Walter Mosley

Episode 2233: John Kay on why (almost) everything we are told about business is wrong, by @ajkeen According to the Scottish economist Sir John Kay, author of The Corporation in the 21st Century, the Magnificent Seven tech companies that supposedly control the global economy aren’t quite as magnificent as we are led to believe. These corporations aren’t even really capitalist, he says, noting that companies like Amazon and Apple own surprisingly few physical assets and thus should be considered providers of “capital as a service”. Kay claims that today's big tech companies probably won’t maintain their dominance, citing historical examples like Cisco and U.S. Steel. He criticizes the contemporary corporate focus on individual leadership, deal-making and shareholder value, advocating instead for businesses built on trust and collective capabilities. And Kay expresses a deep skepticism about both Donald Trump's tariff policies and Elon Musk's recent involvement in government reform, suggesting that Musk’s success might have even undermined his sanity.

Episode 2332: @gregbeato on what could go possibly RIGHT with our AI future, by @ajkeen So what’s it like co-authoring a book with Reid Hoffman, the multi-billionaire co-founder of LinkedIn and amongst Silicon Valley’s most prominent Democrats? According to Greg Beato, who just co-wrote Superagency with Hoffman, it certainly beats co-authoring anything with an AI algorithm. Not that Beato has anything against artificial intelligence. The doomers and the gloomers have it all wrong, he reassures. There will be nothing Orwellian about today’s AI revolution, Beato says. Rather than 1984, he promises, our automatic future will be enriched by AI platforms like and Remesh. I hope he’s right.

John Kay

Episode 2331: The Week that Silicon Valley went from Woke to DOGE, by @ajkeen & @kteare It’s been quite a few days in Silicon Valley. "There are decades where nothing happens,” Lenin famously observed, “and there are weeks where decades happen”. As Andrew and Keith Teare reflect in their regular THAT WAS THE WEEK tech roundup, this was the week that Silicon Valley went from Woke to DOGE. It was the week that our Do No Evil friends @ Google slammed the door on diversity and embraced AI weapons technology. It was the week that Andreessen-Horowitz hired an ex-marine who choked to death a fellow passenger on the New York metro. And, of course, it was the week that Silicon Valley, in the form of DOGE, began the Palo-Altification of Washington DC. So, America, welcome to Silicon Valley. It’s going to be one hell of a disruption.

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Greg Beato

Episode 2330: Eoin Higgins on how reactionary tech billionaires bought Glenn Greenwald and Matt Taibbi, by @ajkeen & @EoinHiggins_ Wow. According to the journalist and historian Eoin Higgins, right wing tech billionaires like Marc Andreessen, David Sacks and Peter Thiel have “bought” prominent anti establishment journalists like Glenn Greenwald and Matt Taibbi. That’s the highly provocative thesis at the heart of his new book Owned: How Tech Billionaires on the Right Bought the Loudest Voices on the Left. While I’m no great fan of the Greenwald/Taibbi school of paranoid anti-establishment journalism, I’m not totally convinced. After all, does working for an online publication partially funded by Thiel like Rumble really mean that you’ve been bought by him? But WTF do I know? Listen to Higgins for yourself. He certainly makes an interesting case for this highly controversial thesis.

Eoin Higgins

Episode 2329: @EthanZ on how the United States learned to love online censorship, by @ajkeen Internet scholar and activist Ethan Zuckerman is horrified by the American ban on TikTok. As a self-described “progressive” with a long and distinguished career advocating for internet freedom, Zuckerman expresses alarm at how the U.S. has moved from defending unfettered access to information in the 1960s to now being willing to ban popular Chinese platforms like TikTok and perhaps even DeepSeek. He suggests the ban stems from the anti-China hysteria and exaggerated fears about social media's impact on young people fueled by paranoid critics like Jonathan Haidt. If this trend toward online censorship continues, Zuckerman warns, America will become indistinguishable from other authoritarian states in its disdain for digital freedom.

Ethan Zuckerman

Episode 2328: A gay Jewish atheist rides to the rescue of American Christianity, by @ajkeen & @jonathanrauch Trust a gay Jewish atheist to defend the value of American Christianity. In his new book Cross-Purposes: Christianity's Broken Bargain with Democracy, the Brookings scholar and gay marriage activist Jonathan Rauch argues that Christianity plays a vital role in sustaining American democracy. He points to the Mormon Church (LDS) as a model for balancing religious beliefs with democratic pluralism, contrasting their approach with white evangelical churches that have become increasingly intolerant of democracy. Rauch suggests that Christianity's core teachings of fearlessness, egalitarianism, and forgiveness align more with James Madison's democratic vision than with MAGA politics, and argues that secular liberals should work to make civic spaces more welcoming to people of faith.

Jon Rauch

Episode 2327: John Lee Hooker Jr explains who gets to go to Heaven and who doesn't, by @ajkeen Who gets to go to heaven and who doesn’t? According to John Lee Hooker Jr., son of the legendary bluesman and author of From The Shadow of the Blues, many are called but not everyone is chosen. In the new autobiography, he confesses his own journey from addiction and imprisonment to religious redemption, while reflecting on growing up in his father's musical shadow. Hooker Jr. distinguishes between genius (like Prince) and talent (like himself), and offers thoughtful insights on the blues as both a response to African-American suffering and as a celebration of joy. And then there’s his take on the heaven question which won’t please everyone, especially those from the LGBTQ community.

John Lee Hooker Jr

Episode 2327: Mike Colias assesses impact of Trump's Tariffs on the US Auto Industry, by @ajkeen Few people know the U.S. car industry more intimately than the Wall Street Journal deputy auto editor Mike Colias. His new book, Inevitable, offers an insiders guide into what he sees as our messy, yet unstoppable transition to electric vehicles. In this wide ranging conversation on all things automotive, Colias addresses Trump's recent tariff impacts on the American car industry, the stark contrast between Chinese (50%) and US (10%) EV adoption rates, and China's dominance in battery supply chains and charging infrastructure. Colias explains how Chinese automakers have leapfrogged traditional manufacturers in EV technology, while European makers are caught between regulatory pressures and relentless Chinese competition. He ends with some thoughts about the future of autonomous vehicles which he sees as far less"inevitable" than EVs. Here are the 5 KEEN ON takeaways from our conversation with Colias: The stark contrast between EV adoption rates globally - China leads with 50% of new car sales being electric, Europe follows at 20-25%, while the US lags at around 10%. This sharp disparity is largely due to China's strategic government support, infrastructure investment, and incentives. China's dominance in the EV supply chain is comprehensive - from controlling critical minerals (lithium, cobalt, nickel) to processing capabilities and battery production. This gives Chinese manufacturers a significant competitive advantage that Western automakers are struggling to match. It might even point to the superiority of the Chinese state lead innovation model over the US market driven one. The role of hybrids as a "bridge technology" - Many consumers, particularly in the US, are choosing hybrids as a stepping stone to full EVs, suggesting the transition might be more gradual than initially predicted by US (but not Japanese) automakers who invested heavily in full electric vehicles. The environmental impact of EVs is more complex than some activists would have us believe - While EVs produce more carbon emissions during manufacturing than gas vehicles, they ultimately result in 30% less emissions over their lifecycle. However, their environmental benefit depends significantly on the source of electricity used to power them. Trump's new tariffs (as of 2025) are creating significant disruption in the auto industry, particularly affecting the established North American supply chains -While unions support the tariffs for potential job creation, most auto executives view them as harmful to the industry and likely to increase car prices.

Mike Colias

Episode 2325: Charles Piller on Fraud, Arrogance, and Tragedy in the Quest to Cure Alzheimer's, by @ajkeen & @cpiller More than 6 million Americans now suffer from Alzheimer’s Disease. So the stakes in find a cure for this neurological illness are huge. Too large, in fact, for some fraudulent American medical researchers. As the investigative science reporter Charles Piller reveals in DOCTORED, there has been considerable fraud, some of it outright criminal, in Alzheimer’s research in the United States. Piller’s key finding, discovered through brave whistleblowers like Vanderbilt’s Dr. Matthew Schrag, is that researchers often doctored images in their studies, either for career advancement or financial gain. Piller emphasizes that while most scientists are honest, institutional oversight has been inadequate in preventing and addressing research misconduct. So I guess Americans should be thankful that the incoming administration has nominated a man of unambiguous moral standing to be the new Secretary of Health and Human Services. I wish.

Episode 2324: Why we need some Sputnik Thinking on Wealth Redistribution in our AI Age, by @ajkeen & @kteare A week is certainly a long time in tech. On last week’s That Was the Week roundup, Keith Teare and I were asking if Trump’s America was a tech oligarchy. This week is all about the so-called “Sputnik Moment” of DeepSeek, a relatively underfunded Chinese AI company which seems to have radically undercut the value of massively financed American AI companies such as OpenAI and Anthropic. As Keith notes, however, while the commodification of AI through a Chinese startup like DeepSeek is probably inevitable, it doesn’t actually undermine the value of US startups like OpenAI and Anthropic. The real victims of DeepSeek, Keith warns, are big tech corps like Meta and Alphabet which are struggling to monetize AI. While nobody outside Silicon Valley will be shedding tears over the travails of Meta and Alphabet, I what we really need, I think, is some Sputnik thinking about wealth redistribution in our big tech age. And, as we discuss, that might come from a certain Bill Gates who, this week, called for a “robot tax” to fund universal basic income so that citizens will have some protection from the massive jobs losses caused by the AI revolution.

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