Keen On America

War is never pretty, but its privatized high tech future dominated by companies like Palintir and SpaceX is particularly chilling. In Unit X, their FT shortlisted best business book of the year, Raj M. Shah and Christopher Kirchhoff’s explain how the Pentagon and Silicon Valley are transforming the future of war with the creation of a new kind of military-digital complex. As Shah and Kirchhoff explain, Unit X is the elite unit within the Pentagon known as the Defense Innovation Unit which is now the military bridge between Silicon Valley and the Federal government. And with Elon Musk’s deregulatory zeal driving the upcoming Trump administration, expect to see closer and closer cooperation between the Pentagon and cutting edge AI and biotech tech companies. Raj M. Shah is a serial technology entrepreneur, venture capitalist, and former director of the Pentagon’s Defense Innovation Unit. He is currently the managing partner of Shield Capital, an investment firm focused on technologies at the nexus of commercial and national security applications. He started his career as an F-16 pilot in the Air National Guard and continues to serve part time. He obtained an AB degree from Princeton University and an MBA from the University of Pennsylvania.Christopher Kirchhoff, an expert in emerging technology, helped create the Defense Innovation Unit, which he continues to advise. During the Obama administration, he was the director of strategic planning for the National Security Council and senior civilian adviser to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Chris obtained an AB degree from Harvard College and a PhD in social and political sciences from Cambridge University.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 KEEN ON, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy show. 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 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

I did this interview with John Driscoll, co-author of Pay the People! Why Fair Pay is Good for Business and Great for America, earlier this week, assuming that Harris would lose the election. And let’s be clear: she did lose an election that should have been eminently winnable. Driscoll spelt it out clearly in a powerful The Hill article last week about how raising the minimum wage is the key to the White House for Harris. The problem with Harris, and most of the Democratic party, is their failure to offer a coherent and politically sellable economic alternative to Trumpism. John Driscoll and his group of successful business leaders at Patriotic Millionaires offer that alternative. It’s not socialism, but it is an undisguised and unapologetic attempt to recognize the economic predicament of the American working class and to resurrect the American Dream by leveling the playing field. That’s the way to defeat Trumpism. Not by smiling inanely and saying nothing.John Driscoll chairs the Waystar Corporation and is a senior advisor at Walgreens Boots Alliance. Previously, he was CEO at CareCentrix, president of Castlight, group president at Medco, and SVP at Oxford Health Plans. John also served as a captain in the U.S. Army Reserve and is a longtime board member of the Alliance for Hunger and The Patriotic Millionaires. The co-author, with Morris Pearl, of Pay the People! (The New Press), he lives in Stamford, Connecticut.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 KEEN ON, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy show. 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 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

Lauren Oyler’s “Revenge Plot”, a literary diary of her trip to this year’s Republican convention in Milwaukee, is the cover story of this month’s Harper’s. So when I talked today with the Berlin based writer, we discussed both the revengefulness of the Republican party and what she calls the “risk aversion” of the Democrats. While Oyler cares a lot about the outcome of today’s election, she is wary of what she calls the “constant catastrophizing” both on the left and right of American politics. While this probably won’t be the final election in the history of American democracy, she suggests, it might be the first 21st century Presidential contest not dramatically shaped by the internet. LAUREN OYLER’s essays on books and culture appear regularly in The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, London Review of Books, Harper's Magazine, Bookforum, and other publications. Born and raised in West Virginia, she now divides her time between New York and Berlin.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 KEEN ON, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy show. 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 is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.TRANSCRIPTAndrew Keen: Hello, everybody. The day has come, it's Tuesday, November the 5th. Election Day. We don't know who's won, but many people are going to the polls. One person who won't be going to the polls is my guest today, Lauren Oyler. She's a distinguished American writer, bestselling writer, essayist, critic. But she happens to be, as I joked before, we went live in exile in Berlin. She lives there in Germany, but she's also the author of an excellent piece, it's the cover story of Harper's this week: "Reunion or Revenge: The GOP Identity Crisis." According to Lauren, they're on the brink. I'm not sure of what. Lauren is joining us from Berlin in Germany. Lauren, what's the view from there? Americans looking as crazy as ever?Lauren Oyler: We're looking for a bar to go to. To be honest, we've been we've been we've been caucusing, trying to figure out where we can watch the the results. And we just found there's one place. But, you know, it doesn't the results aren't really start coming in until midnight here. So the debate is about whether we will stay up--or, people have some bad memories of doing that in 2016. I personally have a bad memory of doing that in 2016 as well. So the view is we're looking at our phones.Keen: So I assume the bad memory was not that you drank too much or ate too much.Oyler: No, I did. I certainly did. I'm just I was with my boyfriend at the time and we had gotten in a fight earlier that day about Hillary Clinton. And I, I just remember being like, I just don't care. I just don't care. And then we went to the bar with our friends and got quite drunk. And and then we were walking home and I didn't live here at the time, so I didn't have we didn't have cell phone service. So we walked home at like three in the morning. We were really drunk and we were like, Well, we won't know anything. And then we got home and we like, laid in bed in the dark and and looked at our phones and we were like, no, this is terrible. So and then just laid in bed again, really drunk looking at our phones.Keen: It's something that could have occurred in one of your books or maybe in a in a DeLillo book. So are the Germans shocked? I mean, they they they've made a culture out of being a shock to other people that they particularly shocked this time around?Oyler: No, I don't think so. I remember right before I went to report this story, I was in a restaurant down the street from my house and I listened to--I was overhearing a conversation with this German guy, was talking to these people and he was like, he was he was like, Yeah, have you heard they have the plague in Colorado now? He's like, Yeah, this is crazy. Imagine if we had the plague in Berlin. Like, it was really like, I don't really think they sort of like, Yeah, this is crazy, but it's, you know, it's not it's not the first time. And I think to and in Europe, it used to be that you were reviled as an American. Certainly when I first moved here in 2012, there was still that kind of anti-American sentiment. But now far right populism has spread across the West and everybody is sort of commiserating with with you and just kind of like, you know, it could happen. It could happen to us at any time. It basically is the idea.Keen: The plague has come home to Germany from Colorado. So let's get to the piece, Lauren, you went to Milwaukee to cover the GOP's identity crisis. And it's a long essay. Very...to use the word Oyler-ish in the sense that it's it's a very creative piece of work, creative nonfiction, although some people might say there's a fictional element there. What was your overall take on this odd convention and why was it that it's almost five months ago now?Oyler: Yeah. Well, I think the big the the big concern that I had going into it was that, you know, you're right, it would be coming out it came out in the middle of October, and I would be reporting on something that had happened in July, which, of course, in the past would have been perfectly normal for this kind of piece of this kind of like literary new journalism type thing. Many, many great pieces about political conventions that I'm sure your listeners, listeners will be familiar with, things like Norman Mailer, they come out late. But, you know, now--Keen: It's timeless as well in their own way. I mean--Oyler: It's supposed to be timeless, but now everybody's sort of attitude towards the news is like, I need to hear it right now. And then it the cycle, the cycle, the cycle and it goes away. So you sort of forget about it. So I kind of was grateful for the assignment because the assignment was basically like write something of lasting literary value about about the circus and spectacle, which was very interesting. And, you know, it was sort of you're following the news as it's happening and you're like, well, I can't really like you just have to be aware of the general narrative as time has gone on, you can't really be too obsessed with anyone's story because as I learned when former President Trump was almost assassinated while I was on the plane there, like something can just completely derail the whole plan. But I had never been to a political convention before. I was surprised at how much I enjoyed doing that kind of reporting. And I was surprised at how at the dissonance between what was being reported by these live up to the minute coverage, like blogs or social media or things like this. The difference between the analysis that those those journalists would generally produce and what I was interested in or even like what I thought the mood was, frankly, as, as the title of the pie...

The good news is that the interminable 2024 election is almost done. The bad news is that the 2028 Presidential campaign - sure to be described as the most important election in American history - will begin later this week. The best-selling writer Paul Greenberg is already imagining this election. “It is 2028 and a certain president wants a third term,” is the premise of Greenberg’s new satire, A Third Term: A Novella. And to counter this Republican President, (un)popularly known as “the Tyrant”, an operative snatches a certain George Washington from his deathbed in 1799 and makes him the 2028 Democratic candidate. The really interesting question in this imaginary Trump-Washington match-up are their running mates. If Washington selects FDR, then I’m guessing Trump will go with Robert E. Lee. It’s going to be quite a spectacle. I can’t wait. Paul Greenberg writes at the intersection of the environment and technology, seeking to help his readers escape screens and find emotional and ecological balance with their planet. He is the author of six books including the New York Times bestseller and Notable Book Four Fish: The Future of the Last Wild Food. His other books are The Climate Diet, Goodbye Phone, Hello World, The Omega Principle, American Catch, and the novel, Leaving Katya. He currently hosts the podcast Fish Talk. Paul’s writing on oceans, climate change, health, technology, and the environment appears regularly in The New York Times and many other publications. He’s the recipient of a James Beard Award for Writing and Literature, a Pew Fellowship in Marine Conservation, a National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship and many other grants and awards. Currently the writer-in-residence at The Safina Center, Paul contributes to academic life as a visiting scholar at the University of Washington’s Ocean Nexus Center, and as an adjunct professor at New York University’s Animal Studies Program in Manhattan. In summers he runs a study-abroad program on the Mediterranean Diet in Greece for Boston’s Northeastern University. His books are used widely in university and high school curricula and have been excerpted on the College Board’s AP English Exam. Paul is a frequent guest on national television and radio including Fresh Air with Terry Gross. His PBS Frontline documentary The Fish on My Plate was among the most viewed Frontline films of the 2017 season and his TED Talk has reached over 1.5 million viewers to date. He lectures widely at institutions around the country ranging from Harvard to Google to the United States Senate. A graduate in Russian Studies from Brown University, Paul speaks Russian and French. He currently lives at Ground Zero in Manhattan where he maintains a family and a terrace garden and produces, to his knowledge, the only wine grown south of 14th Street.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 KEEN ON, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy show. 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 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

Keith Teare, founder and CEO of SignalRank Corporation, shares insights from TechCrunch Disrupt, emphasizing the rapid evolution of technology and AI. He discusses how these advancements contrast sharply with the political landscape, particularly the upcoming Biden-Trump rematch. Teare explores whether Silicon Valley's innovations can truly disrupt politics or if they remain in parallel universes. He also highlights AI's transformative role in healthcare, especially in enhancing diagnostic methods, showcasing the vast potential of technology in various domains.

Yesterday, we featured a conversation with the British pro-market Conservative, Jon Moynihan, who is unambiguously in favor of economic growth. But Daniel Susskind, author of Growth: A History and a Reckoning, is less of an ideological warrior on behalf of unrestrained economic growth. In Growth, which is deservedly included on the Financial Times’ short list of best business books for 2024, Susskind seeks to navigate between the exuberantly Hayekian Moynihan and “degrowthers” like previous KEEN ON guests Tim Jackson and Jason Hickel. The truth about growth, for Susskind, as I’m guessing for most of us, is tricky, especially in the context of its longer term environmental costs. Thus the importance of Susskind’s nuanced and sensitive treatment of both the benefits and drawbacks of economic growth.Dr Daniel Susskind explores the impact of technology, and particularly AI, on work and society. He is a Research Professor in Economics at King’s College London, a Senior Research Associate at the Institute for Ethics in AI at Oxford University, and an Associate Member of the Economics Department at Oxford University. He is the co-author of the best-selling book, The Future of the Professions (2015) and the author of A World Without Work (2020), described by The New York Times as "required reading for any potential presidential candidate thinking about the economy of the future”. His TED Talk, on the future of work, has been viewed more than 1.6 million times. And his new book, Growth: A Reckoning, published in April 2024, is currently shortlisted for the Financial Times Business Book of the Year 2024. Previously he worked in various roles in the British Government – in the Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit, in the Policy Unit in 10 Downing Street, and in the Cabinet Office. He was a Kennedy Scholar at Harvard University. 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 KEEN ON, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy show. 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 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

Not everyone believes in the promise of economic growth. We’ve done KEEN ON shows in the past with “degrowth” advocates like Tim Jackson and Jason Hickle who argue that we need to get beyond the false promise of ever expanding wealth. Our guest today, however, is anything but a sceptic of capitalist economics. Jon Moynihan is a Conservative member of the House of Lords, a vocal supporter of BREXIT, and an unashamed follower of the free market economic principles of Friedrich Hayek & Margaret Thatcher. In his new book, Return to Growth: How to Fix the Economy, the entertaining and combative Lord Moynihan argues that critics of economic growth tend to be what he calls “pampered Oxford Dons” who have no real understanding of the needs or ambitions of ordinary people. By the way, tomorrow’s guest on the show will be the Oxford trained economist Daniel Susskind who, as it happens, has a new book out entitled Growth: A History and a Reckoning. So more views about the value of the idea of economic growth over the next few days.Jon Moynihan is a businessman and venture capitalist who started his career advising companies and banks in the Netherlands, the US and the UK as a specialist in mergers and turnarounds. He then ran the global firm PA Consulting Group for twenty-one years. He subsequently transitioned into venture startups, creating over twenty companies to date, most of them in the science and technology fields. Jon has worked as a volunteer in the charity sector all his life, including in Bangladeshi refugee camps and other developing countries; in educational think tanks, both managing and fundraising for charities; and in the arts sector, where, among other activities, he was president of the Royal Albert Hall for a number of years. Jon sits in the House of Lords as Baron Moynihan of Chelsea.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 KEEN ON, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy show. 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 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

Maybe Halloween is a bit early this year. As Jason Pack, the host of the excellent Disorder podcast notes, a Trump victory on Tuesday would be a horror show. And while he’s much more optimistic than me about a Harris victory, Pack nonetheless views Trump as Exhibit A in his arguments about the global disorder now threatening peace and stability around the world. My own view is that America - always vulnerable to paranoia and conspiracy theories - has descended into total hysteria over the upcoming election. Whoever wins isn’t going to have the political or financial capital to change much; whoever wins, the country is going to remain as bitterly divided as ever. But then, as I’m often reminded, what the f$*k do I know?Jason Pack is the Founder of Libya-Analysis LLC, and the co-host of Disorder, a geopolitics podcast co-produced with Goalhanger Podcasts. He is a Senior Analyst for Emerging Challenges at the NATO Defence College Foundation in Rome. In partnership with NDCF, Jason leads a project entitled NATO and the Global Enduring Disorder, which produces a range of content (including the Disorder podcast and series of publications) attempting to sketch out a ‘unified field theory’ of our current era of geopolitics while proposing actionable solutions to our most pressing collective action challenges. His most recent book, Libya and the Global Enduring Disorder (Hurst, Oxford University Press) is a ‘cross-over’ academic book that explores what Libya’s dysfunctional economic structures and its ongoing civil war reveal about our era of 21st-century geopolitics. Jason’s concept – that we no longer inhabit the post-Cold War World, but have entered a new era – the ‘Enduring Disorder’ – was conceived to describe the collective action failures that have come to define international politics. At present, he is producing a series of articles, media, and podcasts applying this concept to climate change, tax havens, and the geopolitical crises in Ukraine, Syria, and Afghanistan. For a full CV, please click here.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 KEEN ON, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy show. 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 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

Can one age with grace and wisdom? Yes, according to Andrew J. Scott, author of the Longevity Imperative, one of the six books on the Financial Times’ illustrious short list for best business books of the year . For Scott, aging in the 21st century requires a sharp shift in both personal and public policy attitudes to “old age”. No, we can’t live forever, he reminds us, but we do need to make the necessary social, political and economic adjustments to enable us to enjoy the increasingly longer lives most of us now take for granted. Rather than medicalizing old age, he argues, we need to normalize it so that its a central feature of, rather than an epilogue to, the good life. Wise words from one of the world’s leading authorities on aging.Andrew J. Scott is the world’s leading expert on the economics of longevity and on ensuring that our lives aren’t just longer but also happier, healthier and more productive. An award winning researcher, speaker, author and teacher he is a co-founder of The Longevity Forum, co-author of the global bestseller, “The 100 Year Life,” and a professor of economics at London Business School, Scott’s research focuses on the implications of longevity and his advisory work on helping individuals, non-profits, corporations, and governments to seize the benefits of a longer-living society.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 KEEN ON, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy show. 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 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

Last week, the Los Angeles Times book critic, Bethanne Patrick, came on the show to talk about the best new non-fiction books for the Fall. Today she is back to talk new novels by great fictional writers like Allan Hollinghurst, Rachel Kushner and Paula Hawkins. For those of you for whom American reality is currently too depressing, Patrick’s list of great new literature will be of particular solace. Bethanne Patrick maintains a storied place in the publishing industry as a critic and as @TheBookMaven on Twitter, where she created the popular #FridayReads and regularly comments on books and literary ideas to over 200,000 followers. Her work appears frequently in the Los Angeles Times as well as in The Washington Post, NPR Books, and Literary Hub. She sits on the board of the PEN/Faulkner Foundation and has served on the board of the National Book Critics Circle. She is the host of the Missing Pages podcast.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 KEEN ON, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy show. 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 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