Keen On America

In today’s THAT WAS THE WEEK tech newsletter, Keith Teare asks what “civilization” is good for. Triggered by David Brooks’ “We Can Achieve Great Things” NYTimes piece, Keith’s editorial this week focuses on how we can “earn” the future through constant innovation. The problem - as everyone from Keith Teare to David Brooks to KeenOnAmerica guest Yoni Appelbaum all acknowledge - is that America has become stuck in camps, routines and ideologies. So how to unstick America? How to reestablish belief once again in the future?

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Here are the 5 Keen On America take-aways from my conversation this week with Keith Teare:

* Civilization and Technology: Keith argues that civilization is deeply interconnected with technological progress, suggesting that innovation has historically enabled human advancement and that government's role should naturally diminish as abundance increases.

* David Brooks' Essay on Progress: We discuss Brooks' New York Times piece "We Can Achieve Great Things," which examines how progressives have built systems that inadvertently render government ineffective, and the need for a compelling narrative about the desired future.

* The "Stuck" Society: We explore Yoni Appelbaum's argument that America has become immobile, with people no longer moving for opportunity and becoming "stuck" in their locations, which contradicts the traditional American dream.

* AI Democratizing Coding: We discuss how AI tools are allowing non-coders to build applications, with Keith sharing his personal experience creating an app without knowing the programming language Swift, suggesting this might enable individuals to build significant businesses.

* AI Competition Landscape: Our conversation covers recent AI developments, including Perplexity's move to create an AI web browser, OpenAI's GPT-4.5 Orion launch (which Keith acknowledges has been rushed to market), and the intensifying competition between companies like Anthropic, OpenAI, and others in the rapidly evolving AI space.

Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

In the long run, Keynes famously quipped, we are all dead. But Swedish entrepreneur Kristian Ronn reverses Keynes to argue that in the short term we, as a species, might also be death. In his new book Darwinian Trap, Ronn argues that we're hardwired to prioritize immediate benefits over long-term consequences, creating existential risks like nuclear war and uncontrolled AI development. Ronn suggests we need better system design with proper incentives to overcome these tendencies. He proposes controlling critical parts of technology supply chains (like AI chips) to ensure responsible use, similar to nuclear nonproliferation treaties. Despite acknowledging all the obvious challenges of these kind of UN style regulatory initiatives, Ronn remains hopeful that rational thinking and well-designed systems can help humanity transcend its evolutionary limitations.

Here are the 5 KEEN ON take-aways from our conversation with Kristian Ronn:

* The "Darwinian Trap" refers to how humans and systems are hardwired for short-term thinking due to evolutionary forces, creating both personal and existential risks.

* "Offensive realism" in international politics drives nations to compete for resources and develop increasingly dangerous weapons, creating existential threats through arms races.

* AI poses significant existential risks, particularly as a technology multiplier that could enable more destructive weapons and engineered pandemics.

* System design with proper incentives is crucial for overcoming our evolutionary short-term thinking—we need to "change the rules of the game" rather than blame human nature.

* Strategic control of technology supply chains (like AI chips) could potentially create frameworks for responsible AI development, similar to nuclear nonproliferation treaties.

Kristian Rönn is the CEO and co-founder of Normative, a software tool for sustainability accounting. He has a background in mathematics, philosophy, computer science, and artificial intelligence. Before he started Normative, he worked at the University of Oxford’s Future of Humanity Institute on issues related to global catastrophic risks.

Should lawyers, home alarm fitters, hairdressers and plumbers all have to get a license to do their business? And what about dog walkers and surgeons? It’s an absurd question, of course, but as Rebecca Haw Allensworth reveals in her new book, The Licensing Racket, we live in absurdly credentialed times. As Allensworth notes, at a moment in history when AI is about to replace many professional workers with bots, there really are required licenses for “trades” like home alarm fitters. And what about podcasters? Should amateurs like myself have to get a professional license to broadcast conversations with experts like Rebecca Haw Allensworth?

Here are the 5 KEEN-ON takeaways from our conversation with Allensworth:

* Licensing as exclusion rather than protection: Allensworth argues that many professional licensing requirements serve more to restrict entry to professions and maintain high prices than to actually protect the public.

* Self-regulation creates conflicts of interest: Licensing boards are typically composed of professionals from the industry they regulate, creating inherent conflicts where they prioritize their profession's interests over public protection.

* Appropriate vs. excessive licensing: While Allensworth supports licensing for complex and dangerous professions (doctors, lawyers, pilots), she criticizes excessive requirements for jobs like hairstyling, which requires as many educational hours as law school.

* Regulatory failure in healthcare: The licensing system contributes to America's healthcare problems by increasing costs and creating scarcity, while simultaneously failing to effectively discipline dangerous practitioners (as seen in the opioid crisis).

* Alternative approaches to professionalism: Professionalism doesn't necessarily require "closure" (restricting who can enter). Certification systems that signal quality without prohibiting practice may be more effective than licensing for many occupations.

Rebecca Haw Allensworth is a Associate Dean for Research and holds the David Daniels Allen Distinguished Chair of Law at Vanderbilt Law School. She studies antitrust and professional licensing. Her work on antitrust focuses on how to adapt competition policy to address competition problems posed by tech platforms and her research on professional licensing explores how lawmakers should balance the need for expertise in regulating the professions with the problems that can arise from self-regulation. She is the author of The Licensing Racket: How We Decide Who Is Allowed to Work and Why It Goes Wrong? (Harvard University Press, February 2025), a deep dive into the pathologies of professional licensing in America. Her article about medical licensing boards and unethical prescribers, “Licensed to Pill,” appeared in The New York Review of Books in July 2020. Her work has been cited by the U.S. Supreme Court and has received the thirteenth annual Jerry S. Cohen Memorial Fund Writing Award for groundbreaking antitrust scholarship.

Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting the daily KEEN ON show, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy interview series. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children.

Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Who wants to change their life? Who want to transform their relationships and increase their influence? If that’s you, then Stanford based psychologist Caroline Fleck might be your therapist. In her new book, VALIDATION, Fleck lays out a skill set that, she promises, not only revolutionized psychology but can revolutionize all of us. Skeptical? Yes, I was before talking with Dr Fleck. But she actually offer some very practical advice on how we can all improve our relationships and build our self-confidence.

Here are the 5 KEEN ON take-aways from our conversation with Caroline Fleck:

* Validation vs. Praise: Validation is about showing acceptance and understanding ("you're there, you get it, you care"), not about praise or agreement. Many people confuse these concepts.

* Universal Human Need: Everyone seeks acceptance regardless of demographics, gender, or background. The absence of feeling validated contributes to suffering.

* Balancing Acceptance and Change: Effective communication, especially in therapy, requires both validation (acceptance) and problem-solving (change). Validation creates the conditions for people to be receptive to change.

* Applications Beyond Therapy: Validation skills can transform relationships, reduce conflict, and bridge divides in families, couples, and broader society. These are learnable skills that don't require a psychology degree.

* Concerns About AI in Therapy: While AI can effectively mimic validation techniques, Fleck worries about the one-directional nature of AI relationships and their inability to foster genuine connection and reciprocal skill development.

Dr. Caroline Fleck is a licensed psychologist, corporate consultant, and an Adjunct Clinical Instructor at Stanford University. She is a respected voice in psychology and has been featured in national media outlets, including The New York Times, Good Morning America, and The Huffington Post. Her upcoming book with Penguin Random House is the first ever to make the validation skills therapists use to get through to anyone available to everyone. In her private practice, Caroline specializes in evidence-based treatments for adults, adolescents, and couples, including Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT), and Gottman Method Couples Therapy. Her corporate work focuses on creating high-performing individuals and teams using the proven methods of behavioral science. Caroline graduated from the University of Michigan (BA) and Duke University (MA, PhD).

According to the Atlantic’s Yoni Applebaum, America is STUCK - literally and otherwise. In his new book Stuck: How the Privileged and the Propertied Broke the Engine of American Opportunity. Appelbaum argues that America faces not just a housing crisis but a mobility crisis, with prohibitively expensive housing in prosperous areas preventing people from moving toward opportunity. Applebaum traces how zoning laws, initially driven by racism and classism, have created a system where Americans move less than ever before, despite more wanting to relocate. This decreased mobility has wide-ranging consequences for civic engagement, social cohesion, and economic dynamism. His solution: simplify building regulations, reform housing policy to facilitate mobility, and dramatically increase housing supply.

Here are the 5 KEEN ON take-aways from our conversation with Appelbaum:

* America faces a mobility crisis, not just a housing crisis: People can't afford to move to areas with economic opportunity, which has dramatically reduced the rate of Americans relocating (from 1 in 3 annually in the 19th century to 1 in 13 today).

* Restrictive zoning laws have racist and classist origins: America's first zoning laws were designed to segregate Chinese residents in Modesto, and Berkeley's first single-family zoning aimed to keep out working-class people.

* Decreased mobility has widespread negative effects: Beyond economics, reduced mobility damages civic engagement, social cohesion, and even contributes to political polarization and populism.

* Tenements served a positive historical purpose: Despite reformers' criticism, tenements were vehicles for economic mobility that allowed cities to absorb immigrant waves - a capacity many cities have lost.

* Applebaum offers three solutions: Simplify building regulations, redesign housing policy to facilitate movement rather than keeping people in place, and dramatically increase housing supply ("build baby build").

Yoni Appelbaum is a deputy executive editor at The Atlantic and the author of Stuck: How the Privileged and the Propertied Broke the Engine of American Opportunity. Appelbaum is a social and cultural historian of the United States. Before joining The Atlantic, he was a lecturer on history and literature at Harvard University. He previously taught at Babson College and at Brandeis University, where he received his Ph.D. in American history.

Not everyone sees Trump or Musk as an existential threat to the American federal bureaucracy. In the March cover story of Harper’s, their Washington DC editor Andrew Cockburn argues that this latest war against the American state is “futile”. He expresses skepticism that DOGE’s efforts to dismantle the Federal will succeed, suggesting courts will likely block them as they did during Trump's first term. He predicts Musk's influence will diminish and that Trump will eventually sideline him. Cockburn also underlines the "contractor state" where much government work is already privatized, making structural change difficult. He criticizes Democrats for lacking energy and ideas, and suggests they need to disconnect from corporate interests and address issues like housing affordability and insurance costs to reconnect with voters.

Here are the 5 KEEN ON takeaways from our conversation with Andrew Cockburn:

* Cockburn believes Trump's attempts to dismantle the federal bureaucracy will likely fail, as the courts and bureaucratic resistance will eventually prevail, just as they did during his first term.

* He predicts Elon Musk's influence in the administration will be temporary, with Trump eventually sidelining him as other courtiers like Kash Patel assert their authority.

* The "contractor state" (privatized government functions) makes structural reform difficult, as contracts can't be easily canceled without legal challenges.

* Cockburn sees a fundamental crisis in the Democratic Party, describing a lack of energy and clear ideas at their recent convention, with leadership disconnected from working-class concerns.

* He suggests Democrats need to divorce themselves from corporate interests and address real issues affecting Americans, like unaffordable housing, exploitative insurance practices, and the impact of tech companies on local communities.

Andrew Cockburn is the Washington Editor of Harper's magazine and the author of many articles and books on national security, including the New York Times Editor's Choice Rumsfeld and The Threat, which destroyed the myth of Soviet military superiority underpinning the Cold War. He is a regular opinion contributor to the Los Angeles Times and has written for, among others, the New York Times, National Geographic and the London Review of Books.

Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting the daily KEEN ON show, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy interview series. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children.

Given the shameful American sacrifice of Ukraine, there will be few timelier movies than Anna Kryvenko’s upcoming “This House is Undamaged”,. It will be an Orwellian documentary examining the Russian destruction of Mariupol, the Ukrainian city devastated by Putin’s invasion in 2022. Krivenko, a Fellow at the Artist in Residence program, Institute for Advanced Studies at CEU, explains how Russian authorities are rapidly rebuilding and selling properties there while erasing Ukrainian history and creating the big lie of Mariupol as a historically Russian city. Kryvenko, originally from Kyiv, also discusses the parallels between Putin's and Trump's lies about Ukraine, summarizing their fundamental misrepresentation of the truth as a "carnival of hypocrisy."

Here are the five KEEN ON takeaways from our conversation with Kryvenko:

* The Russians are engaged in a systematic erasure of Mariupol's Ukrainian identity, not just through physical reconstruction but through an aggressive propaganda campaign that claims the city was "always Russian." This reconstruction effort began shortly after the city's destruction in 2022.

* Pre-war Mariupol was not characterized by deep Russian-Ukrainian divisions as Russian propaganda claims. According to Kryvenko, language differences weren't a source of conflict before political forces deliberately weaponized them.

* The rebuilding of Mariupol has a dark commercial aspect - Russians are selling apartments in reconstructed buildings, sometimes in properties where the original Ukrainian owners were killed, and marketing them as vacation properties while ignoring the city's tragic recent history.

* There's a humanitarian crisis unfolding as some Ukrainians are being forced to return to occupied Mariupol because they have nowhere else to live, with Kryvenko citing statistics that around 150,000 people returned to occupied territories by the end of 2024.

* The filmmaker is using a unique methodology of gathering evidence through social media content, vlogs, and propaganda materials to document both the physical transformation of the city and the narrative being constructed around it, rather than traditional documentary filming techniques.

Transcript of Anna Kryvenko Interview

Andrew Keen: Hello, everybody. As the situation in Ukraine becomes more absurd, it seems as if the lies of Donald Trump and the lies of Vladimir Putin are becoming increasingly similar. Trump has been talking about Zelensky and Ukraine, what is described as a barrage of lies. As CNN reports, Trump falsely called Zelensky a dictator. It's becoming more and more absurd. It's almost as if the whole script was written by some Central European or East Central European absurdist. Meanwhile, the Russians continue to lie as well. There was an interesting piece recently in the Wall Street Journal about Russia wanting to erase Ukraine's future and its past. My guest today, Anna Kryvenko, is a filmmaker. She's the director of an important new movie in the process of being made called "This House Is Undamaged." She's a visual fellow at the Central European University, and she's joining us from Budapest today. Congratulations on "This House is Undamaged." Before we talk specifically about the film, do you agree with my observations that there seems to be an increasingly eerie synergy between the lies coming out of Washington, D.C. and Moscow, between Trump and Putin?

Anna Kryvenko: I think the situation is becoming more crazy and absurd. That's a better word to use in this situation. For me, all of this looks like some carnival of hypocrisy. It's unbelievable that someone can use the word "dictator" in comparison with Vladimir Putin or speaking about this 4% of the people who support Zelensky when he says it's only four persons. It looks completely absurd. And this information comes from Moscow, not from actual Ukrainian statistics.

Andrew Keen: The phrase you use "carnival of hypocrisy" I think is a good description. I might even use that in the title of this conversation. It's almost as if Trump in particular is parodying himself, but he seems so separated from reality that it seems as if he's actually being serious, at least from my position in California. How does it look from your perspective in Budapest? You're originally from Ukraine, so obviously you have a particular interest in this situation.

Anna Kryvenko: I don't even know what to think because it's changing so fast into absurd situations. Every day when I open the news, I'm speaking with people and it looks like some kind of farce. You're expecting that the next day someone will tell you that this is a joke or something, but it's not. It's really hard to believe that this is reality now, but unfortunately it is.

Andrew Keen: Kundera wrote his famous novel "The Joke" as a parody of the previous authoritarian regime in Central Europe. Your new movie, "This House is Undamaged" - I know you are an artist in residence at the Institute for Advanced Study at Central European University - is very much in that vein. Tell us about the project.

Anna Kryvenko: We're in work in progress. I was doing research in the archives and internet archives. This documentary film will explore the transformation of Mariupol, a Ukrainian city that was destroyed by the Russian invasion in 2022. I will use only archives and found footage materials from people who are in Mariupol now, or who were in Mariupol at the time of invasion, who were actually trying to film what's going on. Sometimes I'll also use propaganda images from Russia, from Russian authorities. In May 2022, Mariupol, after intense fighting, was almost completely destroyed.

Andrew Keen: Tell us the story of Mariupol, this town on the old border of Russia and Ukraine. It's in the southeast of Ukraine.

Anna Kryvenko: It's on the shore of the Azov Sea. It's part of Donetsk region. It was always an industrial city, most known for the Azovstal factory. In 2022, after incredible brutality of Russian war against Ukraine, this strategically important city was almost completely destroyed in May 2022 and was occupied by Russian government. About 90% of buildings were destroyed or demolished in some way.

Andrew Keen: The Russians have essentially leveled the town, perhaps in the same way as the Israelis have essentially destroyed Gaza.

Anna Kryvenko: Exactly. For a lot of people, we have this image of destroyed Mariupol until today. But after these terrible events, the Russians started this big campaign to rebuild the city. Of course, we know it was done just to erase all the scars of war, to erase it from the city's history. They started the reconstruction. Some people who stayed in Mariupol thought they would have new housing since they had no place to live. But business is business - Russian authorities started to sell these apartments to Russian citizens.

Andrew Keen: I'm surprised Trump hasn't got involved. Given his real estate background and his cozy relationship with Putin, maybe Trump real estate will start selling real estate in Mariupol.

Anna Kryvenko: I was thinking the same thing this last week. It was looking like such an absurd situation with Mariupol. But now we are in this business mode again with Ukraine and all the minerals. It's only the economical part of war they look at.

Andrew Keen: He probably would come up with some argument why he really owns Mariupol.

Anna Kryvenko: Yes.

Andrew Keen: Coming back to the Wall Street Journal piece about Russia wanting ...

Lots of healthy disagreement in this week’s THAT WAS THE WEEK tech show with Keith Teare. We debate the impact of AI on coding jobs, with Keith suggesting that while traditional coding skills may become less important, system architecture and AI guidance skills will be crucial to maintaining the value of human labor. We also discuss the rise of early-stage unicorns, military-tech AI start-ups, and disagree strongly on the status of billionaires, with Keith arguing that it’s “not hard” to be a billionaire in Silicon Valley today.

Here are the five KEEN ON takeaways from today’s conversation:

* Divergent Market and Valley Sentiment: While the stock market is having its worst performance since Trump's inauguration, Silicon Valley remains optimistic, particularly about AI. Keith argues there's no short-term correlation between Silicon Valley sentiment and market performance.

* Evolution of Tech Skills: The rise of AI is changing the nature of technical skills needed in startups. Keith suggests that traditional coding skills are becoming less crucial, while the ability to architect systems and guide AI is becoming more important. He notes that universities are already adapting their computer science programs to include AI.

* Rise of Efficient Startups: AI is enabling lean startups to do more with fewer people. Keith uses his own company Signal Rank as an example, noting they've built a complex system with just five people, two of whom are coders, highlighting a shift in how startups can be built efficiently.

* Military-Tech Convergence: There's a growing trend of Silicon Valley companies entering the defense sector, exemplified by Saronic raising $600 million for autonomous warships. This represents a broader shift in how military technology is being developed and funded through private companies.

* Debate about Wealth Creation: The conversation concludes with a debate about wealth accumulation, sparked by Robert Reich's controversial X post about billionaires. Keith argues that technology's global reach and distribution capabilities have made it easier than ever to build valuable companies, with Andrew strongly disputing the idea that becoming a billionaire is "not that hard."

That Was The Week - February 22, 2025

With Andrew Keen and Keith Teare

Andrew Keen: Hello everybody. It is Saturday, February the 22nd, 2025. The last Saturday in February, the last Saturday we're going to do That Was The Week tech roundup. It's been an odd week. On the one hand, the stocks notched the worst week since Trump's inauguration six weeks ago. It's been a long six weeks. According to the Financial Times, the geopolitical rupture, which of course has been caused by Trump, has sparked a quiet market rebellion. Niall Ferguson had an interesting piece in today's Wall Street Journal about the demise of the United States because of its massive debt, and Elon Musk has been continuing to make a public fool of himself this week, waving a chainsaw and pretending to be an Argentine politician, which I'm not sure reflects that well on him. However, in spite of all that bad news, Keith Teare's That Was The Week newsletter is actually very optimistic. Unicorns are back, according to Keith, and we have an image, of course, created by AI of these imaginary beasts horses with horns. Keith is joining us, as always, from Palo Alto, the home of optimism. Keith, do you think it's coincidental that suddenly everyone is optimistic again in Silicon Valley whilst the market is sliding to those two things in an odd way, kind of go together?

Keith Teare: There's no correlation between Silicon Valley and the markets at all in any day to day sense. There's long term correlation, but not short term. Silicon Valley is having a moment because of AI, and Grok Three was launched this week. Crunchbase launched its new AI driven data platform, and the CEO declared that historical data is dead, meaning only future predictive data is any good anymore.

Andrew Keen: And historical data being dead. The future is predictive intelligence. What does that mean?

Keith Teare: He means that it's now possible, because of AI, to see patterns and trends and predict them. Just knowing the past is not the point anymore. Obviously it's stretching a point. You still need the history from the past to see the trends. But he's saying the needle has turned from looking backwards to predicting the future because of data. That's true in biology as well. There's a massive arc this week announced a new model that understands DNA and can predict the likelihood of solving diseases.

Andrew Keen: Your editorial this week, Keith, is quite personal. You know that as the person in charge of Signal Rank, your startup, AI has been remarkably helpful in it. You refer in the editorial to an interesting piece in the New York Times about how AI is changing Silicon Valley build startups like your own Signal. What does your experience at Signal Rank tell us about the future of startups?

Keith Teare: Signal Rank is five people. Two of us have coding skills. We've raised $5 million ever to spend on building Signal. All the other money we raised is to invest in companies. That article is focusing on the fact that it's almost like the Lean Startup story from the early 2000s, except it's true this time, because the most expensive thing in a startup is people. And the one thing you need less of is people. That's a massive shift. Of course, if you're building large language models, the opposite is true, because the most expensive thing is GPUs, which you pay Nvidia for. And that's super expensive. But everything else that's sitting on top of that is getting faster, cheaper and better.

Andrew Keen: You also refer to a New York Times piece about how AI is prompting an evolution, not an extinction for coders. Your son's a coder, in a sense, you're a coder. Ultimately, one and I was at this thing with Tim Draper a couple of weeks ago where he was talking about companies, billion dollar companies built and managed by single people won't ultimately make most coders extinct. Maybe not all. But when founders like yourselves simply become coders and you won't have the need for other help.

Keith Teare: I make the point in an editorial that I didn't write a single line of code, but I've built a very complex system with lots of AI agents working together and delivering results for users. Learning to code is going to be a low requirement. A very high requirement is learning to architect and guide the AI because the AI can code, but it can't imagine systems to build or know when it got it right or when it got it wrong. The skill base is going to shift to what normally would be the domain of a product manager who has coding skills and can understand what's happening and can understand what it can ask for and what it can't ask for. But coding itself, learning Python, learning JavaScript or Java? Probably less essential.

Andrew Keen: So what happens to kids like your son who just graduated and now works in Silicon Valley as a coder?

Keith Teare: He'll still be needed for some time. In his company, they're not allowed to use AI yet. It's a little bit like dying skills always protect themselves until they can't. Engineers that are defensive or companies that are defensive about using AI are going to fall behind a little bit. But eventua...

Why is reforming capitalism so essential? In the latest issue of Liberties Quarterly, Tim Wu argues that unregulated capitalism not only leads to economic monopolies, but also drives populist anger and authoritarian politics. In “The Real Road to Serfdom”, Wu advocates for "decentralized capitalism" with distributed economic power, citing examples from Scandinavia and East Asia. Drawing from his experience in the Biden administration's antitrust efforts, he emphasizes the importance of preventing industry concentration. Wu expresses concern about big tech's growing political influence and argues that challenging monopolies is critical for fostering innovation and maintaining economic progress in the United States.

Here are the 5 KEEN ON AMERICA takeaways from our interview with Tim Wu:

* Historical Parallels: Wu sees concerning parallels between our current era and the 1930s, characterized by concentrated economic power, fragile economic conditions, and the rise of populist leaders. He suggests we're in a period where leaders are moving beyond winning elections to attempting to alter constitutional frameworks.

* The Monopoly-Autocracy Connection: Wu argues there's a dangerous cycle where monopolies create economic inequality, which generates populist anger, which then enables authoritarian leaders to rise to power. He cites Hugo Chavez as a pioneer of this modern autocratic model that leaders like Trump have followed.

* Decentralized Capitalism: Wu advocates for an economic system with multiple centers of distributed economic power, rather than just a few giant companies accumulating wealth. He points to Denmark, Taiwan, and post-WWII East Asia as successful examples of more balanced economic structures.

* Antitrust Legacy: Wu believes the Biden administration's antitrust enforcement efforts have created lasting changes in legal standards and public consciousness that won't be easily reversed. He emphasizes that challenging monopolies is crucial for maintaining innovation and preventing industry stagnation.

* Big Tech and Power: Wu expresses concern about big tech companies' growing political influence, comparing it to historical examples like AT&T and IBM. He's particularly worried about AI potentially reinforcing existing power structures rather than democratizing opportunities.

Complete Transcript: Tim Wu on The Real Road to Serfdom

Andrew Keen: Hello, everybody. We live in very strange times. That's no exaggeration. Yesterday, we had Nick Bryant on the show, the author of The Forever War. He was the BBC's man in Washington, DC for a long time. In our conversation, Nick suggested that we're living in really historic times, equivalent to the fall of the Berlin Wall, 9/11, perhaps even the beginnings of the Second World War.

My guest today, like Nick, is a deep thinker. Tim Wu will be very well known to you for many things, including his book, The Attention Merchants. He was involved in the Biden White House, teaches law at Columbia University, and much more. He has a new book coming out later in the year on November 4th, The Age of Extraction. He has a very interesting essay in this issue of Liberties, the quarterly magazine of ideas, called "The Real Road to Serfdom."

Tim had a couple of interesting tweets in the last couple of days, one comparing the behavior of President Trump to Germany's 1933 enabling act. And when it comes to Ukraine, Tim wrote, "How does the GOP feel about their president's evident plan to forfeit the Cold War?" Tim Wu is joining us from his home in the village of Manhattan. Tim, welcome. Before we get to your excellent essay in Liberties, how would you historicize what we're living through at the moment?

Tim Wu: I think the 1930s are not the wrong way to look at it. Prior to that period, you had this extraordinary concentration of economic power in a very fragile environment. A lot of countries had experienced an enormous crash and you had the rise of populist leaders, with Mussolini being the pioneer of the model. This has been going on for at least 5 or 6 years now. We're in that middle period where it's moving away from people just winning elections to trying to really alter the constitution of their country. So I think the mid-30s is probably about right.

Andrew Keen: You were involved in the Biden administration. You were one of the major thinkers when it came to antitrust. Have you been surprised with what's happened since Biden left office? The speed, the radicalness of this Trump administration?

Tim Wu: Yes, because I expected something more like the first Trump administration, which was more of a show with a lot of flash but poor execution. This time around, the execution is also poor but more effective. I didn't fully expect that Elon Musk would actually be a government official at this point and that he'd have this sort of vandalism project going on. The fact they won all of the houses of Congress was part of the problem and has made the effort go faster.

Andrew Keen: You talk about Musk. We've done many shows on Musk's role in all this and the seeming arrival of Silicon Valley or a certain version of Silicon Valley in Washington, DC. You're familiar with both worlds, the world of big tech and Silicon Valley and Washington. Is that your historical reading that these two worlds are coming together in this second Trump administration?

Tim Wu: It's very natural for economic power to start to seek political power. It follows from the basic view of monopoly as a creature that wants to defend itself, and the second observation that the most effective means of self-defense is control of government. If you follow that very simple logic, it stands to reason that the most powerful economic entities would try to gain control of government.

I want to talk about the next five years. The tech industry is following the lead of Palantir and Peter Thiel, who were pioneers in thinking that instead of trying to avoid government, they should try to control it. I think that is the obvious move over the next four years.

Andrew Keen: I've been reading your excellent essay in Liberties, "The Real Road to Serfdom." When did you write it? It seems particularly pertinent this week, although of course you didn't write it knowing exactly what was going to be happening with Musk and Washington DC and Trump and Ukraine.

Tim Wu: I wrote it about two years ago when I got out of the White House. The themes are trying to get at eternal issues about the dangers of economic power and concentrated economic power and its unaccountability. If it made predictions that are starting to come true, I don't know if that's good or bad.

Andrew Keen: "The Real Road to Serfdom" is, of course, a reference to the Hayek book "The Road to Serfdom." Did you consciously use that title with reference to Hayek, or was that a Liberties decision?

Tim Wu: That was my decision. At that point, and I may still write this, I was thinking of writing a book just called "The Real Road to Serfdom." I am both fascinated and a fan of Hayek in certain ways. I think he nailed certain things exactly right but makes big errors at the same time.

To his credit, Hayek was very critical of monopoly and very critical of the role of the state in reinforcing monopoly. But he had an almost naivete about what powe...

How historic are Trump 2.0’s first few weeks? For the veteran correspondent, Nick Bryant, the longtime BBC man in Washington DC, what the Trump regime has done in the first few weeks of his second administration is as historic as the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. It’s the end of the America we haver known for the last seventy years, he says. Bryant describes Trump's rapprochement with Russia as Neville Chamberlain style appeasement and notes the dramatic shifts in U.S. foreign policy, particularly regarding Ukraine and European allies. He sees Trump's actions as revealing rather than changing America's true nature. Bryant also discusses the failures of the Dems, the role of Elon Musk in the administration, and structural changes to federal institutions. Despite all the upheaval, Bryant suggests this isn't so much "goodbye to America" as a revelation of the cynically isolationist forces that were always present in American society.

Here are the five KEEN ON takeaways from our conversation with Nick Bryant:

* Historic Transformation: Bryant sees Trump's second term as a pivotal moment in world history, comparable to the fall of the Berlin Wall, with rapid changes in global alliances and particularly in America's relationship with Russia, which he characterizes as "appeasement."

* Democratic Party Crisis: He analyzes how the Democrats' failures stemmed from multiple factors - Biden's delayed exit, Kamala Harris's weak candidacy, and the lack of time to find a stronger replacement. While Trump's victory was significant, Bryant notes it wasn't a landslide.

* Elon Musk's Unexpected Role: An unforeseen development Bryant didn't predict in his book was Musk's prominent position in Trump's second administration, describing it as almost a "co-presidency" following Trump's assassination attempt and Musk’s subsequent endorsement of Trump.

* Federal Government Transformation: Bryant observes that Trump's dismantling of federal institutions goes beyond typical Republican small-government approaches, potentially removing not just bureaucratic waste but crucial expertise and institutional knowledge.

* Trump as Revealer, Not Changer: Perhaps most significantly, Bryant argues that Trump hasn't changed America but rather revealed its true nature - arguing that authoritarianism, political violence, and distrust of big government have always been present in American history.

FULL TRANSCRIPT

Andrew Keen: Hello, everybody. About eight months ago, we had a great show with the BBC's former Washington correspondent, Nick Bryant. His latest book, "The Forever War: America's Unending Conflict with Itself," predicted much of what's happening in the United States now. When you look at the headlines this week about the U.S.-Russia relationship changing in a head-spinning way, apparently laying the groundwork for ending the Ukrainian war, all sorts of different relations and tariffs and many other things in this new regime. Nick is joining us from Sydney, Australia, where he now lives. Nick, do you miss America?

Nick Bryant: I covered the first Trump administration and it felt like a 25/8 job, not just 24/7. Trump 2.0 feels even more relentless—round-the-clock news forever. We're checking our phones to see what has happened next. People who read my book wouldn't be surprised by how Donald Trump is conducting his second term. But some things weren't on my bingo card, like Trump suggesting a U.S. takeover of Gaza. The rapprochement with Putin, which we should look on as an act of appeasement after his aggression in Ukraine, was very easy to predict.

Andrew Keen: That's quite a sharp comment, Nick—an act of appeasement equivalent to Neville Chamberlain's umbrella.

Nick Bryant: It was ironic that J.D. Vance made his speech at the Munich Security Conference. Munich was where Neville Chamberlain secured the Munich Agreement, which was seen as a terrible act of appeasement towards Nazi Germany. This moment feels historic—I would liken it to the fall of the Berlin Wall. We're seeing a complete upending of the world order.

Back at the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, we were talking about the end of history—Francis Fukuyama's famous thesis suggesting the triumph of liberal democracy. Now, we're talking about the end of America as we've known it since World War II. You get these Berlin Wall moments like Trump saying there should be a U.S. takeover of Gaza. J.D. Vance's speech in Munich ruptures the transatlantic alliance, which has been the basis of America's global preeminence and European security since World War II.

Then you've seen what's happened in Saudi Arabia with the meeting between the Russians and U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, completely resetting relations between Washington and Moscow. It's almost as if the invasions of Ukraine never happened. We're back to the situation during the Bush administration when George W. Bush famously met Vladimir Putin, looked into his soul, and gave him a clean bill of health. Things are moving at a hurtling pace, and it seems we're seeing the equivalent of a Berlin Wall tumbling every couple of days.

Andrew Keen: That's quite dramatic for an experienced journalist like yourself to say. You don't exaggerate unnecessarily, Nick. It's astonishing. Nobody predicted this.

Nick Bryant: When I first said this about three weeks ago, I had to think long and hard about whether the historical moments were equivalent. Two weeks on, I've got absolutely no doubt. We're seeing a massive change. European allies of America are now not only questioning whether the United States is a reliable ally—they're questioning whether the United States is an ally at all. Some are even raising the possibility that nations like Germany, the UK, and France will soon look upon America as an adversary.

J.D. Vance's speech was very pointed, attacking European elitism and what he saw as denial of freedom of speech in Europe by governments, but not having a single word of criticism for Vladimir Putin. People are listening to the U.S. president, vice president, and others like Marco Rubio with their jaws on the ground. It's a very worrying moment for America's allies because they cannot look across the Atlantic anymore and see a president who will support them. Instead, they see an administration aligning itself with hard-right and far-right populist movements.

Andrew Keen: The subtitle of your book was "America's Unending Conflict with Itself: The History Behind Trump in Advance." But America now—and I'm talking to you from San Francisco, where obviously there aren't a lot of Trump fans or J.D. Vance fans—seems in an odd, almost surreal way to be united. There were protests on Presidents Day earlier this week against Trump, calling him a tyrant. But is the thesis of your book about the forever war, America continually being divided between coastal elites and the hinterlands, Republicans and Democrats, still manifesting itself in late February 2025?

Nick Bryant: Trump didn't win a landslide victory in the election. He won a significant victory, a decisive victory. It was hugely significant that he won the popular vote, which he didn't manage to do in 2016. But it wasn't a big win—he didn't win 50% of the popular vote. Sure, he won the seven battleground states, giving the sense of a massive victory, but it wasn't massive numerically.

The divides in America are still there. The opposition has melted away at the moment with sporadic protests, but nothing really major. Don't be fooled into th...