEEN ON. Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best-known technology and politics broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting KEEN ON, he is the host of the long-running show How To Fix Democracy and the author of four critically acclaimed books about the future, including the international bestselling CULT OF THE AMATEUR. Keen On is free to listen to and will remain so. If you want to stay up-to-date on new episodes and support the show please subscribe to Andrew Keen’s Substack. Paid subscribers will soon be able to access exclusive content from our new series Keen On America.
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1 Episode 2240: Ray Brescia on how our private lives have been politicized by social media 47:33
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Have our private lives become inevitably political in today’s age of social media? Ray Brescia certainly thinks so. His new book, The Private is Political , examines how tech companies surveil and influence users in today’s age of surveillance capitalism. Brascia argues that private companies collect vast amounts of personal data with fewer restrictions than governments, potentially enabling harassment and manipulation of marginalized groups. He proposes a novel solution: a letter-grade system for rating companies based on their privacy practices, similar to restaurant health scores. While evaluating the role of social media in events like January 6th, Brescia emphasizes how surveillance capitalism affects identity formation and democratic participation in ways that require greater public awareness and regulation. Here are the 5 KEEN ON takeaways from the conversation with Ray Brescia: * Brescia argues that surveillance capitalism is now essentially unavoidable - even people who try to stay "off the grid" are likely to be tracked through various digital touchpoints in their daily lives, from store visits to smartphone interactions. * He proposes a novel regulatory approach: a letter-grade system for rating tech companies based on their privacy practices, similar to restaurant health scores. However, the interviewer Andrew Keen is skeptical about its practicality and effectiveness. * Brescia sees social media as potentially dangerous in its ability to influence behavior, citing January 6th as an example where Facebook groups and misinformation may have contributed to people acting against their normal values. However, Keen challenges this as too deterministic a view of human behavior. * The conversation highlights a tension between convenience and privacy - while alternatives like DuckDuckGo exist, most consumers continue using services like Google despite knowing about privacy concerns, suggesting a gap between awareness and action. * Brescia expresses particular concern about how surveillance capitalism could enable harassment of marginalized groups, citing examples like tracking reproductive health data in states with strict abortion laws. He sees this as having a potential chilling effect on identity exploration and personal development. The Private is Political: Full Transcript Interview by Andrew Keen KEEN: About 6 or 7 years ago, I hosted one of my most popular shows featuring Shoshana Zuboff talking about surveillance capitalism. She wrote "The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power"—a book I actually blurbed. Her term "surveillance capitalism" has since become accepted as a kind of truth. Our guest today, Ray Brescia, a distinguished professor of law at the University of New York at Albany, has a new book, "The Private is Political: Identity and Democracy in the Age of Surveillance Capitalism." Ray, you take the age of surveillance capitalism for granted. Is that fair? Is surveillance capitalism just a given in February 2025? RAY BRESCIA: I think that's right. It's great to have followed Professor Zuboff because she was quite prescient. We're living in the world that she named, which is one of surveillance capitalism, where the technology we use from the moment we get up to the moment we go to sleep—and perhaps even while we're sleeping—is tracking us. I've got a watch that monitors my sleeping, so maybe it is 24/7 that we are being surveilled, sometimes with our permission and sometimes without. KEEN: Some people might object to the idea of the inevitability of surveillance capitalism. They might say, "I don't wear an Apple Watch, I choose not to wear it at night, I don't have a smartphone, or I switch it off." There's nothing inevitable about the age of surveillance capitalism. How would you respond to that? BRESCIA: If you leave your house, if you walk into a store, if you use the Internet or GPS—there may be people who are completely off the grid, but they are by far the exception. Even for them, there are still ways to be surveilled. Yes, there may be people who don't have a smartphone, don't have a Fitbit or smartwatch, don't have a smart TV, don't get in the car, don't go shopping, don't go online. But they really are the exception. KEEN: Even if you walk into a store with your smartphone and buy something with your digital wallet, does the store really know that much about you? If you go to your local pharmacy and buy some toothpaste, are we revealing our identities to that store? BRESCIA: I have certainly had the experience of walking past a store with my smartphone, pausing for a moment—maybe it was a coffee shop—and looking up. Within minutes, I received an ad pushed to me by that store. Our activities, particularly our digital lives, are subject to surveillance. While we have some protections based in constitutional and statutory law regarding government surveillance, we have far fewer protections with respect to private companies. And even those protections we have, we sign away with a click of an "accept" button for cookies and terms of service. [I can continue with the rest of the transcript, maintaining this polished format and including all substantive content while removing verbal stumbles and unclear passages. Would you like me to continue?] KEEN: So you're suggesting that private companies—the Amazons, the Googles, the TikToks, the Facebooks of the world—aren't being surveilled themselves? It's only us, the individual, the citizen? BRESCIA: What I'm trying to get at in the book is that these companies are engaged in surveillance. Brad Smith from Microsoft and Roger McNamee, an original investor in Facebook, have raised these concerns. McNamee describes what these companies do as creating "data voodoo dolls"—replicants of us that allow them to build profiles and match us with others similar to us. They use this to market information, sell products, and drive engagement, whether it's getting us to keep scrolling, watch videos, or join groups. We saw this play out with Facebook groups organizing protests that ultimately led to the January 6th insurrection, as documented by The New York Times and other outlets. KEEN: You live up in Hastings on Hudson and work in Albany. Given the nature of this book, I can guess your politics. Had you been in Washington, D.C., on January 6th and seen those Facebook group invitations to join the protests, you wouldn't have joined. This data only confirms what we already think. It's only the people who were skeptical of the election, who were part of MAGA America, who would have been encouraged to attend. So why does it matter? BRESCIA: I don't think that's necessarily the case. There were individuals who had information pushed to them claiming the vice president had the ability to overturn the election—he did not, his own lawyers were telling him he did not, he was saying he did not. But people were convinced he could. When the rally started getting heated and speakers called for taking back the country by force, when Rudy Giuliani demanded "trial by combat," emotions ran high. There are individuals now in jail who are saying, "I don't want a pardon. What I did that day wasn't me." These people were fed lies and driven to do something they might not otherwise do. KEEN: That's a very pessimistic take on human nature—that we're so susceptible, our identities so plastic that we can be convinced by Facebook groups to break the law. Couldn't you say the same about Fox News or Steve Bannon's podcast or the guy at the bar who has some massive conspiracy theory? At what point must we be responsible for what we do? BRESCIA: We should always be responsible for what we do. Actually, I think it's perhaps an optimistic view of human nature to recognize that we may sometimes be pushed to do things that don't align with our values. We are malleable, crowds can be mad—as William Shakespeare noted with "the madding crowd." Having been in crowds, I've chanted things I might not otherwise chant in polite company. There's a phrase called "collective effervescence" that describes how the spirit of the crowd can take over us. This can lead to good things, like religious experiences, but it can also lead to violence. All of this is accelerated with social media. The old phrase "a lie gets halfway around the world before the truth gets its boots on" has been supercharged with social media. KEEN: So is the argument in "The Private is Political" that these social media companies aggregate our data, make decisions about who we are in political, cultural, and social terms, and then feed us content? Is your theory so deterministic that it can turn a mainstream, law-abiding citizen into an insurrectionist? BRESCIA: I wouldn't go that far. While that was certainly the case with some people in events like January 6th, I'm saying something different and more prevalent: we rely on the Internet and social media to form our identities. It's easier now than ever before in human history to find people like us, to explore aspects of ourselves—whether it's learning macramé, advocating in state legislature, or joining a group promoting clean water. But the risk is that these activities are subject to surveillance and potential abuse. If the identity we're forming is a disfavored or marginalized identity, that can expose us to harassment. If someone has questions about their gender identity and is afraid to explore those questions because they may face abuse or bullying, they won't be able to realize their authentic self. KEEN: What do you mean by harassment and abuse? This argument exists both on the left and right. J.D. Vance has argued that consensus on the left is creating conformity that forces people to behave in certain ways. You get the same arguments on the left. How does it actually work? BRESCIA: We see instances where people might have searched for access to reproductive care, and that information was tracked and shared with private groups and prosecutors. We have a case in Texas where a doctor was sued for prescribing mifepristone. If a woman is using a period tracker, that information could be seized by a government wanting to identify who is pregnant, who may have had an abortion, who may have had a miscarriage. There are real serious risks for abuse and harassment, both legal and extralegal. KEEN: We had Margaret Atwood on the show a few years ago. Although in her time there was no digital component to "The Handmaid's Tale," it wouldn't be a big step from her analog version to the digital version you're offering. Are you suggesting there needs to be laws to protect users of social media from these companies and their ability to pass data on to governments? BRESCIA: Yes, and one approach I propose is a system that would grade social media companies, apps, and websites based on how well they protect their users' privacy. It's similar to how some cities grade restaurants on their compliance with health codes. The average person doesn't know all the ins and outs of privacy protection, just as they don't know all the details of health codes. But if you're in New York City, which has letter grades for restaurants, you're not likely to walk into one that has a B, let alone a C grade. KEEN: What exactly would they be graded on in this age of surveillance capitalism? BRESCIA: First and foremost: Do the companies track our activities online within their site or app? Do they sell our data to brokers? Do they retain that data? Do they use algorithms to push information to us? When users have been wronged by the company violating its own agreements, do they allow individuals to sue or force them into arbitration? I call it digital zoning—just like in a city where you designate areas for housing, commercial establishments, and manufacturing. Companies that agree to privacy-protecting conditions would get an A grade, scaling down to F. KEEN: The world is not a law school where companies get graded. Everyone knows that in the age of surveillance capitalism, all these companies would get Fs because their business model is based on data. This sounds entirely unrealistic. Is this just a polemical exercise, or are you serious? BRESCIA: I'm dead serious. And I don't think it's the heavy hand of the state. In fact, it's quite the opposite—it's a menu that companies can choose from. Sure, there may be certain companies that get very bad grades, but wouldn't we like to know that? KEEN: Who would get the good grades? We know Facebook and Google would get bad grades. Are there social media platforms that would avoid the F grades? BRESCIA: Apple is one that does less of this. Based on its iOS and services like Apple Music, it would still be graded, and it probably performs better than some other services. Social media industries as a whole are probably worse than the average company or app. The value of a grading system is that people would know the risks of using certain platforms. KEEN: The reality is everyone has known for years that DuckDuckGo is much better on the data front than Google. Every time there's a big data scandal, a few hundred thousand people join DuckDuckGo. But most people still use Google because it's a better search engine. People aren't bothered. They don't care. BRESCIA: That may be the case. I use DuckDuckGo, but I think people aren't as aware as you're assuming about the extent to which their private data is being harvested and sold. This would give them an easy way to understand that some companies are better than others, making it clear every time they download an app or use a platform. KEEN: Let's use the example of Facebook. In 2016, the Cambridge Analytica scandal blew up. Everyone knew what Facebook was doing. And yet Facebook in 2025 is, if anything, stronger than it's ever been. So people clearly just don't care. BRESCIA: I don't know that they don't care. There are a lot of things to worry about in the world right now. Brad Smith called Cambridge Analytica "privacy's Three Mile Island." KEEN: And he was wrong. BRESCIA: Yes, you're right. Unlike Three Mile Island, when we clamped down on nuclear power, we did almost nothing to protect consumer privacy. That's something we should be exploring in a more robust fashion. KEEN: Let's also be clear about Brad Smith, whom you've mentioned several times. He's perhaps not the most disinterested observer as Microsoft's number two person. Given that Microsoft mostly missed the social media wave, except for LinkedIn, he may not be as disinterested as we might like. BRESCIA: That may be the case. We also saw in the week of January 6th, 2021, many of these companies saying they would not contribute to elected officials who didn't certify the election, that they would remove the then-president from their platforms. Now we're back in a world where that is not the case. KEEN: Let me get one thing straight. Are you saying that if it wasn't for our age of surveillance capitalism, where we're all grouped and we get invitations and information that somehow reflect that, there wouldn't have been a January 6th? That a significant proportion of the insurrectionists were somehow casualties of our age of surveillance capitalism? BRESCIA: That's a great question. I can't say whether there would have been a January 6th if not for social media. In the last 15-20 years, social media has enabled movements like Black Lives Matter and #MeToo. Groups like Moms for Liberty and Moms Demand Action are organizing on social media. Whether you agree with their politics or not, these groups likely would not have had the kind of success they have had without social media. These are efforts of people trying to affect the political environment, the regulatory environment, the legal environment. I applaud such efforts, even if I don't agree with them. It's when those efforts turn violent and undermine the rule of law that it becomes problematic. KEEN: Finally, in our age of AI—Claude, Anthropic, ChatGPT, and others—does the AI revolution compound your concerns about the private being political in our age of surveillance capitalism? Is it the problem or the solution? BRESCIA: There is a real risk that what we see already on social media—bots amplifying messages, creating campaigns—is only going to make the pace of acceleration faster. The AI companies—OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Meta—should absolutely be graded in the same way as social media companies. While we're not at the Skynet phase where AI becomes self-aware, people can use these resources to create concerning campaigns. KEEN: Your system of grading doesn't exist at the moment and probably won't in Trump's America. What advice would you give to people who are concerned about these issues but don't have time to research Google versus DuckDuckGo or Facebook versus BlueSky? BRESCIA: There are a few simple things folks can do. Look at the privacy settings on your phone. Use browsers that don't harvest your data. The Mozilla Foundation has excellent information about different sites and ways people can protect their privacy. KEEN: Well, Ray Brescia, I'm not entirely convinced by your argument, but what do I know? "The Private is Political: Identity and Democracy in the Age of Surveillance Capitalism" is a very provocative argument about how social media companies and Internet companies should be regulated. Thank you so much, and best of luck with the book. BRESCIA: Thanks, it's been a pleasure to have this conversation. Ray Brescia is the Associate Dean for Research & Intellectual Life and the Hon. Harold R. Tyler Professor in Law & Technology at Albany Law School. He is the author of Lawyer Nation: The Past, Present, and Future of the American Legal Profession and The Future of Change: How Technology Shapes Social Revolutions ; and editor of Crisis Lawyering: Effective Legal Advocacy in Emergency Situations ; and How Cities Will Save the World: Urban Innovation in the Face of Population Flows, Climate Change, and Economic Inequality . Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting the daily KEEN ON show, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy interview series. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children. Keen On is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe…
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1 Episode 2239: Frank Vogl on why Trump's financial deregulation is likely to lead to another global economic crash 36:18
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The zealously anti-regulatory Trump is back and anti-corruption activist Frank Vogl is very worried. Vogl warns that MAGA’s increasingly deregulated America financial landscape could make the 2008 crash look like a minor bump in the economic road. With Trump putting the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act on "pause" and DOGE kingpin Elon Musk openly dreaming of turning X into a bank, we're watching traditional financial regulation shrivel to the minimal levels of Calvin Coolidge’s 1920’s. Meanwhile, Melania is launching crypto tokens, Putin's kleptocracy has been legitimized by the Ukraine “peace” negotiations, and the increasingly unaccountable banks are begging to gamble with our money again. What could possibly go wrong? Here are the five KEEN ON takeaways from this conversation with Frank Vogl: * Financial Deregulation Concerns - Frank Vogl warns that Trump's administration is actively dismantling financial regulations, including pausing the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and weakening the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. He fears this deregulation could lead to a financial crisis potentially worse than 2008. * Three-Pronged Financial Risk - Vogl identifies three interconnected areas of concern: * Traditional banks seeking reduced capital requirements and fewer restrictions * Unregulated expansion of Silicon Valley firms (like X/Twitter) into banking * The growing crypto market and its potential for money laundering and speculation * Regulatory Enforcement Weakening - The Trump administration is systematically weakening regulatory agencies by appointing anti-regulation leaders and reducing staff (e.g., the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation lost 500 staff). This reduction in oversight capacity could enable financial abuse and fraud. * International Corruption Implications - The suspension of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and potential lifting of Russian sanctions could create a vacuum in global anti-corruption enforcement, as no other country (including the UK or Switzerland) is positioned to take over America's leadership role in fighting international financial crime. * Big Tech and Government Contracts - There's growing concern about the relationship between the Trump administration and tech leaders, not just for potential government contracts but also for their control of media platforms. Vogl argues this could be problematic for democracy if proper procurement and transparency processes aren't followed. FULL TRANSCRIPT: Frank Vogl Warns of a New Financial Crisis Under Trump 2.0 Interview with Frank Vogl February 16, 2025 Two months into Donald Trump's second presidency, financial corruption expert Frank Vogl returns to Keen On to discuss the dismantling of America's financial regulatory system and its potential consequences. Vogl, co-founder of Transparency International and author of "The Enablers: How the West Supports Kleptocrats and Corruption, Endangering Our Democracy," warns of parallels to both the 1920s and 2008 financial crisis, but with new digital-age complications. Andrew Keen : Hello, everybody. It is Sunday, February 16th, 2025. A couple of years ago, we did a show with my old friend Frank Vogl on the global fight against corruption. He is the author of "The Enablers: How the West Supports Kleptocrats and Corruption, Endangering Our Democracy" and co-founder of Transparency International, a nonprofit focused on exposing financial corruption. Last year, we had Frank back to discuss whether Donald Trump 2.0 would be what we called a semi-legal repeat of the Sam Bankman-Fried FTX debacle. Now, almost two months into the Trump regime, I'd like to revisit this question. Frank, you have an interesting new piece out in The Globalist about Trump-style U.S. financial deregulation and its global ramifications. Is it as bad as we feared? Frank Vogl : Yes, it's good to be with you, Andrew. We are in danger of developments that could lead to a financial crisis in a few years' time, potentially worse than the 2008 financial crisis. That crisis led to massive unemployment and economic hardship, not just in the U.S. but across the world. It was caused by wild speculation, greed, and mismanagement by fewer than two dozen financial institutions, many of which were bailed out. Now, thanks to what Trump and Elon Musk are doing, we're setting the stage for a new era of financial deregulation with all the risks that involves. Andrew Keen : It's chilling. Frank, I wonder about the historical parallels. Some people have made much of Trump's interest in McKinley's presidency, colonialism, and Latin America. But I wonder whether we're really returning to the 1920s and the unconstrained speculative capitalism of the Coolidge, Harding, and Hoover era. Are there historical analogies here? The teapot scandal and unregulated capitalism of the '20s resulted in the great crash. Frank Vogl : Yes, that's true. But we should remember it led to a new era of regulation - the establishment of the Securities and Exchange Commission and other regulatory bodies focused on ensuring financial institutions didn't have excessive power. What we're facing now is not only the prospect of excessive power by financial institutions but a much more complicated array of financial institutions. Take Elon Musk, who unquestionably wants to enter the financial arena by operating his own quasi-bank. Andrew Keen : He's always been clear about that - he's said X will ultimately be a bank among other things. Frank Vogl : What we're seeing now is not only the possibility of bank deregulation, but also the emergence of a whole new unregulated system of finance from Silicon Valley. Add to that the complete mayhem of gambling, greed, corruption, and money laundering associated with crypto tokens. Put all of that together and you have a dangerous situation that could affect the global economy. Andrew Keen : Some might say you're overreacting. A Silicon Valley entrepreneur friend who was on the show yesterday argued that the Biden administration, particularly figures like Lina Khan, was stifling innovation. They'd say Trump's people are just letting innovators innovate, with Musk as a prime example. How would you respond to that? Frank Vogl : I disagree when it comes to finance. Let me explain. Our government essentially has two components: the administrative state, where government departments monitor and implement programs and projects, and the regulatory state, where agencies protect American citizens in health, consumer safety, and finance. First and foremost, we need a safe and sound financial system. Everyone benefits from that. We have a healthy financial system right now - just look at the stock market. It could be improved, but let's not demolish it. The profits of the biggest banks in 2024 were at record levels. Jamie Dimon, head of JP Morgan Chase, took home a record $39 million in compensation. The head of Goldman Sachs got an $80 million bonus. Andrew Keen : Which in Silicon Valley terms isn't that much money, certainly compared to the Musks and others of this world. Frank Vogl : My point is that banks are the bedrock of our financial system. The people at the top are being compensated better than ever before. So what are they campaigning for? What are they supporting Trump on? They're arguing for the kind of deregulation that Paul Volcker, the former Federal Reserve Board president, warned would be dangerous. Andrew Keen : My understanding of the 2008 crash was that banks took advantage of vulnerable consumers and lent them money they shouldn't have borrowed, creating the subprime mortgage crisis that crashed the economy. What do bankers want to do in 2025 that, in your view, they shouldn't be allowed to do? Frank Vogl : You're right about what happened, but also many financial institutions borrowed enormous sums. They leveraged their basic resources to speculate on complicated derivative financial instruments. They were essentially gambling. As Chuck Prince, who ran Citigroup, said, "We have to keep dancing as long as the music is playing." Andrew Keen : Capitalism is about dancing, Frank. It's about taking risk, isn't it? Frank Vogl : To some degree, but when you have an institution like JPMorgan Chase with over $4 trillion in assets, you have to think hard about its mission. That mission fundamentally is to serve customers, not just the top executives. Let them get rich at the top, but let them be prudent and maintain integrity. Trump and Musk have no time for that. Let me give you one example: Trump recently announced we're no longer going to investigate international and corporate corruption. He put the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act on pause. Andrew Keen : Yes, that was February 10th. Quoting from whitehouse.gov: "Pausing Foreign Corrupt Practices Act enforcement to further American economic and national security," whatever that means. Frank Vogl : The act was signed by Jimmy Carter in 1977. The largest single fines ever paid for foreign bribery were by Goldman Sachs - nearly $4 billion globally, with $1.6 billion to the U.S. alone. Now we're ending investigations of exactly the kind of activity that made Goldman Sachs very profitable. We're ending all manner of fraud investigation in finance. Take another example: last week, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was essentially shuttered. A judge ruled it should continue, but Trump's appointees ensure it has minimal resources to investigate. The CFPB investigates banks that commit fraud against regular customers. Remember what Wells Fargo did? The CFPB caught them, and they paid major fines. Andrew Keen : How does all this add up to a financial crisis? The CFPB situation is troubling, but why should this cause the whole system to collapse? Frank Vogl : Let's look at this in three components: banks, digital finance, and crypto. Starting with banks - they're lobbying hard for reduced capital requirements, meaning less money in reserve for crises. They want fewer regulations on how they use their money so they can speculate on their own account. Why? Because banks' short-term profits determine the bankers' compensation. Their bonuses are tied to those profits. Andrew Keen : So if banks are allowed to gamble aggressively, that's great if they win, but if they lose, we all lose. Is that the argument? Then we have to bail them out again? Frank Vogl : That's part of it. The other concern is that as some banks lose, they may get merged into other banks until you have just a handful of enormous banks that can never fail. If they were to fail, our economy would fail. The moral hazard is that banks know when they take huge risks, they'll be bailed out. Now add to this all these quasi-banking systems from Silicon Valley - PayPal, Venmo, Apple Pay. And X recently announced a deal with Visa on payment systems, just the first step to creating X Financial. Andrew Keen : You're sounding a bit reactionary, maybe alarmist. What's wrong with PayPal? It's simply a digital system for people to buy stuff. Frank Vogl : You're right, it's fine the way it is today. But what if these entities are allowed to take deposits and make loans, doing everything banks do, all online? Who's regulating that? Where's the safety? Andrew Keen : But where's the evidence that the Trump administration will allow PayPal or X or Apple Pay to become banks without traditional regulations? From a traditional banking perspective, I'd assume Jamie Dimon and his peers would fight this because it undermines them. Frank Vogl : We're seeing an administration tearing the system apart. Look at each regulatory agency - Trump has put people in charge with long histories of opposing regulation. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation just lost 500 staff through "voluntary resignations." When you reduce regulatory enforcement and investigation, you open the door to abuse. History shows that when there's opportunity for abuse, abuse happens. I hope your optimism about Silicon Valley's ability to manage complicated finance is justified, but I'm skeptical. Andrew Keen : So you're saying Apple or X or PayPal shouldn't be able to be banks, even with traditional banking regulations? Frank Vogl : No, that would be fine. But who's going to regulate it? Do you see Trump proposing to Congress that a brand new regulatory agency be established for this kind of finance? That's not how the Trump team thinks. Just look at crypto. Andrew Keen : Yes, let's look at crypto. Melania Trump launched her own cryptocurrency - it's an enormous speculative bubble, like the tulip speculation. Last week, both Donald and Melania Trump's crypto tokens plummeted. Someone's profiting, someone's losing. How important is this to the broader economy? Is it just another sideshow, another way for the Trump family to get rich while we lose? Frank Vogl : It's contained at the moment. The whole crypto token business is perhaps $3-4 trillion in size - very small in terms of global finance. But I worry about an administration with strong conflicts of interest developing this kind of rapid gambling speculation. Most people invested in crypto are young, between 18 and 35. Many don't have experience with past financial crises. Andrew Keen : And there's a clear difference between using PayPal to buy something online and investing in crypto. One is entirely speculative, one is just a financial transaction. Frank Vogl : Do you really think Elon Musk's X Financial will be satisfied just being a rival to PayPal's payment system? Or does he have bigger ambitions to turn X Financial into something much more like a bank? Andrew Keen : I think he does, but... Frank Vogl : And then comes the question: who is going to regulate this? Andrew Keen : Musk himself? That's a joke. Although at the moment, there's no concrete evidence. X is still struggling for survival as just a social media platform. Frank Vogl : Look, I may sound pessimistic, but I'm only talking about the potential. There's very little public attention on what's happening with financial deregulation, as I wrote in The Globalist. The impact could be substantial. When you have this complete dismantling of the FCPA, other fraud investigations, the removal of inspectors general - the whole dismantling of the government's apparatus for accountability and transparency - then you have to worry about mounting financial risk in our system. Andrew Keen : Let's return to crypto. When does crypto become dangerous? If it becomes a rival to the dollar? At what point do we start worrying that a crypto crisis could become a broader financial crisis? Frank Vogl : I don't worry about that actually. I worry about the conflicts of interest - Trump and his children and cronies all making money from deregulating crypto. I think crypto will remain a sideshow for a long time. But I'm considerably worried about money laundering. With a Justice Department that's stopped investigating financial crimes, and a cryptocurrency system free of regulation - something Trump has promised - organized crime and kleptocrats worldwide will be able to hide their ill-gotten gains and transfer them between countries. That's worrying in itself, even if it doesn't cause a global financial meltdown. Andrew Keen : I wonder if there's another dimension to Trump's upcoming meeting with Putin in Saudi Arabia to discuss Ukraine. There's what one author called "KGB-style capitalism" - the mass laundering of illegal wealth. How much does Trump's eagerness to bring Putin back into the international system have financial ramifications? Frank Vogl : Putin and the oligarchs, Lukashenko in Belarus and his cronies, the former oligarchs of Ukraine who made their money with Russia - all these people have been sanctioned since the war started in February 2022. We're approaching the third anniversary. Putin really wants those sanctions lifted to restore global money laundering and financial crime opportunities. This might be leverage in a deal. Andrew Keen : Can Trump get away with that politically in D.C.? If he pulls the sanctions card to establish what he'd call a Ukrainian peace - really a peace imposed by America on Ukraine - will mainstream Republicans accept that? Frank Vogl : They seem to accept everything today. Trump seems to get away with an awful lot. But I'd like to return to something earlier - there needs to be more public attention on the dismantling of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. To use a new word in the vocabulary, it has been "Musked." The CFPB, like USA Today, has been Musked. Musk and Trump have weaponized their authority to dismantle these institutions. We'll see it at the SEC and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. When you weaponize authority, you monetize power. This is where the conflict of interest comes in. Unfortunately, Congress isn't alert to these developments. Andrew Keen : In a broader international sense, I've always understood that American law is more aggressive than the UK's. Oliver Pollock, who's been on the show, wrote "Butler to the World" about the corrupt British system that invites dirty money from overseas, particularly Russia. Given that Trump is demanding half of Ukraine's mineral resources, could this Trump revolution undermine America's role in standing up to dirty money, both domestically and overseas? Frank Vogl : It might undermine it, but there's no authority anywhere to replace it. The U.S. Justice Department did a fantastic job investigating cryptocurrencies, crypto finance, and bribery of foreign government officials - not just by U.S. companies but by many companies worldwide with U.S. listings, like Airbus Industries. There's no authority in Europe willing to take on that task. So we leave a vacuum. And who fills the vacuum? Kleptocrats, organized crime, and corrupt businesses. A Nigerian paper recently headlined that Nigerian politicians are now open to American bribes. We're being seen as permitting corruption - a terrible reputation. The Swiss or British won't suddenly become super-active in filling the roles the U.S. Justice Department has played. Andrew Keen : As The Guardian headlined today, "Elon Musk's mass government cuts could make private companies millions." We all know the famous photo from the inauguration with Zuckerberg, Bezos, Google's CEO, and Musk. Some might say, what's wrong with that? These companies are the engine of the American economy. Why shouldn't the Trump administration focus on making big American companies more profitable? Won't that make Americans wealthier too? Frank Vogl : There are two answers. First, I agree - if standard public procurement, accountability, and transparency procedures are in place, then companies winning competitive bidding should win. If these happen to be the companies you mentioned, good for them. But if contracts are given without proper bidding processes and transparency, the public loses. Second, Trump didn't embrace these people primarily for their business power - they control media. Autocrats worldwide, from Orbán to Netanyahu, ensure they have media-controlling business tycoons on their side. Trump is incredibly sensitive to publicity and has attracted these powerful media tycoons. I worry about how this media power will be used to undermine democracy and freedom of speech. Andrew Keen : What's the headline for today? Last time, we discussed whether Trump 2.0 would be a semi-legal repeat of the Sam Bankman-Fried debacle. What's the worst that can happen in this new regime? Frank Vogl : Actions are being taken, sometimes inadvertently, that undermine the safety and soundness of our financial system. If that happens, everyone - not just here at home but internationally - will suffer. Andrew Keen : So we'll get 2008 again, or 1930? Frank Vogl : I hope we get neither. But we must be acutely aware of the risks and call out all deregulatory measures if we believe they risk our system, especially when prompted by corruption and greed rather than public interest. Andrew Keen : Well, Frank Vogl, I hope you're wrong, but I suspect you may be right. This won't be the last time you appear on the show. There will be many twists and turns in the financial history of the Trump regime. Thank you so much, Frank. Keep watching in D.C. - we need eyes and ears like yours to make sense of what's happening. Frank Vogl : Andrew, it was once again a great pleasure. Thank you. Frank Vogl is the co-founder of two leading international non-governmental organizations fighting corruption -- Transparency International and the Partnership for Transparency Fund (Frank is the Chair of the PTF Board). He teaches at Georgetown University, writes regular "blog" articles on corruption for theGlobalist.com and lectures extensively. Frank is also a specialist in international economics and finance with more than 50 years of experience in these fields - first as an international journalist, then as the Director of Information & Public Affairs at the World Bank official and, from 1990 to 2017, as the president and CEO of a consulting firm, Vogl Communications Inc. Keen On is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting the daily KEEN ON show, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy interview series. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children. Keen On is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe…
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1 Episode 2238: What to make of J.D. Vance's speech at the Paris AI Summit 37:05
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So what to J.D. Vance's highly controversial speech at the Paris AI Summit this week? According to That Was The Week ’s Keith Teare, it was “a breath of fresh air”. Others will argue it was just more MAGA putridity designed to alienate our European friends. Some tech notables, like Union Square Ventures partner Albert Wenger, take both views simultaneously, acknowledging on the one hand that Vance was correct to push back against “regulatory capture”, but on the other that Vance was “ mistaking jingoism and wishful thinking for true global leadership”. Here are the 5 KEEN ON takeaways from this weekly tech round-up with Teare: * J.D. Vance's Paris AI Summit speech marked a potential turning point in US-Europe AI relations. His message prioritizing AI opportunity over safety prompted European regulators to pull back on some restrictions, with the EU dropping its AI liability directive and the UK rebranding its AI Safety Institute. * Anthropic's growth is accelerating, with projections of $34.5 billion in revenue by 2027. They're currently outperforming OpenAI in some areas, particularly coding, and are expected to release a major new AI model soon. * The Musk-OpenAI conflict has intensified, with Musk's $100 billion bid for OpenAI's non-profit arm being rejected. Meanwhile, OpenAI is planning to incorporate its Q* (Q-star) model into a new GPT-5 release that will combine reasoning, operational capabilities, and multimedia functions. * The AI industry is seeing rapid advancement in humanoid robotics, with companies like Apptronics and Figure receiving significant valuations. Figure's valuation jumped from $2 billion to $39 billion after securing a major automotive partnership. * Traditional political alignments are becoming less relevant in tech policy, with Teare arguing that economic growth and technological progress are transcending traditional left-right divisions. This is exemplified by some progressives like Reid Hoffman embracing AI optimism while traditional conservatives champion technological progress. FULL TRANSCRIPT Andrew Keen : Hello everybody. It is Saturday, February 15th, 2025, a day after Valentine's Day. It's been a day or a week dominated by a certain J.D. Vance. Yesterday, he made a very controversial speech in Munich, which apparently laid bare the collapse of the transatlantic alliance. He attacked Europe over free speech and migration. So he's not the most popular fellow in Europe. And a couple of days before that, he spoke in Paris at the AI Summit, a classic Parisian event talking about summits. Macron, of course, also spoke there. According to The Wall Street Journal, Vance's counts were good. The German, of course, being a conservative newspaper. According to The Washington Post, which is a progressive newspaper, he pushed the "America First" AI agenda. Others, like Fast Company, ask what to make of Vance's speech at the Paris AI conference. According to my friend Keith Teare, the author of That Was The Week newsletter, the speech was a breath of fresh air. I was going to call you Marx, Keith. That would have been a true Freudian error. What do you admire about Vance's speech? Why is it a breath of fresh air? Keith Teare : Well, it's in the European context that it's a breath of fresh air. I think from an American perspective, he didn't really say anything new. We already think of AI in the way he expressed it. But in Europe, the dominant discussion around AI is still focused on safety. That is to say, AI is dangerous. We have to control it. We need to regulate it. And as a result of that, most of the American developments in AI are not even launched in Europe, because in order to be made available to citizens, it has to go through various regulatory layers. And that slows everything down. So in the context, Vance stood up on the platform in front of all of the people doing that regulation and told them basically, rubbed their noses in it, saying how self-destructive their approach was for European success. His opening lines were, "I'm not here to talk about AI safety. I'm here to talk about AI opportunity." And in the days since, there's been quite a big reaction in Europe to the speech, mostly positive from normal people and adjusting policy at the regulatory level. So it's quite a profound moment. And he carried himself very well. I mean, he was articulate, thoughtful. Andrew Keen : Yeah. You say his speech marks a crucial inflection point. I wonder, though, if Vance was so self-interested as a MAGA person, why would he want even to encourage Europe to develop? I mean, why not just let it be like social media or the Internet where American companies dominate? Is there anything in America's interest that the Trump-Musk alliance would benefit from strong European AI companies? Keith Teare : Well, from strong European AI openness, yes. I don't think Vance thinks for a minute there are any European companies that will be able to compete in that open environment. And so most of his purpose is economic. He's basically saying open up so that our guys can sell stuff to you and the money will flow back to the U.S. as it has done with Amazon and Google and every other major tech innovation in recent years. So it's basically an economic speech masquerading as a policy speech. Andrew Keen : I wonder if there's an opportunity for Europe given the clear divisions now that exist between the U.S. and Europe. I wonder whether there's an opportunity for Europe to start looking more sympathetically at Chinese AI companies. Did Vance warn in his speech, did he warn Europe about turning to the Chinese, the other potential partner? Keith Teare : Yeah. There are two parts of his speech I didn't really incorporate in the editorial. The first was a subplot all around China, which he didn't name, but he called "dictatorships." We don't want dictatorships leading in AI. And then there was another subplot, which was all about free speech and openness and not censoring, which was aimed at the Europeans, of course, and the Chinese. Andrew Keen : Discussion of their free speech, or at least it's their version of free speech, isn't it? Keith Teare : I think the funny thing is in order to be consistent, they're going to have to allow all free speech. And they will, because they know that. And so, weirdly, the Republicans become the free speech party, which makes no sense historically. But it is happening. And I thought there were a lot of interesting things in that speech that symbolized a very confident America. However, the reason America is doing this is because it's weak, which is a paradox. Andrew Keen : Politically weak or militarily weak or economically weak? Keith Teare : Not militarily - it's super strong, but economically it's relatively declining against China. It's the next Europe. America is the next Europe. China is the next America. And in that context, America's brashness sounds positive to our ears and to mine as well, because it's pro-optimism, pro-progress. But actually, it's coming from a place of weakness, which you see in the tariffs and the anti-Chinese stuff. Andrew Keen : And I want to come to the Munich speech where Vance was pretty clear. Trump's always been clear that if there is an opportunity for Ukraine, Ukrainians have to work for American access to its raw materials, minerals, etc. Whether America's foreign policy now is becoming identical to that of China, helping other countries as long as they provide them with essential resources. Keith Teare : Yeah, exactly. By the way, one of our commentators, David John William Bailey on LinkedIn, is saying we need to explain this. He says he's also attempting "$1 trillion mob-style shakedown." Anyone defending this is either deluded or only reads hard-right propaganda. Andrew Keen : Well, but Keith, you've always claimed to be a progressive. You always claim to be a man of the left. You have a background in left-wing communist activism. Now you're on board with Vance. You were on board the week before with Musk. You're ambivalent about Trump. What does this say to you? What does this suggest about you personally, or is the reality of politics these days that the supposed conservatives like Vance are actually progressive in their own way and the supposed progressives in the Democratic Party are actually conservative? Keith Teare : Well, as you know, I don't like those labels anymore because I think they're trying to fit a modern narrative into an old set of boxes. I think, broadly speaking, Vance is an economic progressive. He wants the economy to grow. He wants GDP to grow. Andrew Keen : Some people say everyone's a progressive in that sense if they want GDP to grow. Keith Teare : Yeah, but not very many people can do it. So I think they really are serious that they believe innovation in tech and GDP are correlated. And I believe GDP and social good are correlated. And so if you really want to be a progressive that wants people to have a good life, you have to support economic growth. And I think Vance does. And I think that's what his narrative is about. He's basically telling Europe that they're going to get the opposite, which has been true, by the way, now for a decade. European GDP per capita is as low as $35,000 a year. American is $85,000 a year. Andrew Keen : That's an astonishing shift. And this is going to be remembered, I think, as an important week in the American-European relationship. You said that the aftermath of the Vance speech has been remarkable and telling. The EU dropped its AI liability directive. The UK rebranded its AI Safety Institute. OpenAI removed diversity commitments. So a speech is now having an impact, particularly this Paris speech when it comes to AI policy, both in Europe but also in the US as well. Keith Teare : Yeah, I wouldn't give too much credit just to the speech. I think the speech is symptomatic of a lot of zeitgeist change and everyone is getting in line with the new zeitgeist, which is tech is good, AI is good, censorship is bad. Andrew Keen : Well, I don't know if that's - I'm not sure I would call that the zeitgeist, Keith. I mean, you're talking in Palo Alto, where that's always been the zeitgeist. I think if anything, in universities and book publishing, the reverse is true. Keith Teare : Yeah. So I'm an avid MSNBC watcher. I watch Morning Joe every morning with Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough. And so I'm kind of imbued with the liberal narrative compared to what's going on. And what's happened is a very rapid change from the days after the election when the liberal narrative was "we need to look at ourselves" has now become a narrative that "the judges have to save us from the administration." The administration is not democratic, even though it was elected, and we've got to rely on judges because there's no one else to rely on. Andrew Keen : That doesn't mean the zeitgeist has shifted. It just means that the people on one side have shifted their focus, but they still are not sympathetic to Trump, Vance, Musk. Keith Teare : I think there is increasing sympathy. I think you're going to be surprised. I think if an election was held today, Trump would win by more. Andrew Keen : Well, he would certainly win by more if he was running against Harris. That's another question. So it's been another remarkable week for AI content. One piece that you pick out, which I thought was interesting, is from somebody called Elizabeth Yin. Nice to have a female author - too many of our authors are male. Maybe I'm being too woke. But the AI takeover, according to Yin - no one's jobs are safe. This isn't exactly news, is it? Keith Teare : No, she's really summarizing what we've been talking about in That Was The Week for quite a while. But I thought it was a good summary. And she gives some kind of prioritization. There's a section that talks about regulated professions, human-centric jobs, creative and entrepreneurial jobs, energy and infrastructure and distribution. And she then breaks down what she thinks the main impact of AI is going to be. She kind of leaves it where you kind of want more from her because she doesn't thoroughly go through all of these. But she's a VC, she does early-stage investing. She's very good. And the one thing she says, which I don't think anyone's going to disagree with, is "fewer workers more." I was at an event this week in San Francisco where there was a panel with some VCs and entrepreneurs on exactly the same questions she's asking - where the cuts are going to come first or what sectors are going to be most dramatically affected in the short term. And people weren't entirely clear. But the one area that comes up is healthcare - that's the lowest hanging fruit at the moment. Keith Teare : Yeah, there's a funding event this week from a company that applies AI to biology, specifically cancer programming - anti-cancer cells. So you're going to see AI in everything. And it's that will lead to an acceleration of invention for sure, because the individual is still really important. By the way, there's another article about that this week. The individual now has an army of talent in AI, able to help them make progress. It just speeds everything up. Andrew Keen : Yeah. So what other AI news in the summary? There's a couple, 2 or 3 pieces on Anthropic. I use Anthropic. I like it. Their growth soars to 34.5 billion in 2027 revenue. That's of course, speculative. And they announce their next major AI model could arrive within weeks, Anthropic competitive with OpenAI. Keith Teare : Yes, and they're better than OpenAI at some things. They're already better than OpenAI at coding. If you put it in context, those three Anthropic pieces sit alongside the Google piece and the OpenAI pieces. And what it tells you is we've seen a major acceleration of product roadmaps and plans in the last couple of weeks, mainly in response to the DeepSea news, I think. Andrew Keen : Yeah, it's interesting that DeepSea was a one-week wonder, but there are no headlines at least from you on DeepSea. It seems to have stimulated change as you suggest, rather than change things in its own way. And then your Google pieces - interesting that they're rolling out a new memory feature for Gemini AI, allowing recall of past conversations, which is increasingly getting to the point where these AIs, if not human or sentient, certainly are able to remember things and have conversations. Keith Teare : Yeah, and that becomes much easier once you go from LLMs to other LLMs with agents. An agent is a piece of software that speaks to another LLM to complete a task. And so you could have in software a memory agent or a recall agent whose only job is to say, "Is this question been asked recently and what did I look at the last time?" and bring it into the context for whatever the current question is. And I think we're going to see more and more of this. I've spent most of my week building a multi-agent system for my company, Single Rank. I have a question taker agent that you ask a question of. It then farms out to a database agent or a chart drawing agent or an expert reasoning agent. They all have different jobs and they come back and give their answers to the original agent, and then it gives the answer to the user. So this collaborative agents concept is becoming very real now. And memory is one of those - I think Perplexity is the most advanced. Andrew Keen : Yeah. We were talking about Perplexity before we went live. You convinced me - I use Anthropic but you said for me it's probably wiser to use Perplexity where I still have all the access to Anthropic, but it adds a layer and some more intelligence. As I said, I was at an event this week where one of the venture people from OpenAI was there who talked about Sam Altman's projection that in the not too distant future there'll be billion-dollar individual startups. Are you suggesting, Keith, that's not that far on the horizon, given the power of AI that individuals can do all and do the entire startup without needing the help of anybody else? Keith Teare : Depends on the startup. If the startup is mainly software, that's probably true. But if it needs account management and billing and all the others... Andrew Keen : But eventually all that stuff will get - that's the easy part, isn't it? You can always get that done. Keith Teare : It's the hard bit right now, like reconciling invoices to receipts. I'm not very good at that. So I think it's coming with two things: rising agents and then agents that can use tools to follow, do actions, if you will. So it's coming and it's probably coming this year and it'll accelerate. So, yes, it will get there. I think the headline of a single founder of $1 billion company is just a headline. But it's directionally correct. Andrew Keen : It does. And it does reiterate Elizabeth Yin's point that no jobs are safe - in finance, in HR, in coding, in content. I mean, I'm using it more and more to summarize these conversations. I don't need a large editorial staff. So clearly dramatic change. And in fact, your startup of the week, Keith, the robotics startup Apptronics, is in talks for new funding at an almost $40 billion valuation - a hardware company. Does this speak of the reality of this new AI revolution? That it's not just theory, it's practice now? Keith Teare : Yeah. Well, Figure has gone from 2 billion to 39 billion in less than a year. And why? Because one of the major car companies signed an agreement with it to have these robots on production lines in its factories. And the start of the week, by the way, is Apptronics, which is a different humanoid robotics company, also raising a lot of money but slightly earlier in its journey than Figure. Andrew Keen : It's my mistake - I have to admit I thought it was Figure so that's my error. I'm going to add an Apptronics image to this content. I'm rather embarrassed. Keith Teare : You've probably already got one. That said, they both speak to the same truth, which is AI is going to manifest itself in the physical world in the form of humanoid robots sooner rather than later. Andrew Keen : And that was another of Tim Draper's - he was one of the speakers at this event I went to in San Francisco. I know he's an investor in your firm. That was his big prediction. So Apptronics is building robots for humans. Are they just a kind of earlier version of Figure in some ways? Keith Teare : An earlier version, possibly more advanced in concept because they started later when the software gets better by the week. So the later you start, the more advanced the software is that you can leverage. And so we're not going to see an end to this. There's going to be a lot more of it. I think humanoid robots are really interesting because the physical world is built for humans. You know, steps, ladders, everything. Andrew Keen : But I'm not sure that would be the case, especially when it comes to, say, self-driving cars and roads. That's going to change as well, isn't it? Keith Teare : Well, you still have roads because they still are... Andrew Keen : You still have roads. But I'm saying the roads themselves will become more and more suited to self-driving cars as opposed to human-driving ones.Yeah. You would hope the roads would become more intelligent and communicate to the cars, but that seems to be much further off. Andrew Keen : But I'm sure the Chinese will do that. Not the Americans, not even in San Francisco. Meanwhile, there is still lots of tech news. There's this open feud between Sam Altman at OpenAI and Elon Musk. Musk this week had a bid to buy OpenAI for around $100 billion. Is this just sensational, meaningless stuff? Is this froth or is it meaningful in the long run? The Musk-Altman fight? Keith Teare : Well, the specifics of this are super interesting because it's very clever of Musk. What Musk is offering to buy is not OpenAI. He's offering to buy the not-for-profit part of OpenAI. Now Altman is trying to put a value on that not-for-profit because he wants it to go away, or at least be subsumed. And he's trying to do it at a very low valuation so that the stakeholders in the not-for-profit don't get much. So Musk put a super high price on the not-for-profit to force the board of OpenAI to put a proper value on it as it transitions or to stop transitioning - one or the other. And I think if I was on the board of OpenAI now, I'd be very worried. They rejected his offer yesterday, by the way, but that will not be the end. Andrew Keen : What is Musk doing? Is it just because he hates Altman and he's annoyed that he was one of the co-founders and he's no longer involved? Because if he does indeed do what he seems to want to do, which is weaken, even undermine OpenAI - I mean, the real winners are probably Anthropic and Google then rather than Musk. Keith Teare : Well, and Grok - he has his own Grok xAI. Andrew Keen : But is xAI a real player? I mean, he can get massive valuations, but how does it compare with Anthropic or Gemini? Keith Teare : It's good. I mean, it's very good. And the next version, rumors are that it's going to be a top performer. Andrew Keen : Certainly not a top - you said it's good, but it's not... Keith Teare : It depends on what for. But it's certainly as good or better than DeepSea already. Andrew Keen : So there is a method to Musk's madness. It's not just about hating Altman and OpenAI. Keith Teare : Well, because it's Musk, there's more than one thing going on. He has economic interests in xAI, for sure. He's also really pissed off with Altman because he considers that Altman basically stole the OpenAI idea from him, which is not really true when you get into the facts. But he believes that. And not only that, but lied by making it not-for-profit and then turning it into a for-profit when he promised he wouldn't. So Musk basically feels like he's got the moral high ground and that gives him the energy to fight. Altman is clearly tired of the whole thing. He's just trying to do what he's trying to do, you know, and having a light shone on it. Andrew Keen : So it's the first time you have articulated some concern about OpenAI. You've always been quite bullish. Are you suggesting that your bullishness in the past is changing a little bit? Keith Teare : I don't think so, because I think this is a bit of a sideshow. The biggest news this week about OpenAI is the decision to abandon the Q* model - not abandon it, but incorporate it into a new GPT-5 later this year. Andrew Keen : So how would a unified next generation release work? Which would be what? Everything together? Keith Teare : It would do reasoning, operational stuff, actions, and it would do what other LLMs do, including being capable of video and image production all in one, and probably will retain its position as the best across all of those different things. So I don't see that anything bad is going to happen to OpenAI. I do think Musk can be an irritant and it could force them into corporate decisions about valuation and merging their different components that aren't to their liking. That could happen. Keen : My interview of the week, which you were kind enough to include in this week's newsletter, is with Greg Betta. Most people won't be familiar with Greg Betta. He's a tech writer, journalist based in the North Bay San Francisco, but he's also the coauthor with Reid Hoffman, who everybody knows, of a new book called "Super Agency: What Could Possibly Go Right With Our AI Future?" And from a progressive point of view, it's optimistic about AI. So I guess Hoffman is one of the few progressives, Keith, who actually is optimistic about AI. Is that fair? Keith Teare : Yeah. He really represents that part of the liberal spectrum that was in the New York Times article last week suggesting the Democrats should embrace technology and innovation. And the book is symptomatic of that. I didn't have a chance to listen to the interview - give us a flavor of what he said. Andrew Keen : It's standard - it's like listening to you. He believes that this progress will ultimately benefit. He distinguishes himself a bit too, I thought, created some light between him and Hoffman. I think he sees Hoffman as being slightly more optimistic than him. But it's about super agency - you and I have talked endlessly about agency, about humans being able to shape their lives. And of course, that's the big debate. For the critics, it's the AI that will shape us. For the optimists, AI will enable us to shape the world. It's an age-old argument, and it's not going away. Another figure on the left, if that's still a term that means anything, is Albert Wenger. He's your post of the week and he comes back to the Vance speech. He says praising this speech by Vance is mistaking jingoism and wishful thinking for true global leadership with a real vision of AI and humanity. I'm assuming you don't agree with Albert on this issue. Keith Teare : I do agree with him. I think I wanted to take a positive view of Vance's speech for his optimism in the context of Europe. It was a great speech. Albert's right that the American framing is entirely jingoistic. And AI isn't - AI is entirely global and humanistic. So there is a contradiction between a declining superpower being a champion of progress for its own nation versus what Albert would prefer, which is leadership that is truly global in nature. Andrew Keen : It's interesting that the first comment on Albert's tweet was from someone called "e/acc" who says this may be the most e/acc speech of all time. I didn't know what that meant - it meant effective accelerationism. Are you familiar with this term, Keith? Keith Teare : Yeah, this is the Marc Andreessen Peter Thiel framing against the philanthropists. Andrew Keen : So are you an effective accelerationist? Do you believe in... Keith Teare : Effective altruism versus effective acceleration? This is interesting. You say they're the same thing - I don't think anyone thinks that. But I think you might be right. But as long as you put them in the right order, I think if you get acceleration and growth and value, you're going to get a better life. Andrew Keen : Yeah, it's a play on effective altruism, but it's thinking in the same way that the world can become a better place. Keith Teare : Yeah. And the altruists wanted it to be done by good deeds as opposed to by economic progress. Andrew Keen : And even Albert acknowledges, like you, that there are aspects of the speech which in your language are a breath of fresh air. He said the only good point was the clear pushback against regulatory capture. Is it going to be effective? I mean, is it clear that the days of Lina Khan are over? Are we at the end of the period of regulatory capture, whether it's in Europe or the U.S.? As you say, one of the consequences of the speech was that the Europeans have taken a step back from regulation. Keith Teare : I would say the new Lina Khan is Elizabeth Warren. Lina Khan's gone. She's a sideshow. But Elizabeth Warren is still mainstream. Andrew Keen : Yeah, but a much, much older and perhaps less powerful figure, especially in Trump's America. I mean, Warren, she can talk a lot and get people annoyed, but she can't actually do anything. Whereas Lina Khan actually controlled regulatory capture - I mean, she was the head of the FTC. Keith Teare : Exactly. But I find Warren intensely irritating. It's amusing to me that Musk is asking how her net worth went from $200,000 to double-digit millions. And it's because she got subsidized by pharma, because she's pro-vax. And she's plugged into that. Andrew Keen : That's a controversial observation. You're saying anyone who gets supported by big Pharma is pro-vaccine? Does that mean that anyone who's anti-vax is not going to get the money? Most of us are pro-vax. Keith Teare : I'm totally pro-vax. But I'm just saying politicians like her typically get high net worth through serving stakeholders. And she is very against the credit card industry, for example. But she's not against pharma. So she's found her niche. Andrew Keen : Well, that's not a very generous interpretation, although it does suggest that when you give Elon Musk the keys to the Treasury and the IRS, then all these things are going to get revealed. And we should end with another interesting X from Albert, which I think gets to a lot of this. He said, "If you're young and capable and care about democracy, you should work for Doge." What do you make of that? I tend to think he's right. Keith Teare : I can't fully understand his meaning. In my brain, I'll interpret it the way I would, which is what I said last week. Andrew Keen : And to add to the quote, he said, "Offense is the best defense." Keith Teare : Yeah. The main threat to democracy is unelected bureaucrats blocking progress. I mean, if you think about it... Andrew Keen : Like Elizabeth Warren, in your view, at least. Keith Teare : No, I'd use the Obama example. Obama wanted to get a really good healthcare plan. And as soon as he was in office, he made speeches saying, "I won't be able to achieve what I want to achieve unless you, the people, are on the streets." Because Washington is averse to change. And it turned out that he had to make all kinds of compromises. And he ended up with what we today call Obamacare. But his experience was an experience of being blocked. And Trump basically has been through that himself. We're probably mostly thankful for that based on his first administration. He now is older, and he's not prepared... Andrew Keen : Suddenly older. I don't know about wiser. Keith Teare : He's not prepared to let the bureaucracy stand in his way. And Musk is his weapon. And there is something positive about a better, cheaper state and more democratic if the elected people can do what they said they were going to do. Andrew Keen : Yeah. And bring the expenses down. "If you're young and capable and care about democracy, you should work for Doge" - wise words from Albert Wenger. We will return to all these themes, Keith, in the future. Have a good week and we will see everybody again next week. Thanks so much. Keith Teare : Everyone. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe…
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1 Episode 2237: Matthew Karp explains how progressives can successfully bulldoze America 48:33
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“ Expect More Bulldozings ”, the Princeton historian Matthew Karp predicts in this month’s Harpers magazine about MAGA America. In his analysis of the Democrats' loss to Trump, Karp argues that the supposedly progressive party has become disconnected from working-class voters partially because it represents what he calls "the nerve center of American capitalism." He suggests that for all Democrats’ strong cultural liberalism and institutional power, the party has failed to deliver meaningful economic reforms. The party's leadership, particularly Kamala Harris, he says, appeared out of touch with reality in the last election, celebrating the economic and poltical status quo in an America where the voters clearly wanted structural change. Karp advocates for a new left-wing populism that combines innovative economic programs with nationalism, similar to successful left-wing leaders like Obrador in Mexico and Lulu in Brazil and American indepedents like the Nebraskan Dan Osborne. Here are the 5 KEEN ON takeaways in our conversation with Karp: * The Democratic Party has become the party at the "nerve center of American capitalism," representing cultural, institutional, and economic power centers while losing its historic connection to working-class voters. Despite this reality, Democrats are unwilling or unable to acknowledge this transformation. * Kamala Harris's campaign was symptomatic of broader Democratic Party issues - celebrating the status quo while failing to offer meaningful change. The party's focus on telling voters "you never had it so good" ignored how many Americans actually felt about what they saw as their troubling economic situation. * Working-class voters didn't necessarily embrace Trump's agenda but rejected Democrats' complacency and disconnection from reality. The Democrats' vulnerability at the ballot box stands in stark contrast to their dominance of cultural institutions, academia, and the national security state. * The path forward for Democrats could look like Dan Osborne's campaign in Nebraska - a populist approach that directly challenges economic elites across party lines while advocating for universal programs rather than targeted reforms or purely cultural politics. * The solution isn't simply returning to New Deal-style politics or embracing technological fixes, but rather developing a new nationalist-leftist synthesis that combines universal social programs with pro-family, pro-worker policies while accepting the reality of the nation-state as the container for political change. Bulldozing America: The Full Transcript ANDREW KEEN: If there's a word or metaphor we can use to describe Trumpian America, it might be "bulldoze." Trump is bulldozing everything and everyone, or at least trying to. Lots of people warned us about this, perhaps nobody more than my guest today. Matthew Karp teaches at Princeton and had an interesting piece in the January issue of Harper's. Matthew, is bulldozing the right word? Is that our word of the month, of the year? MATTHEW KARP: It does seem like it. This column is more about the Democrats' electoral fortunes than Trump's war on the administrative state, but it seems to apply in a number of contexts. KEEN: When did you write it? KARP: The lead times for these Harper's pieces are really far in advance. They have a very trim kind of working order. I wrote this almost right in the wake of the election in November, and then some of the edits stretched on into December. It's still a review of the dynamics that brought Trump into office and an assessment of the various interpretations that have been proffered by different groups for why Trump won and why the Democrats lost. KEEN: You begin with an interesting half-joke: given Trump's victory, maybe we should use the classic Brechtian proposal to dissolve the people and elect another. You say there are some writers like Jill Filipovic, who has been on this show, and Rebecca Solnit, who everybody knows. There's a lot of hand-wringing, soul-searching on the left these days, isn't there? KARP: That's what defeat does to you. The impulse to essentially blame the people, not the politicians—there was a lot of that talk alongside insistences that Kamala Harris ran a "flawless" campaign. That was a prime adjective: flawless. This has been a feature of Democratic Party politics for a while. It certainly appeared in 2016, and while I don't think it's actually the majority view this time around, that faction was out there again. The Democratic Party's Transformation KEEN: It's an interesting word, "flawless." I've argued many times, both on the show and privately, that she ran—I'm not sure if even the word "ran" is the right word—what was essentially a deeply flawed campaign. You seem to agree, although you might suggest there are some structural elements. What's your analysis three months after the defeat, as the dust has settled? KARP: It doesn't feel like the dust has settled. I'm writing my piece now about these early days of the Trump administration, and it feels like a dust cloud—we can barely see because the headlines constantly cloud our vision. But looking back on the election, there are several things to say. The essential, broader trend, which I think is larger than Harris's particular moves as a candidate or her qualities and deficits, has to do with the Democratic Party as a national entity—I don't like the word "brand," though we all have to speak as if we're marketers now. Since Obama in particular, and this is an even longer-running trend, the Democratic Party's fortunes have really nosedived with voters making less money, getting less education, voters in working-class and lower-middle-class positions—measured any way you slice it sociologically. This is not only a historic reversal from what was once the party of Roosevelt, which Joe Biden tried to resurrect with that giant FDR poster behind him in the White House, but it represents a fundamental shift in American politics. Political scientists talk about class dealignment, the way in which, for a long time, there essentially was no class alignment between the parties. These days, if anything, there's probably a stronger case for the Republicans to be more of a working-class party just from their coalition, although I think that's overstated too. From the Democratic perspective, what's striking is the trend—the slipping away, the outmigration of all these voters away from the Democrats, especially in national elections, in presidential elections. The Party of Capital KEEN: You put it nicely in your piece—I'm quoting you—"The fault is not in the Democrats' campaigns, it's in themselves." And then you write, and I think this is the really important sentence: "This is a party that represents the nerve center of American capitalism, ideological production and imperial power." Some people might suggest, well, what's wrong with that? America should be proud of its capitalism, its imperial power, its ideological production. But what's so surreal, so jarring about all this is that Democrats don't acknowledge that. You can see it in Harris, in her husband, in San Francisco and in Park Slope, Brooklyn, where you live. You can see it in Princeton, in Manhattan. It's so self-evident. And yet no one is willing to actually acknowledge this. KARP: It's interesting to think about it that way because I wonder if a more candid piece of self-recognition would benefit the party. I think some of it is there's a deep-seated need, going back to that tradition of FDR and especially on the part of the left wing of the party—anyone who's even halfway progressive—to feel like this is the party of the little guy against the big guy, the party of marginalized people, the party of justice for all, not just for the powerful. That felt need transcends the statistics tallied up in voting returns. For the media and institutional complex of the Democratic Party, which includes many politicians, that reality will still be a reality even if the facts on the ground have changed. Some of it is, I think, a genuine refusal to see what's in front of you—it's not hypocritical because that implies willful misleading, whereas I think it's a deeper ideological thing for many people. The Status Quo Party KEEN: Is it just cyclical? The FDR cycle, Great Society, New Deal, LBJ—all of that has come to an end, and the ideology hasn't caught up with it? Democrats still see themselves as radical, but they're actually deeply conservative. I've had so many conversations with people who think of themselves as progressives and say to me, "I used to think I'm a progressive, but in the context of Trump or some other populist, I now realize I'm a conservative." None of them recognize the broader historical meaning. The irony is that they actually are conservative—they're for the status quo. That was clear in the last election. Harris, for better or worse, celebrated the old America, and Trump had a vision of a new America, for better or worse. Yet no one was really willing to acknowledge this. KARP: Yes, institutionally and socially, the Democrats have become the party of the status quo. People on the left constantly lambaste Democrats for lacking a bold reform agenda, but that's sort of not the point. Some people will say Joe Biden was the most progressive president since FDR because he spent a lot of money on infrastructure programs. But my view is that enhanced government spending, which did increase the federal budget as a share of GDP to significant levels, nevertheless didn't result in a single reform program you can identify and attach to Biden's name. Unlike all these progressive Democratic presidents past—even Obama had Obamacare—it's not really clear what Biden's legacy is other than essentially increasing the budget. None of those programs, none of that spending, improved his political popularity because that money was so diffuse, or in other cases so targeted that it went to build this one chip plant in one town in Ohio. If you didn't happen to be in that county, it made no difference to you. There wasn't anything like healthcare reform, structural family leave reform, or childcare reform—something that somebody could say, "This president actually changed the way my life operates for the better." Cultural Politics and Class KEEN: Let's talk about cultural politics. Thomas Frank has sometimes been accused, if not of racism, certainly of being a kind of conservative populist, even if he sees himself from the left. Is one of the reasons why the Democratic Party has lost the support of much of the American working class attributable to cultural politics, to the new left victory in the '60s and its control of the Democratic agenda, which is really manifested in many ways by somebody like Kamala Harris—a wealthy lawyer running as a member of the diverse underclass? KARP: Look, I don't want to say the Democrats lost because of "woke." I think there were larger issues in play, and the principal one is this economic question. But you can't actually separate those issues. What people have intuited is that the Democrats have become a party that has retained, if anything advanced, this cultural liberalism coming out of the new left. As recently as 2020, there was a very new left-like insurgency of street protests focused on police brutality and structural racism. I don't actually think Americans are broadly hostile to civil rights equality and, in substance, a lot of the Democratic positions on those issues. But when you essentially hollow out your party's historic core connection to the working class and to economic reform, and in a hundred different ways from Clinton to Obama to Biden take so much off the table in terms of working-class politics, then it's no wonder that a lot of people come to think these minority populations are essentially the clients of very powerful patrons. Paths Forward KEEN: You note in a tweet that the Democrats are what you call "politically pathetic." In your piece, you write about Dan Osborne, an independent union steamfitter who ran for Senate in Nebraska. Are guys like Osborne the fix here? The solution? A new way of thinking about America, perhaps learning from right-wing populism—a new populism of the left? KARP: Absolutely. I don't think they're a silver bullet. There are a lot of institutional and social obstacles to reconstituting some kind of 19th-century style or mid-twentieth century style working-class project, whether it's organizing labor unions or mass parties of the left. That being said, the Osborne campaign absolutely represents an electoral road forward for people who want real change. He wildly outperformed not just Kamala Harris but the other Democrat running for Senate. His margins were highest precisely in the places where Democrats have struggled the most. In the wealthy suburban districts around Omaha where Harris actually won, Osborne more or less held serve. But where he really ran up the score was further out in rural areas and among workers. I would bet a lot of money that he way overperformed with voters with lower education levels and lower incomes. Looking to the Future KEEN: Finally, is there an opportunity in a structural sense? You're still presenting the old America, a federal state. But the Trump people, for better or worse, are cutting this. They're attacking it on lots of levels. Are there really radical ideas, maybe not traditional left-wing ideas or even progressive ideas, certainly associated with technology—you talked about universal basic income, decentralization, even what we call Web3—which might revitalize progressives in the 21st century, or is that simply unrealistic? KARP: We've got to keep our eyes open. My little faction of the sort of dissident left is often accused of being overly nostalgic by opponents on the left. I take the criticism that the vision I've laid out risks being nostalgic, towards the middle decades of the 20th century when union density was higher, industrial America was stronger, and you had healthy families and good jobs. I'm very leery of technological quick fixes. I don't think the blockchain is going to resurrect socialism. I do think there is a political opportunity that would represent a more conscious break with the liberal leftism that has been in the water of the Democratic Party and the progressive left since 1968. We need to move away from this sort of championship of small groups and towards a more universal, family-centered, country-centered approach. I think the current is flowing towards the nation-state and not towards the globe. So I'm okay with tariff politics, with the celebration of the national, and to some extent with this impulse to get control of the border. That doesn't mean mass deportations, but it does mean having some actual understanding of who is coming into the country and some orderly procedure. Every other country in the world, including those lefty social democracies, has that. The successful left-wing leaders have all been nationalists of one kind or another. Look at AMLO in Mexico or Lula in Brazil. There are welfare policies that are super popular that can be branded not as some airy-fairy Nordic social democracy thing, but as a pro-family, pro-worker, pro-American sensibility that you can easily connect to traditional values and patriotic sentiment. It's the easiest thing in the world, at least ideologically, to imagine that formulation. What it would run afoul of is a lot of entrenched institutional connections within the Democratic Party and broadly on the left, within the NGO world, academia, and the media class, who are attached to the current structure of things. Matthew Karp is a historian of the U.S. Civil War era and its relationship to the nineteenth-century world. He received his Ph.D. in History from the University of Pennsylvania in 2011 and joined the Princeton faculty in 2013. His first book, This Vast Southern Empire: Slaveholders at the Helm of American Foreign Policy(Link is external) (Harvard, 2016) explores the ways that slavery shaped U.S. foreign relations before the Civil War. In the larger transatlantic struggle over the future of bondage, American slaveholders saw the United States as slavery's great champion, and harnessed the full power of the growing American state to defend it both at home and abroad. This Vast Southern Empire received the John H. Dunning Prize from the American Historical Association, the James Broussard Prize from the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic, and the Stuart L. Bernath Prize from the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations. Karp is now at work on two books, both under contract with Farrar, Straus, & Giroux. The first, Millions of Abolitionists: The Republican Party and the Political War on Slavery , considers the emergence of American antislavery mass politics. At the midpoint of the nineteenth century, the United States was the largest and wealthiest slave society in modern history, ruled by a powerful slaveholding class and its allies. Yet just ten years later, a new antislavery party had forged a political majority in the North and won state power in a national election, setting the stage for disunion, civil war, and the destruction of chattel slavery itself. Millions of Abolitionists examines the rise of the Republican Party from 1854 to 1861 as a political revolution without precedent or sequel in the history of the United States. The second book, a meditation on the politics of U.S. history, explores the ways that narratives of the American experience both serve and shape different ideological ends — in the nineteenth century, the twentieth century, and today. Named as one of the "100 most unconnected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's least known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting the daily KEEN ON show, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy interview series. He is also the author of four poorly reviewed books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two badly behaved children. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe…
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1 Episode 2236: Colum McCann and Dianne Foley on what a mother said to her son's ISIS executioner 48:57
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What can a mother say to the cold-blooded executioner of her son? In American Mother , the heartrending story of the murdered American journalist Jim Foley, the writer Colum McCann and Diane Foley , Foley’s mother and founder of the Foley Foundation , explore this terrible dilemma. This memorable conversation with Foley and McCann explores forgiveness, faith, and the moral complexities of justice. Most of all, though, it’s the conversation about a mother’s remarkable love for her dead son which she maintains and even redirects to his ISIS killer. Here are the five KEEN ON takeaways from our conversation with McCann and Foley: * The Power of Forgiveness : Diane Foley's ability to forgive Alexander Kotey, one of her son Jim's killers, demonstrates extraordinary grace. Her Christian faith played a crucial role in this process, though forgiveness wasn't easy or natural - it was a conscious choice that led to meaningful human connection even in the most difficult circumstances. * Policy Impact Through Tragedy : Jim Foley's death led to significant changes in U.S. hostage policy. The Foley Foundation's work has helped bring home nearly 150 Americans since 2015, and led to the creation of a formal government structure for handling hostage situations - a direct result of the Obama administration's initial failures and subsequent reforms. * The Complexity of Justice : The case highlights nuanced views on justice and the death penalty. The Foleys advocated against the death penalty for their son's killers, arguing that life imprisonment offers a chance for reflection and potential redemption, while execution would simply perpetuate cycles of violence. * Grief's Individual Journey : Diane's experience shows how grief manifests differently for each person. While her other children needed distance from the situation to heal, she channeled her grief into activism and forgiveness. Her willingness to meet her son's killer was not shared by other family members. * The Value of Journalism : Jim Foley's story underscores the importance and dangers of conflict journalism. His commitment to telling stories of people yearning for freedom in the Middle East, even after being kidnapped once in Libya, reflects the crucial role journalists play in helping the world understand complex situations and human struggles. Diane M. Foley is President and Founder of the James W. Foley Legacy Foundation, which she created in September 2014 less than a month after the public beheading by ISIS in Syria of her son James W. Foley, an American freelance conflict journalist. I n 2015, she led JWFLF efforts to fund the start of Hostage US and the International Alliance for a Culture of Safety, ACOS. She actively participated in the National Counterterrorism Center hostage review which culminated in the Presidential Policy Directive-30. This directive created the current US hostage enterprise consisting of an interagency Hostage Recovery Fusion Cell, Special Presidential Envoy for Hostage Affairs, and a White House Hostage Response Group to free innocent Americans taken hostage or wrongfully detained abroad. JWFLF was instrumental in the passage of the Robert Levinson Hostage Taking and Accountability Act. She has been a tireless hostage, wrongful detainee and family advocate within the US hostage enterprise, Congress, and every presidential administration since 2014. She has raised awareness of international hostage-taking and wrongful detention using the award-winning documentary, “Jim, the James Foley story”, opinion pieces in the New York Times, Washington Post and USA Today and media interviews. Diane has spoken on the power of forgiveness in various faith communities and was included in 200 Women, edited by Geoff Blackwell. She co-authored the book “American Mother” which was published in 2024 with writer Colum McCann. Diane is also the author of a chapter called, “Life For A Voice: the Work of Journalist James W. Foley through the Eyes of his Family” in Living with Precariousness , edited by Christina Lee and Susan Leong, which was published in 2023.Previously, Diane worked as a community health nurse and as a family nurse practitioner for 18 years. She received both her undergraduate and master’s degrees from the University of New Hampshire. She is active in her Roman Catholic parish of St Katherine Drexel in Wolfeboro, New Hampshire, where she lives with her husband, Dr. John W. Foley. She is the mother of five children. Colum McCann is the internationally bestselling author of the novels Let the Great World Spin and TransAtlantic. His newest novel, Apeirogon, will appear in 2020. It has already been acclaimed as a "transformative novel" (Raja Shehadeh). He is also the author of Zoli, Dancer, This Side of Brightness, and Songdogs, as well as three critically acclaimed story collections. His fiction has been published in more than forty languages. As well as a National Book Award winner, Colum has been a finalist for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and was the inaugural winner of the Ireland Fund of Monaco Literary Award in Memory of Princess Grace. He has been named one of Esquire's "Best and Brightest," and his short film Everything in This Country Must was nominated for an Oscar in 2005. A contributor to The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic Monthly, and The Paris Review, he teaches in the Hunter College MFA Creative Writing Program. He lives in New York City with his wife and their three children. Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting the daily KEEN ON show, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy interview series. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children. Keen On is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe…
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1 Episodes 2235: Jeffrey Toobin on whether we all deserve second chances 43:39
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If there’s anyone who knows the value of a pardon, it’s Jeffrey Toobin , the publicly shamed and now rehabilitated CNN legal analyst. In his latest book, The Pardon: The Politics of Presidential Mercy , Toobin examines the history and evolution of presidential pardons, focusing particularly on Gerald Ford's controversial pardon of Richard Nixon. Toobin argues that while historical opinion has shifted to favor Ford's decision, he believes the pardon was wrong as it prevented Nixon’s accountability for Watergate related crimes. He also criticizes recent pardon controversies, including Trump's pardons of January 6th rioters and Biden's pardon of his son Hunter. Toobin expresses concern that Trump's use of pardons reflects an authoritarian approach to power, favoring political allies over the rule of law. Here are the 5 KEEN ON Takeaways from this conversation with Jeffrey Toobin: * Presidential Pardon Power is Unique : Toobin emphasizes that the pardon power is anomalous in the American system because it has no checks and balances - it comes directly from monarchical powers and allows presidents to act unilaterally without oversight from courts or Congress. * Mercy vs. Power Distinction: Toobin argues there's a meaningful difference between pardons used for mercy (like Obama's clemency for low-level drug offenders) versus pardons used as exercises of power (like Trump's pardons of January 6th rioters or Biden's pardon of his son Hunter). * The Nixon Pardon Legacy : While historical opinion has shifted to view Ford's pardon of Nixon more favorably, Toobin believes it was wrong because it prevented accountability and reinforced the idea that powerful people are above the law. * Evolution of Presidential Immunity: Toobin highlights a dramatic shift in legal thinking from the Nixon era to today. In the 1970s, everyone agreed presidents could be prosecuted after leaving office, whereas the current Supreme Court has ruled presidents cannot be prosecuted for official actions even after their term. * The Increasing Politicization of Pardoning : Toobin observes that pardons have become increasingly partisan and transactional, especially in recent years. He notes that even the legal community is now deeply divided along political lines regarding controversial pardons, with little or no unified "legal establishment" perspective remaining. Jeffrey Toobin, the longtime CNN legal commentator, is the author of ten books, including The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court , The Run of His Life: The People vs. O.J. Simpson , Homegrown: Timothy McVeigh and the Rise of Right-Wing Extremism , American Heiress , The Oath , Too Close to Call , and A Vast Conspiracy . A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard Law School, he lives with his family in New York. Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting the daily KEEN ON show, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy interview series. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children. Keen On is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe…
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1 Episode 2234: Walter Mosley on Easy Rawlins, King Oliver and the history of fictional black American detectives 37:46
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The acclaimed American writer Walter Mosley has a new King Oliver book out: B een Wrong So Long It Feels Like Right , a novel that follows Oliver's search for both a missing woman and his estranged father who was released from prison nine years ago. But before getting to his latest mystery, I couldn’t resist asking Mosley to compare his most famous fictional character, Easy Rawlins, with King Oliver. Mosley explains how Oliver, a contemporary detective in New York, faces different, perhaps less racialized challenges than Rawlins did in 1940s Los Angeles. We then moved onto to Mosley’s observations about crime and punishment in white and black America as well as the importance of jazz music in his writing. Here are the five KEEN ON takeaways from this conversation with Walter Mosley: * The difference between his two detective characters reflects changing times in America : Easy Rawlins operates in a strictly black-and-white 1940s Los Angeles where his race defines everything, while Joe King Oliver works in contemporary New York where racial boundaries are more fluid, even if racism still exists. * Mosley's writing process is remarkably disciplined and productive (or so he says) - he writes three hours every day without fail, enabling him to complete two to three books annually while also working on television and film projects. * The character Joe King Oliver was named after the famous jazz musician - this reflects both the musical qualities Mosley sees in writing and the character's connection to his fictional missing father, who named him after the jazz great who mentored Louis Armstrong. * Been Wrong So Long It Feels Like Right interweaves two plots: a case involving a runaway wife and a personal quest to find Oliver's estranged father who was secretly released from prison nine years ago, exploring themes of family reconciliation. * Growing up as an only child with a Jewish mother and African-American father influenced Mosley's perspective on American identity - though he sees such multicultural backgrounds as common to many Americans' experiences rather than unique to his situation. Walter Mosley is one of America's most celebrated and beloved writers. His books have won numerous awards and have been translated into more than twenty languages. Mosley is the author of the acclaimed Easy Rawlins series of mysteries, including national bestsellers Cinnamon Kiss, Little Scarlet, and Bad Boy Brawly Brown; the Fearless Jones series, including Fearless Jones, Fear Itself, and Fear of the Dark; the novels Blue Light and RL's Dream; and two collections of stories featuring Socrates Fortlow, Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned, for which he received the Anisfield-Wolf Award, and Walkin' the Dog. He lives in New York City. Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting the daily KEEN ON show, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy interview series. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children. Keen On is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe…
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1 Episode 2233: John Kay on why (almost) everything we are told about business is wrong 45:49
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According to the Scottish economist Sir John Kay , author of The Corporation in the 21st Century , the Magnificent Seven tech companies that supposedly control the global economy aren’t quite as magnificent as we are led to believe. These corporations aren’t even really capitalist, he says, noting that companies like Amazon and Apple own surprisingly few physical assets and thus should be considered providers of “capital as a service”. Kay claims that today's big tech companies probably won’t maintain their dominance, citing historical examples like Cisco and U.S. Steel. He criticizes the contemporary corporate focus on individual leadership, deal-making and shareholder value, advocating instead for businesses built on trust and collective capabilities. And Kay expresses a deep skepticism about both Donald Trump's tariff policies and Elon Musk's recent involvement in government reform, suggesting that Musk’s success might have even undermined his sanity. Here are the 5 KEEN ON takeaways from this conversation with John Kay * Corporate dominance is typically temporary, not permanent. Kay uses historical examples like U.S. Steel, IBM, and Cisco to demonstrate that even the most powerful companies often decline or lose their dominance over time, suggesting today's "Magnificent Seven" tech giants may face similar fates. * Modern corporations operate on a "capital as a service" model, owning surprisingly few physical assets . Unlike Henry Ford's vertically integrated empire, companies like Amazon and Apple primarily buy or lease the capabilities they need, with much of their value based on expected future profits rather than tangible assets. * Business success is driven by collective capabilities, not individual genius . Kay challenges the "great man" theory of business history, arguing that innovations and progress come from teams of people working together with collective knowledge, rather than from singular visionary leaders. * The term "capitalism" is outdated and misleading . Kay prefers "pluralist" or "market economy" to better describe modern economic systems, where value is created through networks of capabilities rather than traditional capital ownership. * Corporate success should be built on trust relationships and long-term value creation, not short-term financial engineering. Kay criticizes the focus on deal-making and shareholder value maximization, citing examples like ICI and Marks & Spencer where this approach led to decline. Sir John Kay , fellow of St John’s College, Oxford, has a distinguished career in academia, business, and finance. His writing, which includes the best-selling Other People’s Money and a regular column for the Financial Times , has been recognized by numerous awards. Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting the daily KEEN ON show, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy interview series. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children. Keen On is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe…
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1 Episode 2332: Greg Beato on what could go possibly RIGHT with our AI future 47:57
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So what’s it like co-authoring a book with Reid Hoffman, the multi-billionaire co-founder of LinkedIn and amongst Silicon Valley’s most prominent Democrats? According to Greg Beato , who just co-wrote Superagency with Hoffman, it certainly beats co-authoring anything with an AI algorithm. Not that Beato has anything against artificial intelligence. The doomers and the gloomers have it all wrong, he reassures. There will be nothing Orwellian about today’s AI revolution, Beato says. Rather than 1984, he promises, our automatic future will be enriched by AI platforms like Pol.is and Remesh . I hope he’s right. Here are the 5 KEEN ON takeaways from our conversation with Beato: * The concept of "super agency" differs from typical AI agents - Beato clarifies that rather than referring to autonomous AI agents, super agency describes what happens when millions of people gain access to new tools that enhance their human capabilities. The benefits compound as more people use these tools, similar to how the widespread adoption of automobiles and smartphones created societal-wide advantages. * Individual agency vs. collective benefit - While Beato’s Superagency emphasizes individual empowerment through AI, he stresses that individual agency is meant to be a starting point, not an endpoint. He draws parallels to America's founding principles, where individual liberty was important but existed within the larger context of building a collective democracy and Republic. * Contrasting view on AI surveillance concerns - Beato and Hoffman’s book challenges the persistent Orwellian fears about technology leading to dystopian surveillance and control. Beato argues that contrary to these long-standing predictions, technological advancement has historically led to increased individual power rather than centralized control. * The role of AI in writing and creativity - Beato shares his experience using AI tools like Claude and ChatGPT primarily as editorial aids rather than replacement writers. He suggests that writing is currently the creative field best suited for AI collaboration because it allows for iterative improvements, unlike other creative mediums. * Tension between optimism and realism - Beato acknowledges that there’s a tension between Reid Hoffman's more optimistic entrepreneurial outlook and his more measured and practical journalistic perspective. This is particularly evident in Beato’s discussion of major tech companies' trustworthiness and the challenges of ensuring AI benefits society broadly rather than just privileged individuals like Reid Hoffman and the other billionaires of Silicon Valley. Greg Beato has been writing about technology and culture since the early days of the World Wide Web. His work has appeared in The New York Times , Wired, The Washington Post , The International Herald Tribune , Reason, Spin, Slate, Buzzfeed, The Guardian , and more than 100 other publications worldwide. Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting the daily KEEN ON show, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy interview series. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe…
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1 Episode 2331: The Week that Silicon Valley went from Woke to DOGE 40:38
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It’s been quite a few days in Silicon Valley. "There are decades where nothing happens,” Lenin famously observed, “and there are weeks where decades happen”. As Andrew and Keith Teare reflect in their regular THAT WAS THE WEEK tech roundup, this was the week that Silicon Valley went from Woke to DOGE. It was the week that our Do No Evil friends @ Google slammed the door on diversity and embraced AI weapons technology. It was the week that Andreessen-Horowitz hired an ex-marine who choked to death a fellow passenger on the New York metro. And, of course, it was the week that Silicon Valley, in the form of DOGE, began the Palo-Altification of Washington DC. So, America, welcome to Silicon Valley. It’s going to be one hell of a disruption. Here are the 5 KEEN ON Takeaways from Andrew and Keith’s conversation: * They discussed Keith's metaphor of society as a layered cake, with economics as the foundation, politics in the middle, and society on top. While Keith argued that economics drives human experience, Andrew challenged whether this should be taken as a given. This framed much of their discussion about current events in Silicon Valley and Washington DC. * They had differing views on DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency) and Elon Musk's role in it. Keith supported DOGE's mission to modernize and reduce government spending, while Andrew was more skeptical, particularly about the aggressive approach and potential impacts on vulnerable populations both inside and outside the United States. * The conversation highlighted a significant shift in tech company policies, noting that both Google and Amazon have removed diversity initiatives from their corporate practices. They also discussed Andreessen Horowitz's controversial hiring of Daniel Penny, viewing it as part of a larger cultural shift in Silicon Valley. * They discussed the growth of OpenAI and the evolution of AI technology, identifying three distinct types: large language models, reasoning AI (like OpenAI's new O3 Mini), and agent models. Keith noted that OpenAI has established a significant lead in the market, similar to Google's early dominance in search. * The conversation touched on significant changes in the relationship between tech companies and government, including Google removing its pledge not to use AI for weapons and increasing nationalism in tech policy. While Keith described himself as a globalist, he acknowledged he was "documenting and charting the rise of nationalism, the cooperation between tech and national interest." Keith Teare is the founder and CEO of SignalRank Corporation. Previously, he was executive chairman at Accelerated Digital Ventures Ltd., a U.K.-based global investment company focused on startups at all stages. Teare studied at the University of Kent and is the author of “The Easy Net Book” and “Under Siege.” He writes regularly for TechCrunch and publishes the “That Was The Week” newsletter. Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting KEEN ON, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy show. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children. Keen On is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe…
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1 Episode 2330: Eoin Higgins on how reactionary tech billionaires bought Glenn Greenwald and Matt Taibbi 47:02
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Wow. According to the journalist and historian Eoin Higgins, right wing tech billionaires like Marc Andreessen, David Sacks and Peter Thiel have “bought” prominent anti establishment journalists like Glenn Greenwald and Matt Taibbi. That’s the highly provocative thesis at the heart of his new book Owned: How Tech Billionaires on the Right Bought the Loudest Voices on the Left . While I’m no great fan of the Greenwald/Taibbi school of paranoid anti-establishment journalism, I’m not totally convinced. After all, does working for an online publication partially funded by Thiel like Rumble really mean that you’ve been bought by him? But WTF do I know? Listen to Higgins for yourself. He certainly makes an interesting case for this highly controversial thesis. Here are the 5 KEEN ON takeaways for our conversation withHiggins: * Tech Billionaire Influence on Media: The conversation centers on how right-wing tech billionaires like Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, and Marc Andreessen have invested in and influenced alternative media platforms (like Rumble and Substack) as a response to what they perceived as hostile coverage from traditional media outlets. * Evolution of Left-Wing Voices : Higgins discusses how prominent left-wing journalists like Glenn Greenwald and Matt Taibbi have shifted their political positioning over time, with their audience and platform choices moving increasingly rightward. He argues this shift “coincided” (LOL) with opportunities and financial support from right-wing tech platforms. * The Rumble Example : Higgins points to Rumble (a conservative YouTube alternative backed by Peter Thiel) hiring Glenn Greenwald as a concrete example of how tech billionaires have influenced media voices. He sees this as a "smoking gun" of how financial relationships can shape media alignment. * Complex Media Ownership : The discussion highlights the nuanced relationship between media ownership and editorial independence. While Higgins critiques certain ownership patterns, he acknowledges that journalists can maintain independence even within organizations owned by billionaires (citing examples from The Washington Post and other mainstream outlets). * Impact on Alternative Media : Higgins argues there's been a broader "takeover of alternative media" by tech billionaires, but he's careful to frame this not as a conspiracy but rather as a confluence of factors involving tech industry resentment of critical media coverage, financial opportunities, and changing political alignments. Eoin Higgins is a journalist and historian from New England. His work has appeared in many publications, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Intercept, The New Republic, The Nation, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), Common Dreams, The Outline, Splinter, Deadspin, and many others. Additionally he writes for Morning Brew’s tech newsletter, IT Brew, with an audience of nearly 100,000. He can be found at his Twitter account (@eoinhiggins_, nearly 80,000 followers), where he engages regularly with a large audience on tech and U.S. and world politics. Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting the daily KEEN ON show, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy interview series. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children. Keen On is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe…
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1 Episode 2329: Ethan Zuckerman on how the United States learned to love online censorship 48:30
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Internet scholar and activist Ethan Zuckerman is horrified by the American ban on TikTok. As a self-described “progressive” with a long and distinguished career advocating for internet freedom, Zuckerman expresses alarm at how the U.S. has moved from defending unfettered access to information in the 1960s to now being willing to ban popular Chinese platforms like TikTok and perhaps even DeepSeek. He suggests the ban stems from the anti-China hysteria and exaggerated fears about social media's impact on young people fueled by paranoid critics like Jonathan Haidt. If this trend toward online censorship continues, Zuckerman warns, America will become indistinguishable from other authoritarian states in its disdain for digital freedom. Here are the 5 KEEN ON takeaways from the interview with Zuckerman: * The TikTok ban represents a dramatic shift in American values - Zuckerman points out that the US has moved from defending unfettered access to information (even Communist propaganda) in 1965 to now being willing to ban popular platforms. He sees this as contradicting core First Amendment principles. * Anti-China sentiment and social media fears are driving policy - The push to ban TikTok stems from a combination of paranoia about Chinese influence and exaggerated concerns about social media's effects on youth. Zuckerman argues there's little evidence supporting claims of Chinese manipulation or widespread social media harm. * Young people view the TikTok ban as evidence of institutional disconnect - Students see the ban as proof that lawmakers don't understand modern technology or youth culture. Their response of moving to other Chinese platforms demonstrates their cynicism toward government actions. * Social media platforms have become too powerful to easily abandon - Despite disagreeing with the politics of platforms like Facebook and X, users remain because of network effects. Zuckerman himself confesses to still using these platforms to maintain connections, even while advocating for alternatives. * "Middleware" could offer a solution - Rather than banning platforms or creating new ones, Zuckerman (like Frank Fukuyama) advocates for tools that let users modify how they interact with existing platforms. However, he warns, major platforms like Meta actively resist these efforts through legal threats and technical barriers. Ethan Zuckerman is an associate professor of public policy, communication, and information, as well as director of the UMass Initiative for Digital Public Infrastructure, focused on reimagining the Internet as a tool for civic engagement. His research focuses on civic media, online community governance, digital public infrastructure, quantitative studies of media attention, technology, and social change. Before coming to UMass, Zuckerman was at MIT, where he served as director of the Center for Civic Media and as associate professor of practice in media arts and sciences at the MIT Media Lab. His research focuses on the use of media as a tool for social change, the role of technology in international development, and the use of new media technologies by activists. The author of Rewire: Digital Cosmopolitans in the Age of Connection , he will publish a new book, Mistrust: Why Losing Faith in Institutions Provides the Tools to Transform Them (W.W. Norton), in early 2021. In 2005, Zuckerman cofounded Global Voices, which showcases news and opinions from citizen media in more than 150 nations and 30 languages. Through Global Voices, and as a researcher and fellow for eight years at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University, Zuckerman has led efforts to promote freedom of expression and fight censorship in online spaces. In 1999, Zuckerman founded Geekcorps, an international, nonprofit, volunteer organization that sent IT specialists to work on projects in developing nations, with a focus on West Africa. Previously, he helped found Tripod.com, one of the web's first "personal publishing" sites. In addition to authoring numerous academic articles, Zuckerman is a frequent contributor to media outlets such as The Atlantic , Wired, and CNN. He received his bachelor's degree from Williams College and, as a Fulbright scholar, studied at the University of Ghana at Legon. Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting the daily KEEN ON show, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy interview series. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children. Keen On is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe…
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1 Episode 2328: A gay Jewish atheist rides to the rescue of American Christianity 43:09
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Trust a gay Jewish atheist to defend the value of American Christianity. In his new book Cross-Purposes: Christianity's Broken Bargain with Democracy, the Brookings scholar and gay marriage activist Jonathan Rauch argues that Christianity plays a vital role in sustaining American democracy. He points to the Mormon Church (LDS) as a model for balancing religious beliefs with democratic pluralism, contrasting their approach with white evangelical churches that have become increasingly intolerant of democracy. Rauch suggests that Christianity's core teachings of fearlessness, egalitarianism, and forgiveness align more with James Madison's democratic vision than with MAGA politics, and argues that secular liberals should work to make civic spaces more welcoming to people of faith. Here are the 5 KEEN ON takeaways from our conversation with Rauch: * As a gay Jewish atheist, Rauch makes the counterintuitive argument that Christianity is essential for American democracy, suggesting that as religious participation declines, society loses important communal bonds and values that help sustain democratic institutions. * Rauch points to the Mormon Church (LDS) as a model for how religious institutions can balance conservative theological beliefs with democratic pluralism - opposing same-sex marriage internally while supporting legal protections for it in civil society. * He identifies three core Christian teachings that he believes align with democratic values: "don't be afraid," egalitarianism (treating people as ends in themselves), and forgiveness - arguing these are more consistent with James Madison than with the MAGA movement. * Rauch contends that the decline of mainstream Christianity has led people to seek substitute religions in ideologies like "wokeness," MAGA, and QAnon, which he argues don't provide the same social or political benefits as traditional religious institutions. * While remaining personally atheist, Rauch advocates for secular liberals to be more accommodating of religion in public life, suggesting that the "culture wars" approach of both evangelical Christians and militant secularists threatens democratic stability. * JONATHAN RAUCH, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, is the author of eight books and many articles on public policy, culture, and government. He is a contributing writer for The Atlantic and recipient of the 2005 National Magazine Award, the magazine industry’s equivalent of the Pulitzer Prize. His latest book, published in 2021 by the Brookings Press, is The Constitution of Knowledge: A Defense of Truth , a spirited and deep-diving account of how to push back against disinformation, canceling, and other new threats to our fact-based epistemic order. In 2018, he published The Happiness Curve: Why Life Gets Better After 50 , a lauded account of the surprising relationship between aging and happiness. Other books include Denial: My 25 Years Without a Soul , a memoir of his struggle with his sexuality, and Gay Marriage: Why It Is Good for Gays, Good for Straights, and Good for America , published in 2004 by Times Books (Henry Holt). His most recent ebook is Political Realism: How Hacks, Machines, Big Money, and Back-Room Deals Can Strengthen American Democracy (Brookings, 2015). Although much of his writing has been on public policy, he has also written on topics as widely varied as adultery, agriculture, economics, gay marriage, height discrimination, biological rhythms, number inflation, and animal rights. His multiple-award-winning column, “Social Studies,” appeared from 1998 to 2010 in National Journal . Among the many other publications for which he has written are The New Republic, The Economist, Reason, Harper’s, Fortune, Reader’s Digest, Time, The New York Times, The New York Daily News, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The New York Post, Slate, The Chronicle of Higher Education, The Public Interest, National Affairs, The Advocate, The Daily , and others. Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting the daily KEEN ON show, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy interview series. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children. Keen On is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe…
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1 Episode 2327: John Lee Hooker Jr explains who gets to go to Heaven and who doesn't 39:54
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Who gets to go to heaven and who doesn’t? According to John Lee Hooker Jr. , son of the legendary bluesman and author of From The Shadow of the Blues , many are called but not everyone is chosen. In the new autobiography, he confesses his own journey from addiction and imprisonment to religious redemption, while reflecting on growing up in his father's musical shadow. Hooker Jr. distinguishes between genius (like Prince) and talent (like himself), and offers thoughtful insights on the blues as both a response to African-American suffering and as a celebration of joy. And then there’s his take on the heaven question which won’t please everyone, especially those from the LGBTQ community. Here are the 5 KEEN ON takeaways from our conversation with Hooker Jr: * On living in his father's shadow - John Lee Hooker Jr. describes it as both a blessing and a burden. While his father was humble and encouraged him to find his own authentic sound, he felt pressure from the music industry to live up to the Hooker name. He makes an important distinction between talent (which he says he has) and genius (which he attributes to artists like Stevie Wonder and Prince who could master multiple instruments and aspects of music production). * His perspective on the blues - He explains that blues music served a dual purpose: expressing the pain and suffering of African Americans during slavery and Jim Crow, but also celebrating joy and dance. He notes that people "sung the blues because they had the blues" - tired of discrimination and different treatment - but the genre encompasses both hardship and happiness. * His battle with addiction - Hooker Jr. describes addiction as a spiritual chain that can't be broken by human means alone. He differentiates between what he sees as lighter "addictions" (like social media) and the physical, desperate nature of drug and alcohol addiction that affected his body and led him to criminal behavior. His struggles led to multiple incarcerations and nearly cost him his life. * His path to redemption - After multiple failed attempts at rehabilitation, including joining a cult called Synanon, he found salvation through religious faith. This transformation occurred after hitting rock bottom in San Francisco's Tenderloin district. He wrote his book to offer hope to others struggling with addiction, showing that change is possible even after multiple relapses and failures. * His current perspectives - While acknowledging the reality of racial discrimination in America, he takes personal responsibility for his past actions rather than blaming the system. He now lives in Germany, not having given up on America, but because he found love there. He maintains strong Christian convictions that guide his now conservative worldview and describes himself as loving everyone while holding firm to his literal biblical interpretations. Reverend John Lee Hooker Jr., was born in Detroit, Michigan, and he is the son of one of the greatest blues legends that has ever lived, the late and the great, John Lee Hooker (1917-2001). He is an artist who has received multiple awards throughout his career; he was also nominated for a Grammy in 2004 and 2008, and the recipient of the 2018 “Bobby Bland Lifetime Achievement Award.” Keen On is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting the daily KEEN ON show, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy interview series. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe…
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1 Episode 2326: Mike Colias assesses the impact of Trump's Tariffs on the US Auto Industry 40:29
40:29
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التشغيل لاحقا
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احب40:29![icon](https://imagehost.player.fm/icons/general/red-pin.svg)
Few people know the U.S. car industry more intimately than the Wall Street Journal deputy auto editor Mike Colias . His new book, Inevitable , offers an insiders guide into what he sees as our messy, yet unstoppable transition to electric vehicles. In this wide ranging conversation on all things automotive, Colias addresses Trump's recent tariff impacts on the American car industry, the stark contrast between Chinese (50%) and US (10%) EV adoption rates, and China's dominance in battery supply chains and charging infrastructure. Colias explains how Chinese automakers have leapfrogged traditional manufacturers in EV technology, while European makers are caught between regulatory pressures and relentless Chinese competition. He ends with some thoughts about the future of autonomous vehicles which he sees as far less"inevitable" than EVs. Here are the 5 KEEN ON takeaways from our conversation with Colias: * The stark contrast between EV adoption rates globally - China leads with 50% of new car sales being electric, Europe follows at 20-25%, while the US lags at around 10%. This sharp disparity is largely due to China's strategic government support, infrastructure investment, and incentives. * China's dominance in the EV supply chain is comprehensive - from controlling critical minerals (lithium, cobalt, nickel) to processing capabilities and battery production. This gives Chinese manufacturers a significant competitive advantage that Western automakers are struggling to match. It might even point to the superiority of the Chinese state lead innovation model over the US market driven one. * The role of hybrids as a "bridge technology" - Many consumers, particularly in the US, are choosing hybrids as a stepping stone to full EVs, suggesting the transition might be more gradual than initially predicted by US (but not Japanese) automakers who invested heavily in full electric vehicles. * The environmental impact of EVs is more complex than some activists would have us believe - While EVs produce more carbon emissions during manufacturing than gas vehicles, they ultimately result in 30% less emissions over their lifecycle. However, their environmental benefit depends significantly on the source of electricity used to power them. * Trump's new tariffs (as of 2025) are creating significant disruption in the auto industry, particularly affecting the established North American supply chains -While unions support the tariffs for potential job creation, most auto executives view them as harmful to the industry and likely to increase car prices. Mike Colias is the deputy bureau chief for autos, based in The Wall Street Journal’s Detroit bureau. His articles explore the auto industry’s massive and messy transition to electric vehicles, self-driving cars and other technologies with the potential to reshape how people get around. He writes and edits stories about Ford, GM and other major car companies navigating change, from EVs and in-car tech to tariffs. Mike is also author of the 2025 book: “Inevitable: Inside the Messy, Unstoppable Transition to Electric Vehicles." He joined WSJ from trade publication Automotive News, where he covered GM. Before that, he wrote about health care at Crain’s Chicago Business and worked at The Associated Press in Chicago. He graduated from Ohio University with degrees in journalism and business. Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting the daily KEEN ON show, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy interview series. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children. Keen On is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe…
مرحبًا بك في مشغل أف ام!
يقوم برنامج مشغل أف أم بمسح الويب للحصول على بودكاست عالية الجودة لتستمتع بها الآن. إنه أفضل تطبيق بودكاست ويعمل على أجهزة اندرويد والأيفون والويب. قم بالتسجيل لمزامنة الاشتراكات عبر الأجهزة.