The AI Race is a Myth: Why "Who's Winning" is the Wrong Question
Who’s winning and losing in AI plays like a wacky race in that every week there seems to be a new leader. But that’s actually the wrong way of thinking about today’s AI revolution. The right questions are about the three Cs: Capability, Capital and Civics. That’s the lesson of Keith Teare’s latest That Was The Week tech newsletter which focuses on what he calls “the Year in Intelligence”. Nobody is winning the AI race, Teare argues, because it isn’t a race. Instead, it’s an endless innovation cycle without either a start or finish line. The three key questions are whether AI capabilities are solving real social and economic problems, whether we can fund a $200 trillion industrial rebuild, and whether the rewards can be equitably shared. Those are the questions we should be asking. Not who is winning or losing.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
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Strategic Hibernation: A Business Survival Guide for Turbulent Times
“May you live in interesting times,” is supposed to be a Chinese mantra. But according to Cambridge University China expert, Christopher Marquis, our current interesting times are actually a curse for businesses seeking stability rather than disorder. Is this, then, a moment for “strategic hibernation” Marquis asks in a provocative Harvard Business Review piece. Yes, he mostly answers. Businesses are indeed frozen by a perfect storm of uncertainty—overhyped AI, tariffs, and climate disasters. And speaking out in these turbulent times, he warns, can carry severe consequences -such as Jack Ma’s “cancellation” and the NBA’s exile from Chinese TV demonstrated after political missteps. Marquis, author of Mao and Markets, draws on his decade observing Chinese corporate survival tactics to counsel American companies navigating the stormy Trump waters: continue vital work like DEI internally, but avoid publicly poking the political bear. The Prohibition playbook offers a historical model—1920s brewers pivoted to soft drinks using their core bottling capabilities, hibernating their alcohol-making assets until the environment changed. The exception? Brands built on moral values, like Patagonia and Dr. Bronner’s, shouldn’t go silent—but even they should seek strength in collective action rather than standing alone. Rather than poking the bear, Marquis concludes about our interesting times, become the bear and hibernate. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe
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Italian Football: The Art of Defense and The Soul of a Nation
Few journalists, certainly non-Italians, know Italian football as intimately as The Athletic’ James Horncastle, co-author of The Soccer 100. For Horncastle, Italian football presents a fascinating paradox: a nation celebrated for beauty, fashion, and La Grande Bellezza built its footballing identity around winning ugly. Forged in post-war austerity, the Italians embraced a minimalist, counter-attacking style—yet their greatest defenders, Paolo Maldini and Franco Baresi, were anything but ugly players, mastering their craft with elegance and brilliance. Italy, Horncastle reminds us, has also produced a remarkable lineage of world-class goalkeepers, from Dino Zoff to Gianluigi Buffon. And despite its defensive reputation, the position Italians venerate most is the creative number 10—the fantasista embodied by Roberto Baggio, the subject of an upcoming biography by Horncastle. Then there’s Maradona, the “spiritual Italian” who found his perfect home in Naples, a city with a magical realism quality that matched his unique genius. Unlike England, where football loyalties follow class lines, allegiances at Italian clubs like Roma and Lazio are drawn along political divisions—a legacy of Cold War tensions when Italy hosted Western Europe’s largest communist party. Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Thanks for reading Keen On America! This post is public so feel free to share it. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe
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From Feudal Lords to AI Billionaires: Capitalism's Thousand-Year Conquest of the World
Should we be giving thanks today for our capitalist system? Maybe. But we should certainly be thankful for a 1100-page book about the history of capitalism published this week by the Harvard historian Sven Beckert. Entitled Capitalism: A Global History, this magisterial history, which took Beckert 8 years to write, covers the last thousand years of our increasingly dominant capitalist world. In fact, Beckert suggests, capitalism has become so ubiquitous that most of us can’t imagine an alternative economic system. If we are fish, then it’s our water. So what, exactly, were the origins of capitalism? And is there really an alternative economic system? What, if anything, will come after capitalism? A happy (capitalist) Thanksgiving everyone. 1. Capitalism Isn’t Natural—It’s Historical Capitalism is a radical departure from previous forms of economic life, not the default state of human exchange. Because it’s historical, it had a beginning—and anything with a beginning can have an end.2. The Death of Capitalism Has Been Wrongly Predicted for 200 Years From Marx onward, critics have forecast capitalism’s imminent collapse. Beckert is skeptical of these predictions—most of capitalism’s history came after someone declared it finished.3. There’s No Going Back to the Pre-Capitalist Village The nostalgic alternative—returning to some pre-modern arrangement—is both impossible and undesirable. Feudal lords extracting surplus from peasants, subsistence farming at the margins of survival: there’s nothing romantic about scarcity and exploitation.4. We Have the Means to Solve Our Problems—We Lack the Political Will The capitalist revolution has given us unprecedented productive capacity. We could feed everyone, educate everyone, provide universal healthcare. The obstacles aren’t material—they’re political choices.5. AI Could Liberate Us or Concentrate Wealth Further—It’s a Political Decision If artificial intelligence delivers massive productivity gains, those gains could go to a tiny elite or be distributed broadly through shorter work weeks, better wages, expanded education. The technology doesn’t determine the outcome. We do.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
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Why Football's Greatest Player Might Be Its Most Boring: The Problem (Yawn) of Lionel Messi
In The Soccer 100, the Athletic’s list of the greatest footballers in history, Lionel Messi is ranked number one. Perhaps. But he might also be its most boring—at least as a man. For Michael Cox, a contributor to The Soccer 100, Messi is undeniably great, but compared to his fellow Argentine Diego Maradona, he’s a nonentity. Football is theater. That’s why it’s the world’s game. So it’s the tragic narratives of a Maradona or a Jimmy Greaves we most remember and cherish. The game is beautiful because of the poetry, not the prose, of its stars. * Messi has ticked every box except one: being interesting. Cox voted for Messi as the greatest, but concedes Maradona and Cruyff “go above and beyond everyone else” in terms of personality. Messi left Argentina at thirteen, never had Maradona’s volcanic connection with his country, and may never be held in quite the same esteem at home.* Di Stefano was stolen from Barcelona by Franco—and the theft created football’s greatest rivalry. Before the heist, Real Madrid’s main rivals were Atletico. The loss of the era’s best player helped transform Barcelona vs. Real into what it is today.* England doesn’t produce geniuses because English football is suspicious of them. Cox: “There’s often been a desire to amalgamate mavericks into a system rather than bringing out the best in them.” The culture values hard work, scrappiness, physicality. Jimmy Greaves—perhaps the greatest English player ever—was left out of the 1966 final and later sold without his knowledge.* The 2026 World Cup may be a logistical and competitive disaster. Forty-eight teams, three countries, more group-stage matches than any previous tournament just to get down to thirty-two. Cox: “There’ll be a few teams there who with respect just won’t be able to compete.”* The greatest goal in history wasn’t Maradona’s solo run—it was Pele’s pass. Cox prefers the Carlos Alberto goal: team football as poetry, five number tens on the same wavelength, and the simplest possible finish after exhausting Italy with collective brilliance.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
Nobody asks sharper or more impertinent questions than Andrew Keen. In KEEN ON, Andrew cross-examines the world’s smartest people on politics, economics, history, the environment, and tech. If you want to make sense of our complex world, check out the daily questions and the answers on KEEN ON.
Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best-known technology and politics broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting KEEN ON, he is the host of the long-running show How To Fix Democracy and the author of four critically acclaimed books about the future, including the international bestselling CULT OF THE AMATEUR.
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