“Happiness is a rare commodity. There’s a lot of fuel for the claim that unhappiness is caused by some software, when in fact the roots of unhappiness are way deeper than that.” — Keith Teare



If it’s not warfare in Iran, then it’s lawfare in California. Out here in Silicon Valley, it’s been a week dominated by two trials of big tech. First, Meta and YouTube were found liable for designing products that addict children. While the young female social media victims hugged outside the Los Angeles courthouse, the Wall Street Journal dismissed it as a Big Tech shakedown. Then, up the road in San Francisco, a federal judge granted Anthropic an emergency reprieve from the Pentagon’s unprecedented designation of the company as a supply chain risk.

For That Was the Week [https://thatwastheweek.substack.com/] publisher Keith Teare [https://thatwastheweek.substack.com/], the social media trial was fighting the last war, while the Anthropic vs US Government trial is about the future of war. Anthropic took the bait, Keith says. Governments, he believes, should get to decide how to use the products they buy from Silicon Valley. Anthropic wanted to sell to the government but dictate how their technology gets used in battle. The Istanbul-based Soli Özel warned us earlier this week that events in the Middle East are going to get much bloodier. But I wonder if warfare in Iran and lawfare in California are separate fronts in the same battle over tomorrow.

Five Takeaways



•       The Social Media Trial Is Fighting the Last War: Meta and YouTube were fined $6 million — financially meaningless, culturally significant. Keith argues that addiction is successful demand management and every product manager seeks it. The root cause isn’t the algorithm — it’s alienation. The law is always one step behind technology.

•       Anthropic Took the Bait: A federal judge granted Anthropic an emergency reprieve from the Pentagon’s supply chain risk designation. Keith thinks Anthropic is right on the product but wrong on the politics. Governments get to decide how to use weapons. End of story. Anthropic wanted to sell to the government but dictate how the buyer used what they bought. That’s juvenile.

•       Would You Buy a Used Car from Sam Altman? OpenAI killed Sora and shelved its adult mode. Keith calls it maturity, not failure — a recommitment to the core business. Altman’s personality doesn’t lend itself to being liked, but measured by outcomes, he’s fantastic. The AI documentary exposed everyone as adolescent — except Demis Hassabis, the stone-cold scientist.

•       Claude Enters the Third Era of AI: Chat was era one. Directed agents were era two. Autonomous agents that act when you’re not present are era three. Claude’s new Dispatch feature, Gmail connectors, and calendar integration are all about that third era. The product is excellent. The politics are a distraction.

•       Intelligence Is Getting Cheaper. Fear Is Wrapped Up as Principle: The stock market is repricing the future: software companies down, AI companies teed up for IPOs. OpenAI, Anthropic, SpaceX, and xAI will probably all go public this year. For kids in school today, AI is already ubiquitous. The life cycle of companies may shrink from decades to single-digit years. Time, Keith says, to grow up.

 

About the Guest



Keith Teare [https://thatwastheweek.substack.com/] is a serial entrepreneur, investor, and publisher of That Was The Week [https://thatwastheweek.substack.com/], a weekly newsletter on the tech economy. He is co-founder of SignalRank and a regular Saturday guest on Keen On America.

References:



•       That Was The [https://thatwastheweek.substack.com/]

Don’t Fight the Last War: Why Anthropic vs US Government Matters

“Why does someone need to be the first trillionaire? The damage it’s doing just to get to that level is extreme.” — Glen Galaich



Excessive wealth disorder. It sounds like a disease — which, at least according to Glen Galaich — CEO of the Stupski Foundation and author of Control: Why Big Giving Falls Short, it is. There’s $2 trillion sitting in American charitable accounts Galaich says, mostly invested in hedge funds and real estate. Foundations are legally required to distribute only 5% a year — the bare minimum — and invest the remaining 95% to ensure they can make that back and live forever. The system rewards perpetuity over impact. The money is stuck — like most other things in America. And this philanthropic wealth is predicted to grow to $18 trillion by 2050 — twice the size of the annual federal budget. A truly excessive wealth disorder.

Galaich wants to unstick the system. When a donor puts money in a private foundation, they receive up to a 70% tax exemption. The public is forgoing taxation in return for public stewardship. But donors still think it’s their money. That’s Galaich’s Control problem. Carnegie pioneered this idea that the wealthy know best how to distribute their wealth. The Sacklers perfected its dark arts. Bill Gates sits somewhere in between. While billionaires like Peter Thiel and Marc Andreessen reject it entirely.

Galaich’s own foundation is giving up control — returning all its resources to communities by 2029. In Hawaii, he gave $15 million to people who actually lived there. They moved all of it within five months to health clinics on neighbouring islands that had never had discretionary money. His deeper frustration is with progressive philanthropy’s failure to coordinate. Conservative donors give around two issues — free markets and liberty — in coordinated fashion. Progressive philanthropy, in contrast, is fragmented, fearful, and obstinately sitting on its capital. There’s a new institute in the Bay Area called the Excessive Wealth Disorder Institute. The disease is real. And so is its cure.

•       $2 Trillion Is Sitting in Charitable Accounts: Mostly invested in hedge funds and real estate. Philanthropic wealth in the US is predicted to grow from $2 trillion to $18 trillion by 2050 — twice the size of the annual federal budget. Foundations are required to give only 5% a year. The rest grows. The money isn’t moving because the system rewards perpetuity over impact.

•       It’s Not Their Money Anymore: When a donor puts money in a private foundation, they receive up to a 70% tax exemption. The public is forgoing taxation in return for public stewardship. But donors still think it’s their money. That’s the control problem at the heart of Galaich’s book — and why so much of big giving serves the donor, not the community.

•       Excessive Wealth Disorder Is Real: Galaich cites the Excessive Wealth Disorder Institute in the Bay Area. Why does someone need to be the first trillionaire? The damage done to society just getting to that level — environmental, human, democratic — is extreme. And the Giving Pledge is collapsing: Peter Thiel and Marc Andreessen have pulled out. Andreessen argues his investments are his philanthropy.

•       The Hawaii Example: Stupski gave $15 million to people from Hawaii who lived and worked there. They moved all of it within five months to health clinics on the neighbouring islands that had never had discretionary money. Palliative care, community outreach, home visits — none of which Medicaid allowed. That’s what happens when you let go of control.

•       Progressive Philanthropy Can’t Coordinate. Conservatives Can: Conservative donors give around two issues — free markets and liberty — and they give in coordinated fashion over long periods. That’s how you get the Federalist Society, Heritage, ALEC, and p

 Excessive Wealth Disorder: Glen Galaich on the $2 Trillion That Could Save Democracy

“Friction is what brings us together. If we were never able to communicate in real space, we would not truly learn what it is to be human.” — Stephen Balkam



Is social media a drug? In what the Financial Times called a landmark case, Facebook (Meta) and YouTube (Google) have been found guilty of designing their products to be addictive to kids. Is this a big tobacco moment? the tut-tutting New York Times asked. In contrast, the free market Wall Street Journal called it a shakedown.

So what to make of this decision to make social media a narcotic? Stephen Balkam [https://www.fosi.org] — founder and CEO of the Family Online Safety Institute [https://www.fosi.org] (FOSI), amongst Washington’s most credible nonpartisan voices on kids and technology, has been on the front lines of this fight for nearly thirty years. Calling himself a radical moderate, he sees good and bad in social media. He even expelled Meta from FOSI three years ago for what he calls conduct contrary to the institute’s mission.

Balkam’s sharpest disagreement is with Jonathan Haidt, amongst the shrillest voices arguing in favor of a social media ban for kids. He “violently agrees” with Haidt on the idea of a free-range childhood — giving kids more freedom outdoors. But the evidence Haidt uses to justify banning social media confuses correlation with causation, a basic research error that, Balkam insists, academic researchers have called out. Balkam thinks the real anxious generation isn’t the kids — it’s us, the paranoid parents, projecting our mostly irrational fears onto our children.

His deeper argument is in favor of friction. Silicon Valley has spent thirty years removing friction from ordering pizza, hailing cabs, and dating. Balkam argues we need to design it back into childhood — the friction of developing friendships, building resilience, learning to think critically instead of outsourcing cognition to ChatGPT at midnight. Bring the human friction of life back, Balkam argues. It’s the most effective antidote to the drug of online existence.

Five Takeaways



•       Yesterday Was Tech’s Big Tobacco Moment — Sort Of: Meta and Google found liable for harm to children’s mental health. Balkam sees strong parallels to the tobacco cases of the nineties but resists the lazy comparison. The repercussions will extend beyond social media to AI. The hundreds of trials still to come will shape the next decade of tech regulation.

•       Congress Gets a D-Minus: America is the last advanced country without a national privacy framework. COPPA dates to the late nineties. KOSA never passed. The result is a splintering of state-level laws and no coherent federal approach. Meanwhile, parents are overwhelmed, and the tech companies retrofitted safety features years after the damage was done.

•       Jonathan Haidt Got the Free-Range Part Right. The Rest Is Shaky: Balkam “violently agrees” with Haidt on giving kids more freedom outdoors. But the evidence Haidt uses for his social media bans confuses correlation with causation — a basic research error. Academic researchers violently disagree with him. His book directly caused Australia’s social media ban. Balkam thinks we — the parents — are the anxious generation, not the kids.

•       42% of Teens Talk About Their Feelings with AI Chatbots: 60% say they feel safe using AI. 44% say some of its behaviours freak them out. They’re using it for homework, for loneliness, for practical advice, for asking how to invite someone to prom. And they’re worried about their job prospects. The three waves of concern: content in the nineties, behaviour in the 2000s, emotional attachment and cognitive outsourcing now.

•       Bring the Friction Back: Silicon Valley has spent thirty years removing fr

Bring the Friction Back: Stephen Balkam on Kids, Social Media, and Tech’s Big Tobacco Moment

“The shortest distance between you and me is a story.” — Colum McCann



In 1932, Albert Einstein wrote to Sigmund Freud asking if humanity could cure its “lust for hatred.” Freud said no. Mankind’s instinct for death and destruction could not be eliminated. That said, the Viennese doctor went on, the desire to end war should never be abandoned. What was needed was a “mythology of the instincts” and a “community of feeling.” In other words: a story. The book sold 2,000 copies. By 1933, the Nazis had seized power and the two men had fled into exile.

Colum McCann [https://colummccann.com/] — National Book Award-winning novelist, author of Let the Great World Spin and American Mother — has spent the last dozen years trying to build Freud’s community of feeling. His organisation, Narrative Four [https://narrative4.com], now operates in 35 countries with 1,200 school partners and 285,000 participants. The method is deceptively simple: two strangers exchange personal stories, then retell each other’s story in the first person. Overpowered by empathy, they realise they’re not so different.

At 21, Colum McCann bought a typewriter thinking he’d be the next Kerouac and produced a foot and a half of gibberish. He then went on the road and spent eighteen months cycling across America. Everyone he met wanted to tell him their story. That’s his story, but not where it ends.

 

Five Takeaways



•       Einstein Asked Freud If Stories Could Prevent War: In 1932, Einstein wrote to Freud asking if humanity could cure its “lust for hatred.” Freud said no — but added that the desire to end war should never be abandoned. What was needed was a “mythology of the instincts” and a “community of feeling.” Basically: storytelling. The book sold 2,000 copies. By 1933, Hitler was in power.

•       You Tell My Story, I Tell Yours: That’s the Narrative Four method. Pairs of strangers exchange personal stories, then retell each other’s story in the first person to the group. Something fires in the brain — dopamine, memory, imagination, empathetic engagement. It’s been done 285,000 times in 35 countries. Oxford and Ohio State confirmed it: polarisation drops dramatically.

•       South Bronx Kids Met Eastern Kentucky Kids. They Were Terrified: One group Black and immigrant, the other white or Cherokee. One urban, one rural. One blue, one red. Put them in a room and they’re terrified of each other — until they tell a personal story. Not a didactic story, not a political argument. Something that opens up the rib cage. Then they realise they’re not so different.

•       Yesterday Was Big Tobacco’s Moment for Social Media: The landmark court verdict on Facebook and YouTube addiction dropped the same day we recorded this conversation. McCann’s son has been saying for years that social media will be the cigarettes of the future. Social media promised everyone a platform for their stories. What it delivered was isolation, loneliness, and the epidemic of kids who say “I don’t have a story.”

•       Stories Can Do Anything. They Can Never Take Them Away: McCann bought a typewriter at 21, thought he’d be the next Kerouac, produced a foot and a half of gibberish, and spent eighteen months cycling across America instead. He learned that everyone has a story and a deep desire to tell it. Books may go the way of opera. AI may recombine what we’ve already written. But they can never take away stories.

 

About the Guest



Colum McCann [https://colummccann.com/] is the author of eight novels, three collections of stories, and two works of non-fiction. Born in Dublin, he is the recipient of the US National Book Award, the International Dublin Literary Prize, and an Oscar nomination. He is the p

How Stories Can Save Us: Colum McCann on Narrative Four, Einstein, Freud, and the Power of Empathy

“What conclusion do you draw if you see a system that continues to grow more powerful despite failing at the things it says it’s going to accomplish?” — Jacob Siegel



Jacob Siegel [https://www.tabletmag.com/contributors/jacob-siegel] grew up in Brooklyn, studied history at Boston University, enlisted in the US Army after September 11, and fought in Iraq and Afghanistan. In Afghanistan, as an intelligence officer, he had the latest drones, sensors, Palantir databases, and predictive models at his fingertips — but still couldn’t get a coherent answer about what, exactly, America was trying to accomplish in its war with the Taliban. To him, the technology was as extraordinary as the incoherence of the war.

In his new book, The Information State: Politics in the Age of Total Control [https://www.amazon.com/Information-State-Politics-Total-Control/dp/1250363128], Siegel argues that within a few years of coming home, those same tools were being used on American citizens. This “Information State” was born in Herat and Kandahar. It came home to our iPhones.

But Siegel’s Information State isn’t the conventional leftist critique of Big Tech. Siegel argues that the Obama administration elevated the war on terror’s surveillance apparatus into an art of progressive government — not as Orwellian censors but through a sprawling network of NGOs, fact-checkers, and media organisations that made authoritarian control look like liberal consensus. Ben Rhodes, one of the principal architects of the Information State, called it the echo chamber. Trump’s version is cruder, more monarchical, more wannabe Orwellian. But the infrastructure, Siegel says, is the Internet itself. Digital society has spawned its own form of government regardless of who’s in charge. This Kafkaesque system grows more powerful despite failing at everything it claims to do. You may not be interested in the Information State, but it sure is interested in you. Such is politics in the age of total control.

 

Five Takeaways



•       The War on Terror’s Tools Came Home: Siegel was an intelligence officer in Afghanistan with drones, sensors, Palantir, and predictive databases at his fingertips — and couldn’t get a straight answer about what America was trying to accomplish. Within a few years of returning, those same tools were being used on American citizens. The information state was born in Herat and Kandahar.

•       Obama Built It. Trump Inherited It. Neither Owns It: The Obama administration elevated the war on terror’s surveillance tools into an art of government — not as Orwellian censors but through a progressive gloss of rationality and correct social ideals. Trump’s version is cruder, more monarchical, more direct. But the infrastructure is the Internet itself. Digital society spawns its own form of government regardless of who’s in charge.

•       The System Grows More Powerful by Failing: This is the Kafkaesque horror at the heart of the book. A system that never achieves its stated goals — winning in Afghanistan, rationalising society, controlling public opinion — yet continues to grow larger and more powerful. If a system is rewarded for failing, the system itself has become the purpose.

•       Twitter Under Musk Is a Horrifying Factory of Schizophrenia: Siegel is no Musk apologist. He thinks the early campaign against mass censorship was a good step. But the result — Musk’s Twitter — is social dissolution, not liberation. Removing government control didn’t solve the fundamental problem of how we mediate social relations online.

•       The Human Subject Has Been Diminished: The digital world has relocated human agency into opaque systems. The crisis of the American man — and, Siegel concedes, of the American woman too — is bound up with a t

Politics in the Age of Total Control: Jacob Siegel on the Information State that Came Home

“If the regime doesn’t lose, it wins.” — Soli Özel



It was just past midnight in Istanbul when I reached Soli Özel [https://www.project-syndicate.org/columnist/soli-ozel]. The Pentagon had just announced it was deploying 3,000 soldiers — the 82nd Airborne — to the Gulf. Özel — professor of international relations at Kadir Has University, columnist, and one of the most trusted analysts of Middle Eastern politics — is blunt. This might, he warns, be America’s Suez moment.

In 1956, Britain and France — two spent imperial powers that refused to accept they were spent — were humiliated in Egypt. Trump is a noisier, more corpulent Anthony Eden. The difference between then and now is that the US and Soviet Union were ready to replace the European colonial powers. Today, no great power can take America’s place in the region. But its prestige is diminished, its ammunition depleted, and when it called on NATO allies to help open the Strait of Hormuz, nobody volunteered. Russia and China, Özel suggests, are winning on every front without sending any of their crack regiments to the front. It may also be midnight for a declining United States in the Middle East.

 

Five Takeaways



•       The Negotiations Were Going America’s Way: According to the Omani foreign minister, Iran had accepted conditions firmer than the original JCPOA. The war was a choice, not a necessity. The question is who convinced the president: the Venezuela precedent, which suggested quick regime decapitation, or the Israelis, who wanted not just a deal but the regime’s destruction. Nobody told him that Venezuela and Iran have nothing in common.

•       If the Iranian Regime Doesn’t Lose, It Wins: Iran has escalation control. Its defensive resilience has exceeded every analyst’s expectations. It struck the Ras Laffan gas refinery in Qatar — three to five years to repair. It hit radars, data centres, refineries. Nobody thought they could do this. If the regime survives, it emerges emboldened, more autocratic, and the entire Gulf security equation changes permanently.

•       This May Be America’s Suez Moment: In 1956, Britain and France — two spent imperial powers — were humiliated in Egypt. The difference: the US and Soviet Union were ready to take their place. Today, no great power can replace America in the region. But its prestige is diminished, its ammunition depleted, and when it called on NATO allies to help open the Strait of Hormuz, nobody volunteered.

•       The Moral Debate America Isn’t Having: The decapitation strategy — assassinating an entire generation of foreign leaders — crossed a red line that should never have been crossed. The American debate is about preparedness, Israeli influence, and whether Trump can find an exit. The moral question is taking the back seat. The rest of the world has noticed.

•       Russia Wins. China Waits. Nothing Will Be the Same: Oil prices from the sixties to over a hundred. Russia has more room in Ukraine. China is happy the US can’t pivot to Asia and is depleting ammunition reserves meant for a Taiwan scenario. Relations between the Gulf countries, Israel, and the United States will be reconsidered, redefined, and never the same.

 

About the Guest



Soli Özel [https://www.project-syndicate.org/columnist/soli-ozel] is a professor of international relations at Kadir Has University in Istanbul, a fellow at the Robert Bosch Academy, and a columnist for Habertürk. A member of the European Council on Foreign Relations, he has taught at Johns Hopkins SAIS, UC Santa Cruz, and Yale, and was a Fisher Family Fellow at the Belfer Center at the Harvard Kennedy School. He writes regularly for Project Syndicate.

References:



•       Episode 2843:

America's Suez Moment? Soli Özel on Why Nothing Will Ever Be the Same Again

“The problems start when I conclude that only an uninformed, unintelligent, or evil person could hold the view that you hold.” — Julia Minson



In a sneak preview of the 2028 Presidential election, Andy Beshear called JD Vance the most arrogant politician in America. Vance’s spokesperson fires back that Beshear is chasing headlines. Just another disagreeable day in American public life. So how can we make conversation more civil? How to disagree more agreeably?

In her new book (out today) How to Disagree Better [https://www.amazon.com/How-Disagree-Better-Julia-Minson/dp/0593855000], the Harvard public policy professor Julia Minson [https://www.juliaminson.com/] argues that disagreement is not conflict. You and I can see the world differently and have a completely civil conversation about it. The problem is when we decide the other person is stupid, evil, or both.

Minson’s test case is her own family. Her father-in-law is a retired Army veteran who served in Vietnam and Korea and has voted Republican his entire life. Minson is a first-generation Russian immigrant who came to Denver as a teenager. They disagree on immigration, on ICE, on most of what divides America. The problem, she confesses, is that they don’t actually know why the other believes what they believe because they’ve spent years avoiding the subject. So Minson and her father-in-law make the worst assumptions about each other.

Her deeper argument is about the danger of silence. The loudest disagreements get the headlines, but the more dangerous problem is the people who don’t dare to speak up — the junior person in the corporate meeting sitting on their hands while a bad decision gets made, the teenager who walks out of the room, the patient who leaves the doctor’s office. Minson is honest about the limits of how to disagree better: Putin wouldn’t read this book. Some disagreements are not between equals. But most of ours are — and we’re terrible at them because we’d rather go to the dentist than spend twenty minutes talking to someone who disagrees with us. Let’s hope Minson has sent How to Disagree Better to both Andy Beshear and JD Vance.

 

Five Takeaways



•       Disagreement Is Not Conflict: You and I can see the world differently and have a completely civil conversation about it. The problems start when I conclude that only an uninformed, unintelligent, or evil person could hold the view you hold. That’s when disagreement becomes conflict — and it’s usually based on inaccurate information about the other person’s motives.

•       We Fill In the Blanks with the Worst Possible Story: When people avoid a topic, they don’t actually know why the other person believes what they believe. So they make assumptions — and what they assume is negative. Grandpa doesn’t like immigrants because he’s a racist. That probably isn’t how grandpa would explain himself. Most conflict is bred in misunderstanding.

•       Vulnerability Persuades. Bragging Doesn’t: If Minson says “we should let in more immigrants because my life as an immigrant is wonderful” — that sounds like bragging. If she says “I struggled to find acceptance and I want to make it easier for others” — that resonates. Sharing why a topic matters to you, especially the vulnerable part, changes the conversation.

•       The Real Problem Is Silence, Not Shouting: The loudest disagreements get the headlines. But the more common and more dangerous problem is people who don’t speak up because they’re afraid the disagreement will turn into drama. In corporations, in families, in classrooms — the junior person sitting on their hands while a bad decision gets made. That silence has real costs.

•       Putin Wouldn’t Read This Book: Minson is honest about the limits. Her book is for people wh

How to Be Agreeably Disagreeable: Julia Minson on How to Argue with Your MAGA Father-in-Law

“AI is a theft of knowledge. I can’t believe we as a society allowed this.” — Noam Cohen



Ten years ago, Noam Cohen came on the show to ask if it was “Too Late to Save the Internet from Itself?” Back then, this early Silicon Valley critic was a New York Times writer. He was, as it turns out, a “premature anti-technologist” — Cohen’s phrase, borrowed from the premature antifascists who were called communist for opposing Hitler before it was fashionable. We should have listened to him. Now a freelance writer, Cohen describes himself, without self-pity, as a casualty of the internet revolution. The big media world that employed him barely exists anymore. And tech’s Know-It-All elite that he warned us about are richer than ever.

His 2017 book The Know-It-Alls: The Rise of Silicon Valley as a Political Powerhouse and Social Wrecking Ball [https://www.amazon.com/Know-Alls-Political-Powerhouse-Wrecking/dp/1620972107] is now back with a new introduction, triggered by that infamous photograph of Bezos, Zuckerberg, Pichai, and Musk at Trump’s inauguration. Cohen’s argument hasn’t changed — history has caught up with it. These weren’t businessmen attending a president’s ceremony, Cohen says. Trump, he fears, is their vessel. Like the tech titans, Trump doesn’t believe in regulation, doesn’t believe in democracy, believes only he can solve it. That’s the same thing Musk says. And Zuckerberg. And Altman. Even Amodei. They are all Know-It-Alls.

 

Five Takeaways



•       We Were Premature Anti-Technologists: Cohen’s phrase, borrowed from the premature antifascists who were called communist for opposing Hitler before it was fashionable. In 2017, he and I could see the consolidation of power. We should have been listened to. We weren’t. Cohen is now a freelance writer whose wife has the steady income. He describes himself, without self-pity, as a casualty of a media world that no longer exists.

•       Trump Is Their Vessel: That photograph at the inauguration — Bezos, Zuckerberg, Pichai, Musk — wasn’t businessmen attending a ceremony. Trump doesn’t believe in regulation, doesn’t believe in democracy, believes only he can solve it. That’s the same thing Musk says. And Zuckerberg. And Altman. They’re all unique founders who believe only they can fix the world. They have more in common with each other than with any of us.

•       Stanford’s Eugenics History Explains Silicon Valley: Lewis Terman brought the IQ test to America and built a programme around identifying “gifted” children. His son Fred turned Stanford into the Harvard of the West by importing venture capital. The idea that intelligence can be measured, that the smartest should breed, that society should be run by its cognitive elite — that’s the soil Silicon Valley grew from. It’s also why Jeffrey Epstein was a natural fit.

•       AI Is a Theft of Civilisation: They hoovered up all of human knowledge without permission or payment. Copyright is meaningless. The result isn’t intelligence — it’s replication. John McCarthy dreamed of creating a being three times smarter than Einstein. What we got is a machine that regurgitates our own words and calls it thinking.

•       There Shouldn’t Be Billionaires: Cohen’s conclusion after ten years of watching the Know-It-Alls consolidate power. AI and social media are utilities and should be nationalised. Wealth inequality at this scale is inherently destabilising. California’s proposed billionaire wealth tax and Australia’s ban on social media for under-16s are signs that the tide may be turning. But only if the next election produces a party willing to claw it back.

 

About the Guest



Noam Cohen is a former New York Times technology columnist and the author of

Let’s Ban Billionaires: Noam Cohen on the Know-It-Alls 2.0

“We read so as not to feel alone.” — C.S. Lewis (possibly)



Dan Turello [https://www.danturello.com] is a cultural historian of medieval Italy, a much published photographer, and the author of the new Connection: How Technology Can Make Us Better Humans [https://www.amazon.com/dp/0231220154]. I’m sceptical. Especially the promise (or illusion) of better humans. But Turello’s definition of technology goes back further than most — all the way to the original fig leaf. When Adam and Eve were expelled from the Garden, the first thing they did, he reminds us, was cover their bodies. Technology, then, in Turello’s framing, is everything that extends beyond the human body. Clothing is technology. Double-entry bookkeeping is technology. The iPhone is just the latest chapter of our technology story that began at the beginning.

His most surprising argument is that our current tech anxiety has medieval roots. St. Francis of Assisi was what he calls a trust-fund kid “avant la lettre” — his father being a wealthy 13th century silk merchant at a time when northern Italy was Silicon Valley. Francis sold some of his dad’s silk, gave the money away, stripped naked before a bishop, and founded a counterculture movement. The first tech backlash, Turello suggests, wasn’t against AI. It was against double-entry bookkeeping. Dante, writing a generation later, idealised an earlier, simpler Florence — what scholars call “paleolithic chic.” No makeup, no ornate clothing, no fleeing to immoral cities. Sound familiar?

On AI, Turello goes a bit Saint Francis on us. Large language models, he fears, generate material without lineage — you can’t trace where the ideas came from, can’t triangulate the sources, can’t validate against reality. Technology is about power, Turello argues — about who controls the storyline. Making us better humans, then, requires recovering a sense of agency. Thus he argues that we should stop outsourcing our thinking, our writing, our photography to machines. Dante wrote the entire Divine Comedy without Claude. These days, we can barely write an email without a little help from our friends at ChatGPT. Machiavelli donned the robes of the past to think and write. We might try putting ours on too. But then isn’t that a tech solution too?

 

Five Takeaways



•       St. Francis Was a Trust-Fund Kid Who Invented Counterculture: His father was a wealthy silk merchant in 13th-century Italy, at the dawn of Europe’s commercial revolution. Francis sold his father’s silk, gave the money away, stripped naked before a bishop, and founded an order that rejected the mechanisms of early capitalism. The first tech backlash wasn’t against AI. It was against double-entry bookkeeping.

•       Technology Is Everything Beyond the Naked Human Body: Turello’s definition goes back to Genesis. When Adam and Eve were expelled from the Garden, the first thing they did was cover their bodies. Fig leaves are technology. Clothing is technology. The iPhone is just the latest iteration of a metaphysical problem that’s been destabilising us since the Fall.

•       Dante Wrote the Divine Comedy Without Being Able to Edit: He penned an entire macrocosm of the medieval world from memory, without the ability to rewrite in any meaningful way. Turello thinks Dante would be concerned that we’re losing our memories, our ability to tell a coherent narrative for our lives, and that our existence has become too fragmented. We can barely write an email without ChatGPT.

•       LLMs Generate Material Without Lineage: Technology is about power — about who controls the storyline. Large language models produce text without traceable sources, without verifiable origins, without lineage. You can’t triangulate where the ideas came from. That’s not intelligence. That’s a crisis of p

Was St. Francis of Assisi the First Silicon Valley Critic? Dan Turello on 800-Years of Tech Anxiety

“Washington and Hamilton were governed by Willing.” — John Adams, 1813



Thomas Willing voted against the Declaration of Independence. He was the wealthiest man in Philadelphia, the largest merchant trader in North America, an Anglican slave trader printing money. So he saw little reason to declare independence from Britain. Especially since the renegades — the poor Scots-Irish Presbyterians flooding into the country, the MAGA people of their day — had no love of wealthy aristocrats like himself. And then Willing did something that took everyone, even perhaps himself, by surprise: he financed the very revolution he’d voted against.

In The Banker Who Made America [https://www.amazon.com/Banker-Who-Made-America-Aristocracy/dp/1509569081], the financial historian Richard Vague [https://www.amazon.com/stores/Richard-Vague/author/B00J6B7CRO] tells a story that reframes the Founding. After Bunker Hill, Willing financed the smuggling of gunpowder via the Caribbean at a critical moment in the struggle against the British. He and his partner Robert Morris became the principal suppliers of finance and other essential materiel for the revolution. When the Continental Currency collapsed in inflationary chaos, it was Willing’s bank that financed the second half of the war. The purpose of America’s first bank, like the Bank of England before it, was to fund war. Without it, there would have been no successful revolution.

But the real revelation in the Willing story is political. Pennsylvania radicals created the most democratic constitution in American history — an annually elected lower house, neither an upper house nor a governor with veto power. Willing and his fellow financial elites like George Washington and Alexander Hamilton hated this form of people’s democracy. So when they showed up in 1787 to write the US Constitution, they’d learned their lesson: too much democracy is dangerous to the wealthy. The result — an unelected Senate, an unelected president, judges appointed for life — was, as Vague puts it, “a counterrevolution against democracy.” Even Thomas Paine ended up on Willing’s payroll. This Philadelphia story became the American story. Follow the money.

 

Five Takeaways



•       Thomas Willing Voted Against Independence — Then Financed It: The wealthiest man in Philadelphia, the largest merchant trader in North America, an Anglican coastal elite making money hand over fist. He voted against the Declaration of Independence on July 2, 1776. Then he smuggled gunpowder through the Caribbean, funded the Continental Army, and created America’s first bank to finance the back half of the war. John Adams wrote that Washington and Hamilton were “governed by Willing.” Nobody knows his name.

•       The Constitution Was a Counterrevolution Against Democracy: Pennsylvania radicals created the most democratic constitution in American history — annually elected lower house, no upper house, no governor with veto power. Willing and the financial elites clawed it back. The 1787 US Constitution gave America an unelected Senate, an unelected president, and judges appointed for life. Vague calls it a counterrevolution. The tension between money and democracy has never stopped shaping American politics.

•       Even Thomas Paine Ended Up on Willing’s Payroll: The great radical pamphleteer, author of Common Sense, defender of the rights of man — working for the financial elite he should have loathed. Man’s gotta eat. It tells you everything about the relationship between money and idealism in the American founding.

•       The Revolution Wasn’t About High Taxes: Americans’ tax burden was lighter than Britain’s. The real causes were financial: George Washington wanted to speculate on land west of the Appalachians. Willing wanted to start a bank.

A Willing Philadelphia Story: Richard Vague on the Wealthiest & Most Invisible American Founding Father

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