Keen On America

“The current crisis was far from inevitable. Politicians made consistently bad choices. In doing so, they fostered a crisis of confidence in political institutions, empowered anti-system candidates, and produced a new Cold War as dangerous as the last.” — Ian Shapiro
 
The fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989 was a moment of extraordinary euphoria. Fukuyama even described it as the end of history. But what seems to have really fallen in November ’89 was the vitality of democracy. Almost forty years later, we have Donald Trump, Marine Le Pen, and, perhaps most worrying of all, Keir Starmer. Callous and inept politicians are breaking our democratic world. Our job is to put it back together.
 
That’s the thesis of a new book by Ian Shapiro — Sterling Professor of Political Science at Yale. In After the Fall, Shapiro argues that it’s politicians who have created today’s crisis of democracy. His pivotal moment is 2008 rather than 1989. The global financial crisis was the inflection point — the moment at which the corruption of the neoliberal order became self-evident, when elites bailed out the banks and we see the birth of left and right wing illiberal populism.
 
The roots go back before 2008. Clinton’s greatest failure, Shapiro argues, was not NAFTA or welfare reform. It was Russia. Yeltsin wanted to join NATO. Even Putin, in his early years in power, acknowledged that Russia considered itself European. George Kennan, Brent Scowcroft and Richard Nixon warned that expanding NATO eastward would create a new enemy. Clinton ignored them all. So history repeated itself in the form of Versailles rather than the Marshall Plan.
 
So how to raise ourselves up after this fall? What road to take? Maps, Shapiro suggests, aren’t always helpful. The New Deal had no GPS algorithm. FDR invented it on the fly. What democratic governments need now, he insists, is massive investment in physical, technological, and labor market infrastructure. Charismatic leaders matter. But the ideas matter more. We need politicians who take risks. Otherwise we’ll be saddled with Keir Starmer and our current crisis of extraordinary dysphoria.
 
Five Takeaways
 
•       2008, Not 1989, Was the Inflection Point: The fall of the Wall in 1989 produced euphoria. The real break came nineteen years later. The 2008 financial crisis exposed the neoliberal model, undermined the supremacy of the US-led world system, and — crucially — left behind a large population that would subsequently be mobilizable by political entrepreneurs. Elites bailed out the banks and returned to business as usual. They didn’t realize that business as usual was over. From 2008 you can draw a straight line to 2016, to Brexit, to Trump, to every anti-system surge that followed.
 
•       We Repeated the Mistake of Versailles: After World War II, the Marshall Plan invested in the defeated powers — Germany, Japan — and folded them into the new security and economic architecture. After World War I, Versailles punished Germany, and Keynes predicted the results. After the Cold War, the victorious West chose Versailles over Marshall. Yeltsin wanted to join NATO and the EU. Even early Putin said Russia considered itself European. Kennan, Scowcroft, Nixon all warned that expanding NATO eastward would create a new enemy. Clinton ignored them. We created the enemy we warned ourselves about.
 
•       Politicians Broke the World — Not Capitalism, Not Culture: Shapiro’s subtitle is precise. The crisis of democracy was not caused by inevitable economic forces or cultural shifts. It was caused by specific bad decisions by specific politicians at specific moments of choice. Clinton on NATO expansion. Bush on the Iraq War and the refusal to build a genuine rules-based international order after 9/11. Obama on the financial crisis response. These were decisions, not fates. They could have been made differently. Which means the current situation is not irreversible — and that future decisions can be made better.
 
•       Starmer as Exhibit A: Having Power Without Ideas: Shapiro’s prescription for what democratic governments need: a policy agenda. His cautionary tale: Keir Starmer. Starmer came into office with a massive parliamentary majority — he could have passed legislation that attracted 50 or 60 backbench no votes and still won. He had nothing to pass. Tiny step left, tiny step right, reverse, repeat. His comparison: Trump’s main policies came out of Project 2025 — put together not by Trump himself but by people who created the ramp he ran on. Without a ramp, even a charismatic leader stumbles. Without ideas, power is squandered.
 
•       The New Deal Had No Blueprint: FDR Made It Up: The lesson for what comes next. The New Deal — the last great democratic reconstruction — was not designed in advance. Roosevelt made it up as he went along, trying things, abandoning what didn’t work, building a coalition of extraordinarily unlikely bedfellows. What democratic governments need now, Shapiro argues, is massive infrastructure investment: physical infrastructure, tech infrastructure, labor market infrastructure. The CHIPS Act model. Incentivize business to retrain the workforce for the tech revolution and the green transition. Chancellor Merz in Germany has just borrowed half a trillion euros for this. Without it, there will be another Trump. And another. And another.
 
About the Guest
 
Ian Shapiro is Sterling Professor of Political Science and Global Affairs at Yale University and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He is the author of After the Fall: From the End of History to the Crisis of Democracy — How Politicians Broke Our World (Basic Books, May 5, 2026), Uncommon Sense, The Wolf at the Door (with Michael Graetz), and many other books. He lives in New Haven, Connecticut.
 
References:
 
•       After the Fall: From the End of History to the Crisis of Democracy — How Politicians Broke Our World by Ian Shapiro (Basic Books, May 5, 2026).
 
•       Episode 2881: Adrian Wooldridge on The Revolutionary Center — the companion episode on the crisis of liberalism that Shapiro’s book diagnoses.
 
•       Episode 2895: Glyn Morgan on The Rise and Fall of American Europe — the international dimension of Shapiro’s argument about the post-Cold War missed opportunities.
 
•       Episode 2880: Gal Beckerman on How to Be a Dissident — on the tradition of resistance that Shapiro’s “roads not taken” argument implicitly invokes.
 
About Keen On America
 
Nobody asks more awkward questions than th...

“Post-war Europe is essentially an American protectorate. Europeans don’t like to admit that. They only came to realize just how dependent they were on the United States in 2025, when Trump basically leveraged US security and forced Europe into a very disadvantageous trade deal.” — Glyn Morgan
 
Post Second World War Europe was always an American project. At least according to The Rise and Fall of American Europe by Glyn Morgan, the Director of the Moynihan Center of European Studies at Syracuse University and a proud Welshman. All that post-war civilizational jazz — the Marshall Plan, NATO, the EU — weren’t really European achievements. Instead, they were American-designed ideas and institutions that proud Europeans boasted they had built themselves. For Morgan, post-war Europe was, in fact, little more than a US protectorate. Gaul colonized by Rome. Wales as a backwater of Great Britain.
 
Europeans only discovered this unpalatable truth in 2025, when Trump leveraged their security dependence to force a ruinous trade deal. JD Vance made the official press announcement at the Munich Security Conference. Today’s crisis of NATO is its obit.
 
The original architects of American Europe were deeply Europeanized Americans — Bill Bullitt, who loved France; George Kennan, who spoke better German than most Germans; Ivy League Libs who cherished Europe as a café-rich sibling of New York City. That imaginary continent lasted eighty years. Morgan defines its MAGA replacement as “civilizational America.” It’s a United States that sees itself as a distinct civilization with distinct interests, willing to transact with Russia and China and leave an increasingly marginalized Europe to fend for itself.
 
Wales is the future of Europe, Morgan says. The Welsh lost the Darwinian struggle for world power very early — conquered, then absorbed and shrunken into a rainy museum for English romantics. Sheep, rugby and singing ex-miners. That’s the fate of 21st century Europe. Bon Voyage. And don’t forget your umbrella.
 
Five Takeaways
 
•       American Europe Was a US Protectorate: The story Europeans like to tell is that they built post-war Europe themselves — the Marshall Plan, the Treaty of Paris, the Treaty of Rome, the EU. Morgan’s counter: the construction of post-war Europe was theorized by Americans and pushed through by American pressure. Europeans resisted and begrudgingly went along. NATO provided the security. The EU organized the trade. Democratic nation states were the units. Enlargement was the engine. Europeans got comfortable inside this structure and convinced themselves they were in charge. Trump’s arrival in 2025 revealed the truth they had been avoiding for eighty years.
 
•       The Architects: Bullitt, Kennan, and the Europeanized Americans: The Roosevelt Democrats who built American Europe were deeply European in origin and values. Bill Bullitt loved France. George Kennan spoke better German than most Germans. They were steeped in the idea that America and Europe were one civilization. They wanted to rescue Europe both from the Europeans themselves and from the Soviet threat they were among the first to identify clearly. Bullitt and Kennan broke with Roosevelt over the Soviets — Roosevelt thought a deal could be struck; they said no. A strong democratic Europe as a bulwark against Soviet communism was the founding logic of the whole enterprise.
 
•       Trump and Vance: The Return of Isolationism: American isolationism — powerful in the 1930s, defeated by Pearl Harbor, marginalized through the Cold War — has returned. It returned in JD Vance’s speech at the Munich Security Conference in 2025, and in Trump’s leveraging of European security dependence to force a disadvantageous trade deal. Morgan’s framing: what has emerged is “civilizational America” — a United States that sees itself not as the guarantor of European democracy but as a distinct civilization with distinct interests, willing to transact with Russia and China and leave Europe to manage its own affairs.
 
•       Putin and Trump Are Playing the Same Playbook: Putin seeks a Europe of nation states — not the integrated EU — where he can deal transactionally, playing different European states against each other. Europeans were slow to realize that’s what they were facing. Then they faced the same thing from Trump. The beneficiary of the collapse of American Europe, Morgan argues, is China: investing in Eastern Europe, doing trade deals across the continent, acquiring economic leverage while Russia and America compete for security dominance. A Chinese Europe in fifty years is not inconceivable.
 
•       No Solution: Look to Wales: Europe faces an impossible dilemma. Rebuild the military and lose the welfare state. Or preserve the welfare state and rely on security that may no longer be provided. De Gaulle’s line: it is a fundamental error to think that to every problem there is a solution. At some moments there is no solution. We await a Bismarck; we have mediocre politicians who can only stop things from getting worse. The bleak future: a pleasant museum, highly dependent on American tech, visited by Chinese and American tourists. Morgan is from Wales. Wales lost the struggle for world power very early. He can see what’s coming.
 
About the Guest
 
Glyn Morgan is Director of the Moynihan Center of European Studies at Syracuse University and the author of The Rise and Fall of American Europe (Polity, August 2026) and The Idea of a European Superstate.
 
References:
 
•       The Rise and Fall of American Europe by Glyn Morgan (Polity, August 2026).
 
•       Episode 2875: Daniel Bessner on Cold War Liberalism — the companion episode on the Cold War liberal tradition that built American Europe.
 
•       Episode 2887: Steven J. Ross on The Secret War Against Hate — referenced in the interview; the American neo-Nazi tradition that ran alongside American Europe.
 
•       Episode 2881: Adrian Wooldridge on The Revolutionary Center — the crisis of liberalism that American Europe’s collapse is accelerating.
 
About Keen On America
 
Nobody asks more awkward questions than the Anglo-American writer and filmmaker Andrew Keen. In Keen On America, Andrew brings his pointed Transatlantic wit to making sense of the United States — hosting daily interviews about the history and future of this now venerable Republic. With nearly 2,900 episodes since the show launched on TechCrunch in 2010, Keen On America is the most prolific intellectual intervi...

“Orbán rigged the electoral system to highly benefit the winner. He thought he would never face the realistic possibility of losing. When someone actually threatened his plan, he just couldn’t imagine it. And that person got more than 55% — a two-thirds-plus majority. Orbán shot himself in the foot.” — Marc Loustau
 
On April 12, Viktor Orbán — the populist who invented the illiberal playbook — got booted out of office by the Hungarian electorate. His defeat, says Marc Loustau, Harvard PhD and fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study at Central European University, represents a playbook for defeating illiberalism. Orbán had rigged the electoral system so dramatically — giving the winner 1.5 votes for every vote the loser got — that when Péter Magyar got more than 55 percent of the vote, Orbán’s own system destroyed him. The gods must have their fun — Hungarian poetic justice.
 
Orbán’s cronies, Loustau reports, are fleeing to Dubai with their hot rod car collections and ill-gotten gains from sixteen years in power. But the mid- and upper-tier bureaucrats, Loustau warns, are still in office. Not having any other skills, they’re going to be difficult to dislodge. Making Hungary a functional democracy again won’t happen overnight.
 
The goal of Péter Magyar’s government, Loustau says, is to “make Hungary boring again.” That should be the lesson for the anti-Trumpists in his native America, Loustau says. Build the broadest possible coalition, never kick anyone out of it, and refuse to be drawn onto the deadly culture-war terrain. When Orbán banned the Budapest Pride parade to force Péter Magyar to take a stand on LGBTQ issues, Magyar flew to a Greek island. It was, Loustau says, the smartest move of the campaign. Make America boring again. The anti-Hollywood playbook for defeating illiberalism. Are you watching Gavin & Kamala?
 
Five Takeaways
 
•       Poetic Justice: Orbán’s System Destroyed Him: Orbán rigged Hungary’s electoral system to massively benefit the winner: if you get more than 55 percent of the vote, you get roughly 70 percent of parliamentary seats, and effectively 1.5 votes for every vote your opponent receives. He did this because he never imagined anyone could get above 50 percent against him. When Péter Magyar did — comfortably — Orbán’s own system gave Magyar a supermajority. Loustau’s verdict: it is rare that there is genuine poetic justice in life. This is one of those moments.
 
•       The Cronies Are Heading for Dubai: Sixteen years of a two-thirds majority in parliament allowed Orbán to pack every institution in Hungary with loyalists — friends, family, friends of friends — from top to bottom. In the end, this became part of his undoing: when you bleed out talent and fill institutions with cronies, you end up with an inept government. The most visible Orbán figures are now heading to Dubai with their hot rod car collections. But the mid-level “authoritarian cadre circles” burrowed into every institution will be much harder to remove. It will take years to restore functional public services.
 
•       Make Hungary Boring Again: The incoming government’s agenda, in Loustau’s formulation, is to make Hungary boring again. No more brinkmanship between Russia, Brussels, and Washington. No more geopolitical risk-taking. Hungary belongs in the EU, and if the EU likes anything, it is stultifying bureaucracy. That, paradoxically, may be the best thing for ordinary Hungarians. It does not signal the end of the far-right threat globally. So long as Putin is alive, Loustau argues, we must remain vigilant.
 
•       Magyar Goes to Greece: The Culture War Lesson: One of Orbán’s favourite tactics was to force opposition politicians to take a stand on LGBTQ issues. He banned the Budapest Pride parade specifically to create a trap for Magyar — either come out against the ban and look soft on “family values,” or attend the parade and look radical. Magyar’s response: he went on holiday to Greece. He wasn’t even in the country. Loustau calls it one of the slyest moves of the campaign. The lesson for Trump’s opponents: never engage on the terrain your opponent has chosen.
 
•       Can Disaffected Trumpians Defeat Trumpism? Magyar came from within Orbán’s government and broke with him at a moment of genuine moral crisis — a scandal involving pardons for those who covered up sexual abuse at state-run orphanages. That moral authority gave him a platform. Loustau’s honest assessment: disaffected Trumpians who had any dealings with Trump are radioactive, perhaps permanently. But the broader lesson holds: when government inaction harms the innocent and powerless, someone who stands up and says “enough is enough” can build a majority. Magyar didn’t win on policy. He won on decency.
 
About the Guest
 
Marc Loustau is a Harvard PhD, Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study at Central European University in Budapest, and author of the At the Edges Substack. He writes on Central and Eastern European politics, religion, and society.
 
References:
 
•       At the Edges by Marc Loustau — his Substack on Central and Eastern European politics.
 
•       Episode 2880: Gal Beckerman on How to Be a Dissident — the companion episode on the theory of resistance that Magyar’s campaign enacted.
 
•       Episode 2881: Adrian Wooldridge on The Revolutionary Center — on the crisis of liberalism that Orbán exploited and Magyar may have reversed.
 
About Keen On America
 
Nobody asks more awkward questions than the Anglo-American writer and filmmaker Andrew Keen. In Keen On America, Andrew brings his pointed Transatlantic wit to making sense of the United States — hosting daily interviews about the history and future of this now venerable Republic. With nearly 2,900 episodes since the show launched on TechCrunch in 2010, Keen On America is the most prolific intellectual interview show in the history of podcasting.
 
Website
Substack
YouTube
Apple Podcasts
Spotify
 
Chapters:
 

(00:31) - How significant was the Hungarian election in historical terms?

(01:30) - Orbán’s authoritarianism: model for the world, now defeated

(02:56) - Was the left paranoid? How did Orbán actually lose?

(03:50) - Poetic justice: Orbán rigged the system and it destroyed him

(05:46) - Corruption uncovered: the regime unraveling

(06:38) - Sixteen years of cronyism: what remains?

(07:51) - Authoritarian cadre circles: how long to dislodge them?

(08:24) - The cronies heading for Dubai with their hot rod collections

(10:38) - Romania, Ceauşescu, and celebrat...

“Anyone that’s properly using AI now knows that you tell it what you want, it gives you a plan, carries out the work, and you judge and tweak. You’re not a passive victim — you’re an active user with outcomes in mind.” — Keith Teare
 
Do we really want a no-hands job from Silicon Valley? That Was the Week newsletter publisher Keith Teare — who thinks all tech innovation results in human progress — thinks we do. No hands, no problem, Keith says. But I’m not sure. Especially given the powers-that-be giving us that no-hands job.
 
Keith welcomes the end of what he calls the “typed” and “touched” computing era — keyboards, mice, touchscreens, and all the manifold ways we have used our hands to interact with computers since the 1980s. That’s the outcome, he predicts, of the race to AGI. So far so good. But what happens if our no-hands AI future is controlled by Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and Facebook? This week these four behemoths committed 00 billion to AI infrastructure investment in 2026 alone — 2 percent of all US GDP. These companies are racing to build (and own) the foundational mechanics of AGI.
 
That’s always how it’s been, Keith says, embracing our no-hands future. I’m less open-armed. What happens if we want our hands to fend off AGI? No, I’m not so keen on a no-hands job from Silicon Valley. Especially one couched in the altruism of human progress.
 
Five Takeaways
 
•       The End of the Hand-Driven Computing Era: Andrej Karpathy’s observation at Sequoia’s AI Ascent: he no longer uses his hands to do his work. He speaks to the computer; the computer acts; he judges and refines. The keyboard, the mouse, the touchscreen — all the hand-driven interfaces that have defined computing since the 1980s are entering their twilight. Karpathy calls it “software 3.0”. Keith, two years ago, wrote an editorial called “eyes, hands, ears, and mouth” about the inclusion of other human attributes beyond hands. That prediction has arrived.
 
•       $700 Billion: The CapEx Explosion: A post by @Signal framed the week’s numbers: $700 billion in AI infrastructure spending in 2026, equivalent to 2 percent of all US GDP. This kind of spending, the post observes, usually happens via governments or wars. This time, it’s four private companies — Microsoft, Amazon, Google, and Meta — racing to build the foundational mechanics of AGI. Meta was punished by Wall Street for overspending; Google was rewarded because its numbers were strong enough to justify it. The same bet, two different verdicts, depending on your quarterly earnings.
 
•       Was the Internet Privately Built? The ARPANET Argument: Keith’s claim: innovation waves have always been privately financed. The railways, the telephone, the electricity grid, the commercial internet. Andrew’s counter: ARPANET was a massive government investment that created the protocols on which the internet runs. Keith’s response: ARPANET was a university bulletin board that created the precedent, not the infrastructure. Andrew’s response: that’s not exactly what ARPANET was. They agree that government research matters. They disagree on how much credit it deserves for what became the commercial internet.
 
•       The Revenge of the Idea Guy: Sam Altman’s line of the week. In the past, an idea person came up with a concept and then needed expensive engineers to build it. Many ideas never saw the light of day because the engineering cost was prohibitive. Now, anyone can speak an idea into existence. AI builds the plan, executes the work, and you judge and refine. That changes the economics of creativity, advertising, software development, and anything else that used to require specialist execution. The specialist is not dead — but specialists will increasingly use AI to scale themselves, rather than being hired one at a time.
 
•       Should Kids Use AI in Schools? A New Yorker piece asks what it would take to get AI out of schools. Keith’s view: the premise misunderstands how AI works now. The fear is passive students asking chatbots for answers and having their brains atrophy. The reality is that proper AI use requires active judgment at every step — telling it what you want, refining the plan, evaluating the output. If schools understand that, they embrace AI. If they don’t, they produce graduates unequipped for a world in which the idea guy with AI tools now has the power the engineering team used to have. Andrew’s prediction: the kids whose parents ban AI will eventually sue them.
 
About the Guest
 
Keith Teare is a British-American entrepreneur, investor, and publisher of the That Was the Week newsletter — a daily curation of the most important stories at the intersection of technology, business, and culture. He is a co-founder of TechCrunch and a long-time interlocutor on Keen On America.
 
References:
 
•       That Was the Week newsletter by Keith Teare — this week’s editorial: “Hand Job?”
 
•       Andrej Karpathy at Sequoia Capital AI Ascent 2026 — the Karpathy interview on Software 3.0 and the end of typed input.
 
•       @Signal, “$700 billion on AI infrastructure” — the post that framed the CapEx question.
 
•       Jessica Winter, “What Will It Take to Get AI Out of Schools?” The New Yorker, 2026.
 
•       Episode 2891: John Steele Gordon on how information technology knitted America together — the ARPANET backstory that feeds directly into this week’s argument.
 
About Keen On America
 
Nobody asks more awkward questions than the Anglo-American writer and filmmaker Andrew Keen. In Keen On America, Andrew brings his pointed Transatlantic wit to making sense of the United States — hosting daily interviews about the history and future of this now venerable Republic. With nearly 2,900 episodes since the show launched on TechCrunch in 2010, Keen On America is the most prolific intellectual interview show in the history of podcasting.
 
Website
Substack
YouTube
Apple Podcasts
Spotify
 
Chapters:
 

(00:31) - Keith leads with “Hand Job?” — explaining the headline

(03:27) - Karpathy at Sequoia: the end of typed and touched input

(04:30) - CapEx: the real story of the week

(05:35) - $700 billion — 2% of US GDP on AI infrastructure

(06:38) - Was the commercial internet privately built?

(07:35) - ARPANET: pathetic bulletin board or foundational infrastructure?

(09:08) - Keith and Andrew agree to disagree on government’s role

(11:00) - Big Tech earnings: Google up, Meta down, and why

(17:00) - OpenAI’s strategy: the long game

“Trump has no strategy and no endgame. No amount of success in tactics will win. No military campaign has ever been won solely from the air.” — Jason Pack
 
Happy May Day! Today’s papers are leading with stories about Obamacare, a Gaza flotilla, and the price of oil. Everything but the story at both the front and back of our minds. Only the Wall Street Journal leads with Iran. Which is more than a bit odd, given that America is supposed to be at war there. Or is it? Jason Pack — Middle East analyst, host of the Disorder podcast, and our man in London — joins for a special May Day show on the most surreal conflict in recent memory.
 
Both sides, Pack argues, care more about the narrative war than about actual military strategy. The official word out of DC and Tehran is the same: we’re winning. But no military campaign in history has been won solely on the airwaves. Pack sees two sides that are doing their surreal best to ignore a war that they are both fighting. If you pretend it’s not happening, then maybe it isn’t. Don’t mention the war. On this May Day, everyone is Basil Fawlty.
 
Five Takeaways
 
•       Two Sides with No Strategy: Both Trump and the Iranian regime are more invested in the narrative war — the story of who is winning — than in having an actual endgame. Trump says the blockade will make the Iranians cry uncle. The Iranians say they are surviving and therefore winning. Neither has clearly stated what they want from this conflict: not on the nuclear file, not on territory, not on regime change. Pack’s verdict: he sees two sides that don’t even know what they want to get out of a war they’re both pretending is going well.
 
•       No Campaign Has Ever Been Won Solely from the Air: The American military has showcased extraordinary AI-enabled tactical capability in the Iran conflict. But war is about outcomes and strategy. Territory must be controlled. New leaders must be installed. These things cannot be done from altitude. The Israeli Twelve-Day War hit the head of the snake — the Iranian regime — but may have overplayed its hand. A Shia axis that was being systematically degraded could come back like a phoenix if the narrative of martyrdom and resistance is allowed to reconsolidate around shared injury.
 
•       Trump Does Projection: Pack’s most pointed observation: track what Trump accuses his adversaries of, and you learn what he is about to do. He says the blockade will make the Iranians cry uncle. Which means he is on the verge of backing down. The absolute worst outcome, Pack argues, would be Trump as the one who folds — not because America loses a war, but because it loses the credibility that underwrites the entire international order. His fear: that is exactly what is about to happen.
 
•       Pakistan: The Sleeping Giant: The story the world’s media has mostly not told: Pakistan’s role. Pakistan has nuclear weapons. Pakistan has a large Shia minority and a complex relationship with Iran. It also has a complex relationship with China, with the Gulf states, and with the United States. Any escalation that involves Iran necessarily involves the question of what Pakistan does. Pack considers this one of the most under-covered dimensions of the conflict and one of the most consequential. The sleeping giant has not yet been asked to choose sides. That moment may be coming.
 
•       The First AI War: London Antisemitism and Russian Disinformation: Six antisemitic attacks in London in six weeks since the Iran war began. Pack’s argument: the disinformation driving radicalisation on social media is not purely Iranian. Russia and North Korea are seeding the most outlandish conspiracy theories about Jewish people — great replacement, Epstein, the rest — and someone with mental health problems eventually acts. This, combined with AI-enabled targeteering and logistics in the actual conflict, makes this the first AI war. Future historians will untangle what that means. For now, it means the world is more disordered than it looks from any single headline.
 
About the Guest
 
Jason Pack is a Middle East analyst, host of the Disorder podcast, and a Fellow at the Middle East Institute. He is the author of Libya and the Global Enduring Disorder and a regular contributor to international media on North Africa, the Middle East, and great power competition.
 
References:
 
•       Disorder podcast by Jason Pack — disorder.fm.
 
•       Episode 2877: Keith Teare — Let’s Just Say It Out Loud: AI Is Not Dangerous — the Silicon Valley seminary argument, now tested in the first AI war.
 
About Keen On America
 
Nobody asks more awkward questions than the Anglo-American writer and filmmaker Andrew Keen. In Keen On America, Andrew brings his pointed Transatlantic wit to making sense of the United States — hosting daily interviews about the history and future of this now venerable Republic. With nearly 2,900 episodes since the show launched on TechCrunch in 2010, Keen On America is the most prolific intellectual interview show in the history of podcasting.
 
Website
Substack
YouTube
Apple Podcasts
Spotify
 
Chapters:
 

(00:00) - Chapter 1

(00:31) - May Day check-in: is there even a war happening?

(02:09) - Both sides care more about the narrative than strategy

(02:37) - Trump’s lack of endgame: no military campaign is won from the air

(04:18) - How is the war covered in the Middle East?

(06:09) - Shia vs Sunni: does it still matter?

(07:54) - Hussein, martyrology, and the Shia willingness to fight the losing battle

(09:21) - Syria and the Alawis: off the map?

(11:00) - Pakistan: the sleeping giant

(14:00) - Is this the equivalent of Suez?

(18:00) - A new world order: does America want to lead it?

(22:00) - The Gulf states and the new regional order

(26:00) - Trump does projection: crying uncle

(30:00) - China, Russia, and who benefits

(34:22) - The first AI war: what will historians say?

(37:25) - AI company stocks keep going up

(38:02) - London antisemitism: six attacks in six weeks

(40:12) - Russian and North Korean disinformation driving radicalization

(42:13) - Disorder podcast: subscribe. The world needs it.