Keen On America

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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