This week on Net Society, we’re joined by special guest Daniel Keller to break down how policy, infrastructure, and narrative are colliding across AI and crypto. The conversation opens with the Supreme Court’s tariff ruling and what it signals about institutional power, industrial strategy, and second order economic fallout. From there, the group turns to AI, from Claude and the Pentagon to the way labs build legitimacy, sell a story of inevitability, and cycle through “mandate of heaven” moments as hype meets reality. The episode then moves into the physical layer, looking at the data center buildout, local backlash, zoning politics, and why elections shape what actually gets built. In the second half, the discussion widens to cities and status, including K shaped urban outcomes, network state thinking, and why New York’s cultural primacy feels less secure. The episode closes with an info war lens on modern media, the coming regulatory sorting in crypto, why meme coins may get sacrificed while NFTs quietly benefit, and how robots, Waymo, unions, prediction markets, and the dead internet thesis all point to a world where models become the primary interface to reality.

Mentioned in the episode

Special Guest Daniel Keller https://x.com/dnlklr

Supreme Court Tariff Ruling https://x.com/ABC/status/2024864990189044039

Pentagon vs Claude https://www.cnbc.com/2026/02/18/anthropic-pentagon-ai-defense-war-surveillance.html

Rand Corporation Firehose of Falsehood https://www.rand.org/pubs/perspectives/PE198.html

Everyone will be slop in 90 days https://x.com/nikitabier/status/2021632774013432061

Next XAI Safety Tsar https://x.com/elonmusk/status/2024703811806515667

Show & Hosts

Net Society: https://x.com/net__society

Aaron Wright: https://x.com/awrigh01

Chris F: https://x.com/ChrisF_0x

Derek Edwards: https://x.com/derekedws