Keen On America

Is Mohammed bin Salman a tyrant or an enlightened despot? According to the former Wall Street Journal publisher Karen Elliott House, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Man Who Would Be King, a new biography of MBS, he might be both. Or neither. House who spent years reporting from and writing on Saudi Arabia, offers a complex (and unofficial) portrait of the Crown Prince's ambitious transformation efforts, his deeply troubling human rights record, and the uncertain fate of his grand vision for modernizing the oil kingdom. Drawing on extensive access to MBS himself, she explores whether his reforms can succeed or will ultimately crumble like the ruins in Shelley's "Ozymandias." Rather than Lee Kuan Yew or Saddam Hussein, that’s probably MBS’ fate. A ruler neither sufficiently enlightened or tyrannical to leave a historical footprint. 1. MBS as an "Enlightened Despot" Shaped by Personal Experience"He is an enlightened despot. He grew up in that period when you couldn't do anything... all this trying to put the religious police aside is personal, not just policy for him."House argues that MBS's reforms stem from his own frustration with Saudi Arabia's religious restrictions, making his changes deeply personal rather than merely strategic.2. The Khashoggi Murder: A "Rendition Gone Wrong""I do believe that he too smart to order somebody to do that. I think what he ordered, that it was a rendition gone wrong. He said, bring the guy back... I don't think it would have happened if the crown prince had said, bring me that guy, but you know be sure he gets here alive."House suggests MBS likely ordered Khashoggi's return to Saudi Arabia but didn't intend for him to be killed, though she acknowledges the brutal outcome.3. Human Rights Have Worsened Under MBS"Yes, absolutely. But, you know, the only countries probably that are worse... basically Iran, China, North Korea, countries like that."When asked if Saudi's human rights record has deteriorated under MBS, House confirms it has, placing the kingdom among the world's worst offenders.4. Ambitious Projects Face Reality Checks"Some of his ideas are like the line in Naom... I mean that's a, you know, some might say a monstrosity... it's now down to there will be a mile and a half of it by 2030."House describes how MBS's grandiose vision for NEOM has been dramatically scaled back, suggesting his ambitious projects may be unrealistic.5. Uncertain Legacy: The Ozymandias Question"I quote in the book, the poet Shelley's poem, Ozymandias, about dirt and the look at me, mighty and despair, that it could all turn to dirt... if it were me and I had all of these issues that he faces now, I'd probably crawl under the bed and take a sleeping pill."House remains uncertain about MBS's ultimate success, comparing his potential fate to the fallen ruler in Shelley's poem while acknowledging his determination to persist despite enormous challenges.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

In this engaging discussion, sociologist Charles Derber from Boston College unpacks the concept of 'sociocide,' which he describes as America's descent into social disintegration. Drawing on his latest book, he highlights alarming trends like increased isolation and how this alienation can lead to vulnerability to authoritarian leaders. Derber links the breakdown of social bonds to economic insecurity and rising mental health issues, emphasizing the urgent need for community and solidarity to combat these societal challenges.

Amran Gowani, a former Wall Street analyst and author of the satirical novel *Leverage*, discusses his dramatic career shift from finance to fiction. He reveals the harsh realities of publishing and the economic challenges that aspiring novelists face. Gowani critiques Wall Street's toxic culture and perverse incentives, sharing insights from his experiences that inspired his writing. He also explores how AI is changing the landscape of storytelling and emphasizes the need for authenticity in an increasingly digital world.

Nathalia Holt, the author of 'The Beast in the Clouds', dives into the fascinating story of Teddy Roosevelt's sons, who embarked on a 1928 expedition to find the giant panda in China. Their journey marks a crucial turning point in conservation history, as they shifted perspectives from hunting endangered species to protecting them. Holt reveals how these troubled brothers sought redemption and grappled with personal failures, all while leaving a profound legacy that still resonates in wildlife conservation efforts today.

Peter Wehner, a writer for The Atlantic and commentator on American conservatism, delves into the significant ethical darkness surrounding Trump’s policies and their impact on African AIDS victims. He highlights the devastating consequences of the PEPFAR shutdown, with staggering loss of life looming. Wehner expresses dismay over the unwavering loyalty of evangelical supporters despite this backdrop of humanitarian crises, raising profound questions about morality in politics and the complexities of faith under Trump’s influence.

Anand Pandian, a Johns Hopkins anthropology professor and author of 'Something Between Us', takes listeners on a journey through America's everyday walls. He discusses how common spaces like swimming pools reflect deeper societal divisions shaped by race, class, and ideology. Using his ethnographic approach, Pandian highlights the importance of understanding these barriers while advocating for collective political action. His insights on the pink tax and the power of unlikely alliances reveal pathways to bridge divides and foster unity across diverse communities.

So what, exactly, is the AI wedge? According to Ewan Morrison, author of For Emma, an already acclaimed novel about our dystopian biotech future, it means a “V-shaped” force that starts small but gradually drives people apart, replacing human connection with technological mediation."It starts off really small. You end up with something like internet dating... it begins as a novelty and then people become dependent on it," Morrison explains. What seemed harmless in the 1990s has evolved to the point where 60-70% of people now use dating apps, with younger generations saying they "don't wanna meet anyone outside of using an app because they don't trust anyone." But the wedge doesn't stop there. The final stage, Morrison warns, is the replacement of the humans completely by AI friends, partners, even therapists. The metaphor captures how each technological "solution" creates new dependencies while eroding our capacity for direct human interaction. As Morrison puts it, technology "removes that sort of tactile sense that humorous, trusting, improvisatory, make do sense that we have when we deal face to face with people." Morrison notes that "for some, it's easier. It's easier to have an AI friend because it's always going to tell you, you're wonderful." This highlights how the wedge works not just through dependency, but through the seductive appeal of artificial relationships that never require the messy, challenging work of real human connection.1. AI is Pure Hype, Not a Real Revolution"I think you just have to break it down and look at AI from a PR perspective and see what we were promised. We were promised human level AI by Marvin Minsky in 1970... And I think we're seeing the same cycle happening again."Morrison argues we're experiencing the third "AI winter" - a pattern of overpromising and eventual collapse that's repeated since the 1970s.2. The AI Wedge Drives Human Separation"They're a bit like a wedge, like a V-shaped wedge... So it starts off really small... and then the final stage of that wedge is the replacement of the humans completely by Mark Zuckerberg's AI friends, by AI partners, AI therapists, these human surrogates."Technology gradually separates us from authentic human connection through a three-stage process: novelty, dependency, replacement.3. Neuralink Represents Dangerous Human Experimentation"When it's a dirty operating table with surgical glue being squeezed into your skull as electronic treads have shaken themselves loose from deep in your brain... then it starts to become a different story entirely."Morrison warns that Silicon Valley's "move fast and break things" mentality becomes morally problematic when applied to human bodies and brains.4. We Shouldn't Ask AI Life's Big Questions"The tragedy that I'm trying to put forward in the book is that we shouldn't give that big question to computers to answer. We shouldn't ask AI, why are we alive?"His novel For Emma explores the danger of outsourcing fundamental human questions about meaning and purpose to artificial intelligence.5. The Utilitarian vs. Romantic Struggle Continues"We're never gonna solve this, but what will happen will be there will be periods in history where one side takes dominance over the other... And now we are seeing the return of the utilitarian mindset once again with the new technologies enabled by AI."Morrison sees current tech development as part of a historical cycle between utilitarian planning (Bentham-style) and romantic individualism, with AI representing a new form of surveillance society.I’ve know Morrison for many years and generally share his take on Big Tech. But I differ on his view about what he calls the coming 3rd “AI winter”. There’s too much capital and technology now to imagine this kind of sharp freeze on the AI economy. For better or worse, this thing is happening now. The threshold has been crossed. It’s already radically changing the nature of education and work. And we are still in the earliest chapters of the revolution. That AI wedge is going to get seriously painful. 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

You've heard it before and you'll hear it again. AI is a gold rush. It will change everything. But 2025 is different, That Was The Week tech newsletter publisher Keith Teare argues. This is the year that the AI gold rush is changing everything. In our reflection of the first six months of 2025, Keith argues that we're witnessing a fundamental "phase shift" - not just another tech cycle, but an inflection point where scale becomes a necessity for survival. From Meta's $100 million developer deals to the consolidation of 80% of venture capital into just five firms, from Cloudflare's revolutionary "toll booth" economy replacing advertising models to the tokenization of private markets through platforms like Robinhood, the rules of Silicon Valley are being rewritten. As graduates face an employment crisis and AI superstars command unprecedented compensation, Keith and I debate whether this transformation represents capitalism's natural evolution or a dangerous concentration of power that could reshape the global economy forever.1. Scale Has Become a Survival Requirement2025 marks a shift where scale isn't just advantageous—it's necessary for survival. With 80% of venture capital flowing to just five firms (Andreessen, Sequoia, Cotu, Lightspeed, and one other), and late-stage investors writing billion-dollar checks for 3-5x returns instead of traditional smaller bets for 100x gains, the venture capital game has fundamentally changed.2. The "Toll Booth" Economy is Replacing AdvertisingCloudflare's "paper crawl" initiative represents a seismic shift from advertising-based revenue models to direct payment systems where AI companies must pay publishers for content access. This could create new revenue streams for content creators while giving them control over how their intellectual property is used for AI training.3. Tokenization is Democratizing Private MarketsRobinhood's tokenization of companies like SpaceX and OpenAI allows European retail investors to buy shares in private companies through crypto-backed tokens. This convergence of private markets, public markets, and crypto could fundamentally change who can access high-growth investments.4. AI Superstars Command Unprecedented ValueWhile AI eliminates many jobs, it's creating extreme value concentration among top talent. Meta's $100 million deals for individual AI experts and OpenAI's $6 billion deal with Johnny Ive illustrate how differentiated developers are becoming incredibly valuable in an age where most workers face displacement.5. 2025 is the Inflection Point, Not the FutureUnlike previous tech cycles, Keith argues this isn't about future potential—the transformation is happening now. With companies like OpenAI reaching $14 billion in annual revenue and AI's economic impact becoming undeniable, 2025 represents the moment when AI shifted from promise to reality, making it a true inflection point rather than just another tech trend.Where Keith and I fundamentally disagree is over jobs. He seems to skate over the implications of jobless consequences of AI, believing in some sort of magical age of abundance in which we will all be free to pursue our hobbies. I think this is entirely wrong. This is where his Silicon Valley language about having to “scale or die” is so terrifying. Over the next couple of decades, tens of millions of people are going to lose both their jobs and careers to the AI revolution. Some might find other kinds of work, but most won’t. The age of abundance is total a myth. Instead of “scale or die”, the mantra of the coming age will be “scale or starve”. What we are about to experience is the kind of economic scarcity that will utterly transform our societies and politics. 2025 might be an inflection point for Silicon Valley. But that existential moment for the rest of us will come in around 2030.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

On July 4, 2025, is America still worth the fireworks? For Paul Orgel, producer of America 250, C-SPAN's upcoming celebration of 250 years of independence, the answer is a full stars 'n stripes YES! But even this C-SPAN veteran acknowledges the complexity of celebrating America in 2025. "We're not just going to be celebratory," Orgel admits, "but realistic to the good, the bad and the ugly of our country's history." As America stands one year away from its 250th birthday, the question isn't whether national independence deserves to be celebrated—it's whether Americans can still find common ground in their shared experiment. With political divisions deeper than ever and historical narratives under fierce debate, Orgel's mission feels both urgent and impossible: reminding a fractured nation why it's still worth celebrating together.1. C-SPAN’s America 250 Will Address the "Good, Bad and Ugly:" "This effort of ours will not just be celebratory, but will be realistic to the good, the bad and the ugly of our country's history." Orgel promises C-SPAN won't shy away from difficult topics like slavery and treatment of indigenous peoples, even as they celebrate America's founding.2. The Founders Expected Political Division: "When you read about how the early debates and early politics in this country were conducted, very, very rabid, very opinionated, very harsh in their political campaigns... I don't think founders would be surprised at how divided politics are in the country now." Current political polarization isn't unprecedented—it echoes the fierce debates of America's earliest days.3. "Freedom" Still Defines the American Experience: "I just interviewed a bunch of people in Boston and Philadelphia about what it means to be an American. And the word that kept coming up was freedom. Freedom to live where you want, do what you want." Despite current challenges, Americans still see freedom as their defining characteristic.4. America Remains an Ongoing Experiment: "They talk about this country still being an experiment, right? How can we get better? How can we become more unified as a country? I don't think that conversation ever ends." The work of building America isn't finished—it's a continuous process of improvement and adaptation.5. The Constitution's Flexibility Was It’s Genius: "The beauty... is that they left that Constitution amendable. I think they realized that they weren't gonna have all the answers to everything." The founders' decision to make the Constitution changeable shows their wisdom in creating a framework that could evolve with the times.Like C-SPAN's Paul Orgel, I think America is worth the fireworks. But not because the American Dream is alive and well—because it's still worth improving. What strikes me about this interview is how Orgel refuses to abandon the dream even while acknowledging its flaws, contradictions and, perhaps, even its fundamental imperfectability. Over the next 18 months, we'll be featuring more content from C-SPAN's celebration of America's 250 years of independence. So enjoy today’s fireworks and get ready for many more over the next year and a half.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

Few people have spent more of their lives thinking about the Nazis than the English filmmaker and writer Laurence Rees. In his new book, The Nazi Mind, Rees offers a lifetime of knowledge about the Nazis to warn about today’s fragility of democracy. Borrowing from his extensive interviews of both former Nazis and Holocaust survivors, Rees discusses how Nazi ideology developed, why democracy proved so vulnerable in 1930s Germany, and what modern societies must understand about the enduring appeal of authoritarianism. Institutions we take for granted, he warns, can be far more fragile than we imagine.1. Democracy is More Fragile Than We Think"Everything is fragile and often a great deal more fragile than we think. That's the recurring theme of many of the interviewees that I met. Never saw this coming... You can have the most fragile piece of glass on your mantelpiece and it can stay there for 50 years, but someone can just touch it and it breaks." Democratic institutions require constant vigilance to survive.2. The Nazis Started as a Fringe Movement"Crucial statistic people should hold onto is that in 1928, the Nazis only got 2.6% of the vote. The vast majority of Germans rejected them... And then five years later, Hitler's chancellor." Economic crisis and democratic failure allowed extremism to flourish.3. Nazi Anti-Semitism Was Uniquely Dangerous"Unlike in previous anti-Semitic attacks going back hundreds and hundreds of years, there wasn't a possibility of a Jew saving themselves by saying, no, I'm baptized Christian... The Nazis saw you as a Jew based on your Jewish heritage, and so you found that there was no escape." This racial ideology made the Holocaust uniquely all-encompassing and deadly.4. Charismatic Leadership Requires Hero Worship"It was vital for a charismatic leader that the population see him as a hero... The notion of a charismatic leader being a hero figure is incredibly useful and important." Modern propaganda techniques were pioneered by figures like Goebbels.5. Historical Ignorance Enables Extremism"The bigger issue is absolute historical illiteracy... All this nonsense, all this misinformation, all this fake history, to coin a phrase, comes in to fill the gap." Without understanding history, people become vulnerable to manipulation and conspiracy theories.Forget the 12 warnings. There are only two ways of thinking about the Nazi mind: either it’s evil or it’s banal. In his historical movies and books, Rees treats Nazis as uniquely literal manifestation of pure evil. In contrast, Hannah Arendt’s 1963 book, Eichmann in Jerusalem, focuses on its human ordinariness - what she called the banality of evil. It’s an argument that Jonathan Glazer brilliantly develops in his controversial 2023 Oscar-winning movie, The Zone of Interest. As you can probably sense from my conversation with Rees, I’m in the Arendt/Glazer camp on this. Evil is always all around us. It’s in Guantanamo and Gaza, as well as Belsen and Auschwitz. 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