Keen On America

"He's blundered here. He's trying to set policy for the government on the use of AI through a sales contract." — Keith Teare on Dario Amodei

There's only one story this week: Dario Amodei's refusal to let the Department of War use Anthropic's best technology for mass domestic surveillance and fully autonomous weapons. Silicon Valley rallied behind him. The New York Times covered it. Sam Altman publicly supported him—while quietly cutting his own deal with the administration. But Keith Teare thinks Anthropic is wrong.
Keith's argument is simple: vendors don't set policy. If you want to sell to governments, you can't then dictate what they do with your product. That's not your job. And by trying to do it, Amodei has alienated the entire US administration and created a fake battle that can only damage his company. Andrew is more sympathetic. In his view, Amodei is taking a political position against Trump—and in 2026, with Congress marginalized and corporations increasingly powerful, that's just the nature of things.
The debate cuts to something deeper: the power shift between corporations and the state. Oppenheimer couldn't say no to the government because he worked for them. Amodei can say no because he doesn't. These companies now speak to the government as almost equals. Meanwhile, Citruni Research released a white paper predicting AI will collapse the economy and destroy white-collar jobs. Jack Dorsey just cut 40% of Square's workforce. The stock jumped 25%.
 
Five Takeaways

●      Keith: Amodei Has Blundered: Vendors don't determine the use of what you buy from them. By trying to set policy through a sales contract, Amodei has alienated the entire US administration and created a fake battle that can only damage his company. He hasn't read the Art of War.
●      Andrew: This Is a Political Stand: Amodei isn't naive—he's taking a position against Trump. And in 2026, with Congress marginalized and corporations increasingly powerful, the fact that he's willing to take the government on publicly is astonishing. He's kept his job. The investors are fine with it.
●      The Power Has Shifted: Oppenheimer couldn't say no to the government because he worked for them. Amodei can say no because he doesn't. What Anthropic has at its fingertips is not something the government has. These companies now speak to the government as almost equals.
●      Silicon Valley Is Split: Right libertarians are small-government supporters of the administration. Left libertarians are bigger-government supporters of welfare. Vinod Khosla is a hybrid—pro-America militarily, fearful of China. Tim Cook does whatever governments tell him. NVIDIA is navigating best.
●      Jack Dorsey Cut 40%—Stock Jumped 25%: Citruni Research released a white paper predicting AI will collapse the economy. Noah Smith called it a scary bedtime story. But Dorsey just did it for real at Square. If AI succeeds, lots of white-collar jobs go. The social contract between capital and labor is breaking.
 
About the Guest

Keith Teare is a Silicon Valley entrepreneur and publisher of That Was The Week, a weekly tech newsletter. He is a co-founder of TechCrunch and has been a fixture in Silicon Valley for decades.
References

This week's reading:

●      Ezra Klein's interview with Jack Clark — Andrew calls it the interview of the week.
●      Citruni Research white paper — The AI jobs apocalypse scenario that crashed the software market on Monday.
●      Noah Smith's response — Calls the Citruni report a "scary bedtime story."
Previous Keen On episodes mentioned:

●      Maya Kornberg on Congress being "Stuck" (Episode 2815)
●      Arne Westad on pre-WWI parallels (upcoming)
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 2,800 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:

"You can't wear a yellow vest on a demonstration anymore because you get arrested as soon as the police see you." — Ida Susser

In November 2018, something strange happened in France. People from the urban periphery—truck drivers, nurses, teachers, plumbers—drove seven or eight hours to Paris wearing yellow safety vests. They weren't students. They weren't union members. They weren't organized by any political party. They were furious about a diesel tax, but really about something deeper: decades of disinvestment, cut services, shuttered bakeries, and a government that had abandoned them.
Anthropologist Ida Susser spent years studying this spontaneous movement for her new book, The Yellow Vests and the Battle for Democracy. Like so many other observers, Susser sought to identify them on the traditional left/right political spectrum. The uncomfortable truth, she discovered, is that many had never voted. Many didn't care about consistent ideology. They mixed and matched political ideology, bricolage-style. Marine Le Pen tried to claim them. So did Mélenchon on the far left. Neither succeeded. The Yellow Vests didn't want either fascist or communist leaders.
Theoretical comparisons with MAGA and the Tea Party are tempting. We find the same rage, the same economic disinvestment, same feeling of political abandonment. But, for Susser, there's a crucial difference. The Tea Party was mostly an astroturf movement—manufactured by economic and political elites. The Yellow Vests, in contrast, are authentically grassroots. And these days, in Macron's France, you can't even wear a yellow vest on the street without getting arrested. So an incredulous Susser watched a 75-year-old man, innocently going about his business, taken away by police. His crime? That bright vest.
 
Five Takeaways

●      They Weren't Left or Right—At Least Not Initially: The Yellow Vests didn't come with a consistent ideology. Many had never voted. They mixed and matched political ideology, bricolage-style. Marine Le Pen tried to claim them. So did Mélenchon on the far left. Neither succeeded. The Yellow Vests didn't want either fascist or communist leaders.
●      The Diesel Tax Was the Trigger, Not the Cause: The real issue was decades of disinvestment in rural France. Trains cut. Buses cut. Schools moved further away. Bakeries and post offices shuttered. People had to drive everywhere—then the government taxed their diesel. Macron became enemy number one. They called him Jupiter. They called him king.
●      MAGA Comparison Is Apt—But There's a Key Difference: Same rage, same abandoned communities, same sense that elites have forgotten them. But the Tea Party was mostly an astroturf movement—channeled by economic and political elites. The Yellow Vests, in contrast, are genuinely grassroots.
●      They Refuse Leadership on Principle: The Yellow Vests are part of a horizontalist movement going back to the World Social Forum. They write their messages on their backs. They won't name leaders. Susser didn't put a single name in her book—they wouldn't allow it. With surveillance cameras everywhere, it's also safer not to be known.
●      You Can't Wear a Yellow Vest in France Anymore: An incredulous Susser watched a 75-year-old man standing quietly get taken away by police for wearing one. The other man without a vest was left alone. The movement lives on in the pension strikes, in the songs, in the rage. But the vest itself has become a crime.
 
About the Guest

Ida Susser is an anthropologist at the City University of New York and the author of The Yellow Vests and the Battle for Democracy. She has previously conducted research in South Africa and on urban poverty in the United States.
References

Previous Keen On episodes mentioned:

●      Charles Derber on progressive populism
●      Hélène Landemore on deliberative democracy and citizen assemblies
●      Christopher Clark on Revolutionary Spring and 1848 (upcoming)
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 2,800 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:

"He lied more than I thought he did—and I thought he lied a lot." — Tom Wells on Henry Kissinger

In our Epstein age, everyone seems to have access to everyone else's dirtiest secrets. But half a century ago, in the Watergate era, it was harder to get one's hands on the secret files, phone calls and other private data. But historian Tom Wells has done exactly that with the private phone calls of Henry Kissinger. Wells' new book, The Kissinger Tapes, is based on transcripts of Kissinger's secretly recorded phone conversations—recordings he made primarily for his memoirs and to keep track of what he told to whom.
Wells came to the project as a Kissinger critic but found himself respecting certain things about him: particularly his stamina, the work ethic and political skills. What Wells didn't expect was to discover that Kissinger lied even more than most of us assume. Especially about Vietnam and Cambodia. The most damning revelation is his callousness. Kissinger reveled in body counts, Wells reports. He even supported American planes indiscriminately bombing Vietnam so as to hit something. Anything. Anyone.
So was Kissinger evil? Or was he, to borrow from Arendt's account of the Adolf Eichmann trial, banal? Whereas Eichmann might have been following orders, Henry Kissinger was following his own career. One was an efficient bureaucrat, the other a supreme networker. Neither had any sensitivity to human suffering.
 
Five Takeaways

●      He Lied More Than Expected: Wells came to the project already critical of Kissinger. But going through the transcripts, he discovered Kissinger lied even more than he'd assumed. About the secret wiretaps of government officials and journalists. About the false reporting system for the Cambodia bombing. He kept saying he didn't know anything, had nothing to do with it. He did.
●      The Callousness Is Stunning: Nixon and Kissinger reveled in body counts. Nixon said, "I don't care about the civilian casualties." During the Laos invasion, he said he didn't even care if they lost 10,000 South Vietnamese troops. Kissinger remarked that if American planes just dropped bombs out the door without aiming, they'd have to hit something. This wasn't indifference. It was gratification.
●      Morality Was Not Part of the Calculation: Kissinger saw most conflicts through the lens of U.S.-Soviet rivalry. The balance of power mattered. The human cost didn't. They secretly armed the Pakistani military during the Bangladesh genocide—between 300,000 and 3 million dead—because they needed Pakistan as a channel to China. The opening to Beijing was more important than the slaughter.
●      He Was Supremely Two-Faced: Kissinger was always deferential to Nixon's face, always addressed him as "Mr. President." Behind his back, he said nasty things. He trashed Secretary of State William Rogers constantly. He and Defense Secretary Melvin Laird were rivals, both master leakers, both devious. They came to respect each other for it.
●      Evil or Banal?: Hannah Arendt wrote about the banality of evil after covering the Eichmann trial. Some apply that framework to Kissinger. But there's a difference. Eichmann was following orders. Kissinger was following his career. One was an efficient bureaucrat. The other a supreme networker. Neither had any sensitivity to human suffering.
 
About the Guest

Tom Wells is a historian and the author of The War Within: America's Battle Over Vietnam. He is based in New Mexico.
References

Books mentioned:

●      The Kissinger Tapes: Inside His Secretly Recorded Phone Conversations by Tom Wells — his new book based on transcripts of Kissinger's phone recordings.
●      Zbig: The Man Who Cracked the Kremlin by Edward Luce — biography of Zbigniew Brzezinski, Kissinger's rival.
People mentioned:

●      Hannah Arendt wrote about "the banality of evil" while covering the Eichmann trial—a framework some apply to Kissinger.
●      Daniel Ellsberg leaked the Pentagon Papers; his son's book Truth and Consequences is discussed next week on the show.
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 2,800 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) - Introduction: The age of Epstein vs. the age of Kissinger

(01:31) - Why did Kissinger secretly record his calls?

(02:54) - Did you come to this as a Kissinger hater?

(05:43) - He lied more than I thought he did

(06:08) - Breaking news: The callousness

(07:47) - Realpolitik vs. indifference to human suffering

(09:47) - Did Kissinger recognize moral critics?

(11:06) - What kind of man was Kissinger?

(14:18) - His relationship with Nixon

(15:15) - Who did Kissinger trust?

(16:40) - His private life and playboy reputation

(19:00) - What the tapes reveal about Vietnam

(20:56) - Did he care about American casualties?

(22:19) - The monstrous quality

(24:20) - Hannah Arendt and the banality of evil

(25:52) - What the Kissinger tapes tell us about Trump

(27:31) - What would Kissinger make of Ukraine and Gaza?

"They are fundamentally bound at the hip, because the Trump age is a conspiratorial age and a backlash against global wealth inequality... Epstein facilitated the rise of Trump." — Jason Pack

Late last year, Disorder podcast host Jason Pack came on the show and predicted that Mark Carney would be the "orderer" of 2025 and Jeffrey Epstein would be 2026's "disorderer-in-chief". Pack was uncannily right. Although, as he admits, such prescience gives him no pleasure.
Pack is no conspiracist. He thought QAnon was a hoax; he saw the antisemitism baked into its bizarre theories. But he's come to believe there was a genuine cover-up of the Jeffrey Epstein case—not orchestrated by the CIA, but by prosecutors who didn't want to go after powerful people, journalists comfortably ensconced in Epstein's world, and a system where too much wealth has accrued to too narrow a sliver of global elites.
What haunts him most is what the emails reveal about how the world actually works. Favors exchanged for favors in a network of infinite back-scratching. Noam Chomsky (!) and Leon Black busy trading intros for access to Epstein's underworld. The emails reveal completely amoral elites, Pack says, nihilists without even the pretense of moral scruples.
Trump and Epstein, Pack argues, are bound at the hip—not because Trump is guilty of Epstein's crimes, but because both are products of the same angry backlash against global wealth inequality and the collapse of institutional trust. Trump is, in Pack's memorable phrase, "a legal Epstein"—someone who gets things done through connections, who can appear the most elite Wall Street type to bankers and the most common man to coal miners. The evil genius of doppelgängerism. For Pack, the Epstein files may be a tremor before the big one—AI or crypto could bring the real 1789 style earthquake—but they've already destroyed something of priceless value: the illusion that elites are working on the behalf of the people.
 
Five Takeaways

●      The Cover-Up Wasn't a Conspiracy—It Was the System: Cases sat on prosecutors' desks in Florida in 2003 and weren't filed. Journalists were tipped off in the early 2000s and didn't run with it. Pack isn't alleging CIA orchestration—just that too much wealth and power had accrued to too narrow a tranche of global elites, and they were able to cow journalists and prosecutors into silence.
●      Trump and Epstein Are Bound at the Hip: Both are products of the same backlash against global wealth inequality and the collapse of trust since the end of the Cold War. The irony: Trump is himself a member of the elite who benefited from these networks, but his political appeal lies in his promise to dismantle them.
●      "Order" vs. the Law of the Jungle: The world Epstein built wasn't ordered in any traditional sense—it was the logic of the jungle, based on blackmail and compromat. Russian intelligence running a financial sex trafficking influence scheme at the heart of the Anglo-American establishment. When they needed a service, they got the service.
●      The Collapse of Social Trust: Pack contrasts our "low-trust" Anglo-American society with Scandinavian models where people still believe institutions work on their behalf. The Epstein files reveal completely amoral elites who believed in nothing—no religion, no moral code—and had no compunction about harming young women or stealing pensioners' money.
●      A Tremor Before the Big One: Epstein won't bring down neoliberal capitalism. But AI making five families wealthier than the rest of the world combined could. Or crypto going to zero and 300,000 people realizing their life savings are gone. The true significance of the Epstein files is that they've stripped away the illusion that the system works on our behalf.
 
About the Guest

Jason Pack is a historian, consultant, and host of the Disorder podcast. He is the author of Libya and the Global Enduring Disorder. He is based in London.
References

Podcasts mentioned:

●      Disorder Episode 167 — "Epstein Survivor Rina Oh on Getting Justice"
●      Disorder Episode 168 — "How Can Epstein's Victims Get Closure? with Civil Rights Attorney Lisa Bloom"
●      Bobby Capucci's "Jeffrey Epstein: The Cover-Up Chronicles" — deep dives into the Epstein files
●      Jewish Currents — left-wing Jewish treatment of Epstein's connections to Ehud Barak and the Mossad
Previous Keen On episodes mentioned:

●      Peter Bale interview (Episode 2813) — discussed the Epstein media cover-up and Michael Wolff's attempts to interest mainstream media
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 2,800 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) - Introduction: Jason Pack hates being right

(02:04) - Carney's Davos speech: Words as actions

(05:44) - A Canadian-led initiative on Ukraine?

(06:55) - The Epstein cover-up: Why I believe it

(11:05) - What the New York Times knew and when

(13:21) - Epstein survivors and their lawyers

(15:06) - Too much wealth has accrued to too narrow a tranche

(17:09) - The uncomfortable Jewish angle

(21:03) - Emails to Woody Allen and Leon Botstein

(23:00) - Trump and Epstein: Bound at the hip

(27:03) - Trump as a legal Epstein

(29:33) - Disorder or the law of the jungle?

(33:28) - Does Scandinavia get off lighter?

(38:05) - A tremor before the big one?

"The House hasn't reorganized committee jurisdictions since the early 70s—before the internet existed." — Maya Kornberg

America is stuck stuck stuck stuck. Almost exactly a year ago, I interviewed the Atlantic's Yoni Applebaum about Stuck, his influential critique of the housing crisis. Now we have another Stuck—this one by Maya Kornberg, a senior fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice. Only her subtitle is about Congress, not housing: How Money, Media, and Violence Prevent Change in Congress.
This is, Kornberg argues, one of the toughest times in modern American history to sit in Congress. Members are forced to spend most of their time making fundraising calls. They face record-high threats against themselves and their families. And the media incentivizes spectacle over policymaking—what she describes as "Kings and Prophets"—where members have the power of the megaphone but not the power to drive legislation.
One fact captures Congressional stuckness: The House hasn't reorganized its committee jurisdictions since the early 1970s—before the internet existed. Half the Senate, then, questioned Mark Zuckerberg because no single committee is responsible for tech. Not even mad libertarians like Elon Musk could make that one up.
Kornberg recently ran for New York City Council in Park Slope and, as a friend of Israel, discovered firsthand how media latches onto the most salacious angle. That said, she's not giving up on Congress. Kornberg is hopeful that a fresh wave of reformers, like the Watergate babies of '74 or the class of 2018, can unstick it. But she is, nonetheless, clear-eyed about what we're facing: a four-alarm fire for our democracy.
 
Five Takeaways

●      This Is the Hardest Moment in Modern History to Be in Congress: Members face astronomical campaign costs, record-high threats and violence against themselves and their families, and a leadership-driven system that has stripped rank-and-file members of real power to drive legislation.
●      Money, Media, and Violence Keep Congress Stuck: Members spend every mealtime making fundraising calls. They pay "dues" to the party just to get on good committees. Media incentivizes spectacle over policymaking. And threats against members have risen year after year.
●      Congress Hasn't Reorganized Since Before the Internet: The House hasn't reorganized committee jurisdictions since the early 1970s. Half the Senate questions Mark Zuckerberg because no single committee is responsible for tech. When everyone's responsible, no one is.
●      More Chairmen Named Mike Than Women Committee Leaders: The pay-to-play system in Congress disadvantages women, communities of color, working-class Americans, and young Americans—anyone who faces greater barriers to fundraising faces greater barriers to power.
●      Waves of Reformers Can Unstick Congress: The Watergate babies of '74, the Republican Revolution of '94, the class of 2018—frustrated reformers have reshaped Congress before. The midterms could bring another wave, if the public frustration is deep enough.
 
About the Guest

Maya Kornberg is a senior fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice. She holds a PhD from Oxford and is the author of Inside Congressional Committees. She recently ran for New York City Council in Brooklyn's Park Slope.
References

Books mentioned:

●      Stuck: How Money, Media, and Violence Prevent Change in Congress by Maya Kornberg — her new book on why Congress is stuck and how to unstick it.
●      Stuck: How the Privileged and the Propertied Broke the Engine of American Opportunity by Yoni Applebaum — on the housing crisis, interviewed on this show a year ago.
●      Why Nothing Works by Marc Dunkelman — on who killed progress and how to bring it back.
People mentioned:

●      Henry Waxman served four decades in Congress and passed landmark health and environmental legislation even under Reagan.
●      Lauren Underwood came to Congress in 2018 and co-founded the Black Maternal Health Caucus after losing a friend who died after childbirth.
●      Hélène Landemore is a Yale political theorist who advocates for citizen assemblies as an alternative to representative democracy.
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 2,800 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) - Introduction: America is stuck

(02:04) - Why everyone woke up to this problem at once

(03:49) - Why study Congress? Is it boring?

(06:33) - Money, media, and violence

(07:11) - Congressional chameleons: Waxman, Underwood, Andy Kim

(10:24) - Is this bipartisan?

(12:37) - The crummiest job in Washington

(15:53) - Money: 'I spend every mealtime making fundraising calls'

(17:29) - Should Congress get a pay raise?

(19:53) - Media and the Gaza third rail

(23:14) - Kings and Prophets: Spectacle over policy

(25:32) - Can Congress stand up to Trump?

(27:43) - Congress is woefully unprepared to regulate tech

(31:54) - Gerontocracy: More Mikes than women

(37:34) - Can citiz...