Keen On America

Happy New Year everyone! As the final show of 2025 and first for 2026, we turned the tables and had me interviewed by the formidable David Masciotra. As you will see, my reading of 2025 is more optimistic than many of my guests. And my sense about 2026 is that it will be a happier year for America than 2025 (which isn’t saying much). As I explain to David, I suspect the zeitgeist is shifting back to a cautious optimism about the American future. Despite all the doom-mongering, 2025 was actually an exciting year for movies, books, and music — the artistic world being at least as vibrant and diverse as it was twenty years ago. That said, I warn about the medieval wealth gap between rich and poor, Trump’s pride in willful cruelty to immigrants, and the increasingly chasmic divide between young and older Americans.This is all speculative, of course. But what I can promise is that this show will remain a daily broadcast featuring America’s leading commentators. So stay tuned. I can guarantee that 2026 will be an exciting year for all KEEN ON AMERICA viewers, listeners and readers. Keen On America 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

We live in transitional times. "The old is dead and the new cannot be born—this is the time of monsters," Antonio Gramsci famously wrote. But today, as the West declines and the East rises, these may equally be times for middle powers like Turkey. That, at least, is the view from Istanbul of the Turkish commentator Soli Özel, who sees an opportunity for regional powers to become more influential players in the international system. Expect more international empowerment of states like Turkey, Brazil, and India in 2026, Özel suggests. Today's emerging multipolar world is, indeed, not just a time for monsters, but also for middle-ranked powers.Keen On America 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

For Jason Pack, presenter of the Disorder podcast, the person of the year for 2025 was the Canadian Prime Minister, Mark Carney. But for 2026, Pack predicts, the person of the year will be a resurrected Jeffrey Epstein (or, at least, the Epstein scandal). Orderers vs Disorderers: the dialectic driving our age of upheaval. The Canadian Prime Minister, for Pack, is a hero. "Carney stood up to Trump and said, Great, you want to punish us? Punish us," Pack says. Whereas the conspiracy theorists stoking the Epstein paranoia are the bad guys. "The more that we in the mainstream attempt to say it was just a sex scandal, the more that people on the extreme left and right are gonna gain in power," Pack warns. So it's Carney vs Epstein. The hard center vs the extreme left and right. Order vs disorder. If only the future was that dialectically simple.Keen On America 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

According to the German Marshall Fund chair Chris Schroeder, China both goes to bed and wakes up thinking of China rather than America. How does the Washington DC based Schroeder know? Because, unlike almost all Americans, he actually made the effort of visiting China this year and seeing this vast and paradoxical country for himself. “Curiosity has never been more valuable,” Schroeder warns. “If you are not on the ground, you have no sense of nuance. You get caught in a narrative which is much more macro." And that’s exactly what the global investor and entrepreneur did. He got on the ground - talked to young Chinese entrepreneurs, traveled on high speed rail, saw an entire car assembled in twenty seconds. Americans might not want to obsess over the China paradox. But they should probably occasionally spare a thought for this remarkable country before going to bed or waking up in the morning.According to German Marshall Fund chair Chris Schroeder, China goes to bed and wakes up thinking about China — not America. How does the Washington, DC-based Schroeder know? Because, unlike almost all Americans, he actually made the effort of visiting China this year and seeing this vast and paradoxical country for himself. “Curiosity has never been more valuable,” he warns. “If you are not on the ground, you have no sense of nuance. You get caught in a narrative which is much more macro.” And that’s exactly what the global investor and entrepreneur did — he talked to young Chinese entrepreneurs, traveled on high-speed rail, saw an entire car assembled in 20 seconds. Americans don’t need to think about China every night or morning. But they would be advised to listen to nuanced and on-the-ground stories of curious travelers like Chris Schroeder. 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

That was the year in tech. When nothing and yet everything happened. A year betwixt and between, simultaneously revolutionary and uneventful. That's the ironic conclusion Keith Teare and I reach about Silicon Valley in 2025. It's as if the AI revolution is changing the world without us fully noticing. AI has become electricity—ubiquitous and essential, yet barely noticed. So what will happen on the tech front (or not happen) in 2026? Will it be another year in which nothing happened (except everything, everywhere, all at once). Or are we reaching 1789 or 1917 or 1989—a grand historical year where the logjam breaks and tech formally takes over the world? A true end and beginning of history. The first real year of the tech 21st century.Keen On America 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