Feb. 28, 2026

Is Anthropic Wrong? Andrew vs. Keith on Amodei vs. Trump

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"He's blundered here. He's trying to set policy for the government on the use of AI through a sales contract." — Keith Teare on Dario Amodei

There's only one story this week: Dario Amodei's refusal to let the Department of War use Anthropic's best technology for mass domestic surveillance and fully autonomous weapons. Silicon Valley rallied behind him. The New York Times covered it. Sam Altman publicly supported him—while quietly cutting his own deal with the administration. But Keith Teare thinks Anthropic is wrong.

Keith's argument is simple: vendors don't set policy. If you want to sell to governments, you can't then dictate what they do with your product. That's not your job. And by trying to do it, Amodei has alienated the entire US administration and created a fake battle that can only damage his company. Andrew is more sympathetic. In his view, Amodei is taking a political position against Trump—and in 2026, with Congress marginalized and corporations increasingly powerful, that's just the nature of things.

The debate cuts to something deeper: the power shift between corporations and the state. Oppenheimer couldn't say no to the government because he worked for them. Amodei can say no because he doesn't. These companies now speak to the government as almost equals. Meanwhile, Citruni Research released a white paper predicting AI will collapse the economy and destroy white-collar jobs. Jack Dorsey just cut 40% of Square's workforce. The stock jumped 25%.

 

Five Takeaways

●      Keith: Amodei Has Blundered: Vendors don't determine the use of what you buy from them. By trying to set policy through a sales contract, Amodei has alienated the entire US administration and created a fake battle that can only damage his company. He hasn't read the Art of War.

●      Andrew: This Is a Political Stand: Amodei isn't naive—he's taking a position against Trump. And in 2026, with Congress marginalized and corporations increasingly powerful, the fact that he's willing to take the government on publicly is astonishing. He's kept his job. The investors are fine with it.

●      The Power Has Shifted: Oppenheimer couldn't say no to the government because he worked for them. Amodei can say no because he doesn't. What Anthropic has at its fingertips is not something the government has. These companies now speak to the government as almost equals.

●      Silicon Valley Is Split: Right libertarians are small-government supporters of the administration. Left libertarians are bigger-government supporters of welfare. Vinod Khosla is a hybrid—pro-America militarily, fearful of China. Tim Cook does whatever governments tell him. NVIDIA is navigating best.

●      Jack Dorsey Cut 40%—Stock Jumped 25%: Citruni Research released a white paper predicting AI will collapse the economy. Noah Smith called it a scary bedtime story. But Dorsey just did it for real at Square. If AI succeeds, lots of white-collar jobs go. The social contract between capital and labor is breaking.

 

About the Guest

Keith Teare is a Silicon Valley entrepreneur and publisher of That Was The Week, a weekly tech newsletter. He is a co-founder of TechCrunch and has been a fixture in Silicon Valley for decades.

References

This week's reading:

●      Ezra Klein's interview with Jack Clark — Andrew calls it the interview of the week.

●      Citruni Research white paper — The AI jobs apocalypse scenario that crashed the software market on Monday.

●      Noah Smith's response — Calls the Citruni report a "scary bedtime story."

Previous Keen On episodes mentioned:

●      Maya Kornberg on Congress being "Stuck" (Episode 2815)

●      Arne Westad on pre-WWI parallels (upcoming)

About Keen On America

Nobody asks more awkward questions than the Anglo-American writer and filmmaker Andrew Keen. In Keen On America, Andrew brings his pointed Transatlantic wit to making sense of the United States—hosting daily interviews about the history and future of this now venerable Republic. With nearly 2,800 episodes since the show launched on TechCrunch in 2010, Keen On America is the most prolific intellectual interview show in the history of podcasting.

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Chapters:

0:00 Andrew Keen Hello, my name is Andrew Keen. Welcome to Keen on America, the daily interview show about the United States... with world-leading commentators and thinkers.
00:54 Andrew Keen Hello everybody, it is Saturday, February the 28th, 2026. Last day in February, and our Saturday show, our summary of tech news from Silicon Valley. There's only really one story this week.
01:10 Andrew Keen It's the statement from Dario Amodei of Anthropic in terms of his "discussions" with the Department of War. They weren't very successful discussions.
01:21 Andrew Keen Amodei has decided not to allow the Department of War to use some of his best technology. A lot of people in Silicon Valley are very sympathetic to Anthropic in this clash with the Department of War and Donald Trump.
01:37 Andrew Keen Silicon Valley rallies behind Anthropic according to the New York Times. Big tech companies like Google and Meta are supportive. Not everyone, though, is supportive of the position he's taken.
01:49 Andrew Keen Vinod Khosla says he's sympathetic in a way with what Amodei is doing, but disagrees with the principle itself. And Keith Teare of That Was The Week, I think, agrees with Khosla.
02:04 Andrew Keen Keith leads this week with "Anthropic is Wrong." Keith, why is Dario Amodei wrong? What's your position on this?
02:14 Keith Teare Well, he clearly hasn't read the Art of War. How do you win? He's blundered here. He's trying to set policy for the government on the use of AI through a sales contract.
02:29 Keith Teare Firstly, it's not his job to do that. Vendors don't determine the use of the thing you buy from them. And by doing it, he's obviously alienated the entire US administration, which means a huge customer base.
02:44 Keith Teare The reality is that the likelihood of the government misusing his AI due to the rule of law—firstly it's out of his control, and secondly it's very unlikely they would anyway. He's created a fake battle that can only damage his company.
03:00 Andrew Keen But these aren't normal political times, Keith. If it was Anthropic challenging the Biden government or the Bush government or the Obama one, you may have a point.
03:12 Andrew Keen At what point, then, in your view, should or would Anthropic not allow the government to use his technology? You have to assume there's a political dimension here.
03:22 Andrew Keen He doesn't mention in his statement Trump and Hegseth, but it's clearly there—it's self-evident in his challenge to the administration.
03:31 Keith Teare Look, the better option would be to just decide: we don't sell to governments. You can't sell to a government and then when the government says "any lawful use"—which is an important sentence—say "well no, we want to carve out these things you can't do."
03:48 Keith Teare And expect that a government is going to allow a private company to determine government policy. It's just unrealistic. And so he's naive.
04:00 Keith Teare I'm with Vinod: I'm not in favor of mass surveillance, and I'm not in favor of even narrow surveillance. And I'm certainly not in favor of autonomous weapons making kill decisions at a time when the software itself is not reliably deterministic.
04:16 Keith Teare So I don't disagree with Amodei's concerns. I'm giving him some business advice here: the best way to pursue his concerns is not to do what he did.
04:25 Andrew Keen Right, but that's all very well. He doesn't need business advice from you; he's quite enough of a grown-up, I think. And this is not a business decision; he's taking a position against the Trump administration.
04:42 Keith Teare Well, it isn't money—my main point isn't about money. It's about who controls policy. And that's more of a point about democracy. None of us want private companies to make policy.
04:57 Keith Teare They're allowed to be lobbyists, they're allowed to have opinions. They're not policymakers. So policy belongs with the legislature and the people who elect them.
05:07 Keith Teare There is no current fear that the legal system doesn't protect us against mass surveillance of the US population because there are laws against that.
05:18 Keith Teare But as we've seen in recent history, the government does it anyway. The guy who had to go to Moscow, what's his name?
05:25 Andrew Keen W-Wittkoff?
05:27 Keith Teare No, the guy who was a secret service guy who leaked that there was mass surveillance going on with the British government in cahoots... Edward Snowden.
05:38 Keith Teare So there's a long history of mass surveillance. We know it happens. Anthropic isn't going to have any impact at all on the reality of that. So it's a fake misfire by Amodei.
05:54 Andrew Keen I wonder, you know, I take your point, but this was a week when OpenAI, Anthropic's competitor, raised $110 billion, the largest private funding round in history.
06:08 Andrew Keen Altman apparently reached a deal with the government, the kind of deal that Amodei rejected. But I wonder in retrospect whether this might speak to the change in power between corporations and the state.
06:23 Andrew Keen These private companies are increasingly powerful, increasingly wealthy. And the government, for all Trump or Hegseth's bluster, seems increasingly marginalized.
06:40 Keith Teare The word "power" might be too big a word, but I think you're right that the influence of technology companies in particular on government has increased certainly during this administration.
06:55 Keith Teare I wouldn't characterize it as power because I think we all know that Trump is not somebody to accede power to a third party. He clearly is using them for his own ends as opposed to giving them authority.
07:11 Keith Teare Personally, I think it's a good thing if the main drivers of GDP growth have a seat at the table in the conversation. When they step over the line of thinking they are the ones who set policy, that is not fine.
07:27 Keith Teare And I say that despite the fact that this is the Trump administration. Democracy is founded on elected officials making policy through legislation.
07:38 Andrew Keen But again, I wonder whether technology is so powerful and is so privatized now that this is almost unavoidable. Back in the nuclear age, Oppenheimer couldn't say, "Well, I'm not going to give my technology to the government" because he worked for them.
07:56 Andrew Keen Now, what Amodei has at his fingertips within Anthropic is not something that the government has. Sam Altman has it at OpenAI and he's done this deal, but who knows in the future what kind of relations will exist. Something has changed.
08:14 Keith Teare Well, there's an enduring theme that goes back maybe as long as 15-20 years, which is the globalization of tech leads to a separation of interest from domestic corporations and national governments.
08:29 Keith Teare All over the world, national governments have reacted with regulatory zeal, fines, especially in Europe. We are living at a time in history when the nation-state is too small an institution for a corporation that has a reach much greater than a nation-state.
08:50 Keith Teare That tension is real and always arises in any globalizing setting. At the same time, it's intensified because nations are de-globalizing and shrinking back into their regional zones. And corporations are not.
09:05 Andrew Keen Right, and so you have someone like Trump who's a sort of a wannabe 19th-century tin-pot dictator invading countries at his will or his whim and then you have the real powers of Anthropic or OpenAI or Google.
09:23 Keith Teare Yeah. We have a couple of viewers... one on LinkedIn reminding us it was Edward Snowden we were trying to think about earlier. And then scrap metal husband on YouTube saying he thinks the reliance of the government on tech companies has increased.
09:41 Andrew Keen Well I think he's wrong. Anyway, Khosla argues that—I'm quoting from an X he posted—"And Putin will adhere to it? China didn't do gain-of-function research and cause COVID... do you trust Putin and Xi?"
10:00 Andrew Keen That's all very well, but on a day where Donald Trump has at least declared war on Iran... I mean one could argue, there's not a great deal of difference between Putin and Xi and Trump.
10:14 Keith Teare Well, the biggest difference is the belief in, ultimately, in democracy.
10:20 Andrew Keen You keep on using this D-word. You don't sound very convinced, Keith.
10:25 Keith Teare Well, it is certainly the case that the gains we've made in political organizations since feudalism are something to be defended and protected.
10:35 Andrew Keen That's another vague, vague response. I mean we're not talking about advances from feudalism. We're talking about America in 2026.
10:43 Keith Teare Well America in 2026 is dangerous because America is a relatively declining global power and is having to rely more and more on shrinking back into its borders, hence the discussion around NATO and the EU spending more money on the military.
10:59 Keith Teare It's a bunch of bilateral relationships. Increasing diplomacy with China becomes important, and Putin for that matter. And so a shrinking or declining power which happens to be the world's biggest military power clearly would be of concern.
11:18 Keith Teare That's the reality. Putting—the United States government, therefore, needs to be controlled by its people in terms of what policies the people want.
11:29 Andrew Keen Yeah, but that's again—you sound like some civics teacher. That's not the way things are working in America. The vast majority of Americans are not supportive of what Trump did in Minneapolis. They're certainly not supportive of him declaring war on Iran.
11:47 Andrew Keen He won a narrow victory, but that doesn't necessarily mean that everyone supports what he does. And Amodei might ask: what's the difference between giving these weapons of mass destruction to, well maybe not Putin, but certainly Xi versus Trump?
12:04 Andrew Keen Xi hasn't used them yet, certainly in Taiwan. It's just not clear really. You keep on mentioning democracy, but it's not convincing.
12:15 Keith Teare I want to hear from you how you frame it. I mean I do think historically at least rising powers rarely resort to war. It's almost always declining powers or powers that are struggling to put paid to a previous big power that's declined.
12:35 Andrew Keen Well it's interesting, I have an interview coming up with a Yale historian, Arne Westad, who's just written a book called The Coming Storm in which he compares the current world with the period before the First World War.
12:51 Andrew Keen He compares pre-WWI Britain with America in terms of decline and pre-WWI Germany with China. So it's an interesting comparison.
13:02 Keith Teare I think that is an appropriate comparison at an abstract level. At the big-picture level, China is already dominating many industries globally and is a rising power. America is very similar to Britain.
13:16 Keith Teare As in the Pound was being questioned as the currency of world trade, now the Dollar's being questioned. And it's cyclical. And by the way, my PhD thesis was about why this happens: the old get old, and the new are new.
13:30 Andrew Keen Right, so I'll run that interview actually probably tomorrow. But let's get back to tech. I mean again, it comes back to—I mean if I have—I'm much more sympathetic to Amodei because I see it as a political response.
13:46 Andrew Keen I mean I don't necessarily disagree with certainly you or Khosla in theory, but in practice we live in late February or early March 2026. And Amodei has taken a position for better or worse on the current state of the US government.
14:03 Andrew Keen My bigger point is that I think it does reflect the fact that these companies now are so powerful, have so much technology and financial independence, that the fact that Amodei is willing to take the government on publicly is astonishing.
14:24 Andrew Keen And that he's kept his job, there's no rebellion, the investors in Anthropic are clearly okay with it. As Sam Altman came out publicly to support him, although clearly he's using it as an opportunity to build better bridges with the current administration.
14:41 Andrew Keen I think it speaks of the change in power between governments and corporations in the long term. I don't think you got the same imbalance say between the first World War. No one knows who supplied the British government, for example, with weapons.
14:57 Andrew Keen There were steel manufacturers and armament manufacturers, people who made tanks, but they don't come to mind. I think when historians look back at this period, Anthropic and OpenAI and Google and Microsoft will be major players.
15:15 Keith Teare Well, Palmer Luckey's company that produces autonomous weapons is obviously a big part of the current... but Andrew, I know you well enough and your reputation on being pro-democracy is huge.
15:27 Keith Teare I suspect you would agree with me that corporations shouldn't set policy. You might agree with, and I do too, the individual beliefs against mass surveillance and against unreliable autonomous weapons.
15:43 Andrew Keen Yeah, and to be clear, Amodei's position is not that the government can't use Anthropic technology. It's in particular in two areas: mass domestic surveillance and fully autonomous weapons.
15:58 Andrew Keen You ask me whether as a demo—I mean obviously we're all democrats here. But he has every right in a democracy, or Anthropic has every right, to withhold the use of their technology to a government. That's what democracy is.
16:15 Keith Teare Yeah, but the scenario you've got to consider is if the government had agreed with him. If the government agreed to buy on those conditions, Congress is no longer setting policy.
16:26 Andrew Keen Yeah but that's my point: Congress isn't. I mean for better or worse, Congress is irrelevant in America. They did a show on that last week as well where there's a woman who's written a book called Stuck.
16:38 Andrew Keen Congress has been completely marginalized by Trump. At best, it's not a player anymore. So um, that's just the nature of things for better or worse. And in these power vacuums, companies like Anthropic and the other Silicon Valley leviathans are going to be more and more prominent.
17:00 Keith Teare Well your statement that Congress is irrelevant can't be one that sits comfortably with you because you're a democrat and you want the elected...
17:09 Andrew Keen Yeah but obviously I'm not happy with the situation, but that's the reality, that's the world we're living in today. So would you rather, Keith, that Trump has announced—or he's launched an invasion of Iran—Congress might not even challenge that.
17:28 Andrew Keen So something has changed. Now that is, I mean you could have a weak Congress and a weak Silicon Valley, those two things don't go together. But um, I'm not celebrating it, it's just a reality.
17:42 Keith Teare Well let's just take it to its extreme. If public corporations started doing what happened in the war in between the wars, which is build private armies, you'd obviously be against that.
17:54 Keith Teare Setting policy is the first step toward having an independent executive and legislature inside a private company. So I do think we have to draw a line and say that even if we agree with his spirit, we disagree with his attempt to set policy.
18:10 Andrew Keen Well I don't think that's true because again you're taking it to the logical extreme. Just because he withholds his technology because of his ambivalence or concern about mass domestic surveillance and fully autonomous weapons, that doesn't suggest there's going to be an Anthropic army.
18:29 Keith Teare There's a lot of discussion on YouTube about what we're talking about... thank you for this is my username and Profit Generation Lab and others.
18:38 Andrew Keen So who, are most people on your side or my side on this? I hope it's my side.
18:43 Keith Teare You know we have intelligent viewers, so I'd say they're nuanced. I'll read one: "It's a nuanced situation and I agree they have a moral right to withhold their technology. There are other players they can use. I also see the other perspective."
19:01 Andrew Keen So what's the the feeling down in Palo Alto, Keith? I sent you this New York Times piece, "Silicon Valley Rallies Behind Anthropic in AI Clash with Trump." You sent me back the fact that Khosla disagrees. What do you think the consensus is?
19:22 Keith Teare It's complicated. Silicon Valley basically splits into two kinds of libertarian: right libertarians who are typically small-government supporters of the administration, and left libertarians who are typically bigger-government supporters of welfare.
19:40 Keith Teare Vinod is a kind of a hybrid. He is very pro-America militarily especially, and so he sees everything through the prism of being fearful of China. So there's a lot, a lot of different strands in Silicon Valley and I'd say it's the least harmonious time.
19:59 Andrew Keen Well that's good. I mean that again, if you want to use the D-word, that reflects the fact that Silicon Valley is a democracy. The interview of the week wasn't from Keen on America this week.
20:13 Andrew Keen I suggested everyone should read Ezra Klein's interview of Anthropic co-founder Jack Clark on the New York Times. I thought it was an excellent interview, partly because it tells us about the kind of mentality or perhaps culture of senior people at a company like Anthropic.
20:31 Andrew Keen Do you think there's a great deal of difference? I mean half these people at Anthropic had been at OpenAI. Amodei of course began at OpenAI. There isn't much of a difference really between Anthropic and OpenAI is there, do you think culturally or politically?
20:47 Keith Teare I think emotionally there is. There's companies which are striking in their preparedness to work with the administration. Apple stands out there—Tim Cook is the least likely person you would imagine to do that but is doing it.
21:03 Andrew Keen To many people's disappointment.
21:05 Keith Teare Right. And then there's other companies where the emotional core, like Anthropic, is prepared to put politics into business. And arguably to their own detriment.
21:19 Andrew Keen But I would argue again the idea of putting politics into business is again the nature of things, especially in America in 2026. If you decide to do business with the government, by definition you're being involved in politics.
21:38 Andrew Keen Trump for better or worse is forcing Silicon Valley to be political. So um, it's not possible to separate business and politics in early 2026.
21:51 Keith Teare But there is a way to do that. Anthropic has a lot of money.
21:55 Andrew Keen So who's the model then? Who is navigating these two worlds of politics and business most successfully? If it's not Amodei?
22:06 Keith Teare I think NVIDIA. I mean it's amazing to me that NVIDIA got Trump to agree he could sell to China. I think NVIDIA's doing a great job of navigating on its own behalf.
22:20 Keith Teare And you know, that is the democratic way to do it. It's to lobby. You can also build PACs and put money into them for your preferred point of view, which Anthropic could.
22:33 Andrew Keen But who wants that? You mean lobbyists in DC? And I would argue that what Amodei has done is actually raise this. Most people hadn't really thought that much about mass domestic surveillance or fully autonomous weapons until he brought it up.
22:50 Andrew Keen So it's an act of politics and I think a lot of people expect some sort of deal down the line on this because the government probably needs Anthropic more than Anthropic needs the government.
23:02 Keith Teare Let's imagine that there was a democratic government and a company that builds autonomous weapons only agreed to sell to the government if they said they would use them.
23:14 Keith Teare You'd disagree with that company. Would you say it's doing the right thing? Probably not. So I think here bias gets in the way of logic.
23:23 Andrew Keen Well yeah I mean that's a good counterargument. I'm not sure I would—I wouldn't necessarily admire them but they have every right to do it.
23:32 Andrew Keen If one of these new Thiel-backed organizations refused to give their technology to Biden because he was using it for international peace... I think everyone would be shocked but they have every right to do it.
23:46 Andrew Keen If Palantir decided that they didn't want to share their technology with a Democratic administration... but again I think what it does is it speaks to the fact that these companies now can speak to the government as almost as equals.
24:06 Andrew Keen So whether it would be Palantir standing up to a Democratic government or Anthropic standing up to the Republican one or a MAGA one, it's a new reality.
24:19 Andrew Keen You mentioned Cook. It's an interesting one, and I think Cook is a representative of the old world. But what's bewildering to a lot of people is why wouldn't Apple stand up to Trump?
24:32 Keith Teare Well they have no interest—Apple also works with the Chinese government. Apple doesn't try to pretend it can circumvent national law and governments ever.
24:42 Keith Teare It's very disciplined about having a voice without setting policy. Everywhere in the world. And it gets criticized in China for acceding to government policy. But that's what you have to do as long as you have a world of nation-states with legal systems.
24:58 Andrew Keen So you're admiring that? I mean Sergey Brin pulled Google out of China and has always been very critical of Google's involvement with any authoritarian government.
25:10 Andrew Keen I mean these are realities. You have to take a position one way or the other. So you're suggesting that the Apple model of doing business with everyone is more acceptable than Google or Anthropic?
25:23 Keith Teare Not only more acceptable, it's the only realistic way to to exist in a a multipolar world of nation-states with different legal systems.
25:34 Keith Teare If you want to be a global business which all big business are, you have to work with an array of different legal systems in order to even be able to exist.
25:46 Keith Teare And you can still pursue politics, but you pursue it outside of your sales process and your product process. You pursue it in civil society.
25:57 Andrew Keen Yeah but there's no civil society in China. Google doesn't do a great deal of business, I don't think they do any business in China. They're still a three or four trillion dollar company.
26:09 Keith Teare Andrew, have you been to China? The idea that there's no civil society in China is ludicrous.
26:16 Andrew Keen Yeah, but my point is that Google survives as a very viable company without doing business in China.
26:24 Keith Teare So what? That doesn't change the point. You just made the point that you have to because that's the only way a company can operate.
26:33 Keith Teare I agree you can take positions, you can say, "Well, China's beyond the pale for one reason or another, or Russia's beyond the pale."
26:41 Keith Teare That's why I said Anthropic is doing this to its detriment. It is taking a position. It is a wrong position and it's going to lose significant tailwinds as a company because of the decision.
26:55 Keith Teare As Google did in China. Google lost... but it doesn't seem to have harmed Google as a company, though. Well you have to do the math on what it could have made in China if it didn't do it to know.
27:10 Andrew Keen So are you suggesting that companies should just do business with all governments at any time because they're businesses and they're in the business of making money?
27:23 Keith Teare I think it's fine to choose not to trade with a government as Google did. It's not fine to say "I'll trade if you change your policy to this."
27:34 Andrew Keen Is that what Amodei's doing though?
27:36 Keith Teare He is. Absolutely he's doing that.
27:39 Andrew Keen So what is he saying? What is he saying that Hegseth and the Department of War should be doing?
27:46 Keith Teare He's putting rules in place for the use of his technology that the customer must agree to in order to buy it. And when the customer is a government, that means you're putting yourself ahead of national rule of law.
28:02 Andrew Keen Yeah well as I mean given what's happening in the US a lot of people would say that the national rule of law is certainly precarious in the US.
28:11 Andrew Keen Let's move on. I think it's an interesting debate and it's complicated but important. The other news this week was the Citruni Research came out with a white paper which had a great deal of impact on Wall Street.
28:28 Andrew Keen Tell us about the Citruni Research, Keith, and why it had such a dramatic impact when it comes to AI and jobs.
28:36 Keith Teare Well it was a fictional extrapolation over the next two years of what happens if AI succeeds. So it wasn't "doomer" as in AI will fail; it's AI will succeed and lots of white-collar jobs will go.
28:54 Keith Teare And then other things will kick in. And it concluded that the economy would collapse, at least initially, GDP would collapse, and software would disappear as an item.
29:10 Keith Teare I'd recommend everyone goes and reads it. It is in this week's newsletter, ThatWasTheWeek.com, which by the way is not yet published, it'll be published later today.
29:21 Keith Teare And there was a massive counter-reaction to it saying it was simplifying and over-extrapolating. But it did lead to a very large crash in the software part of the stock market on Monday, which has recovered since.
29:38 Andrew Keen And the other piece of news which—and not everyone of course agrees you linked to a piece by Noah Smith, very good columnist—suggests that this Citruni post is just what he calls a scary bedtime story.
29:55 Andrew Keen But if you have enough scary bedtime stories, people begin to believe them.
29:59 Keith Teare Yeah. Well look, the truth is nobody really knows what the next two years look like. We all have models in our head of what we think will happen.
30:11 Keith Teare And the range of those models goes from a Gary Marcus kind of view which is "this is all BS and nothing's going to happen" through to "this is real and there won't be any white-collar jobs two years from now."
30:27 Keith Teare And then robotics will kick in and there won't be any manual jobs. And then their opinion divides further into "that's a good thing" or "that's a catastrophic thing."
30:40 Andrew Keen Yeah but that's, you know, it's not all fictional because the other big news, and certainly to be read in parallel with the Citruni Research report, is a real-world case.
30:54 Andrew Keen Jack Dorsey at Square announced cutting 40% of its workforce because of AI, and overnight its stock jumped 25%. So this is having a real impact. This isn't just scary bedtime stories.
31:10 Keith Teare You know, my point of view is that it will make a big impact, I think first and foremost in software engineering. I think white-collar jobs are somewhat safe because the probabilistic nature of current AI means there have to be humans in the loop.
31:30 Keith Teare But arguably less humans in the loop. That can certainly be true. And we are on a trend where the social contract between capital and labor—ultimately if you extrapolate, there is no labor.
31:47 Keith Teare And so capitalism itself morphs into a capital-only economy where labor is no longer required. That seems a logical extrapolation and that keys into the narrative others are putting on the table, especially Elon Musk, about the end of money.
32:08 Andrew Keen Yeah well I'm not going to go—you know that's my red flag, we're not going to go into that one. But finally I wonder whether in Amodei's mind at least, this issue if it is indeed true...
32:23 Andrew Keen If indeed 30, 40, 50 percent of white-collar work is going to get lost in the next two or three or four years... at what point does Amodei say, "It's not just mass domestic surveillance and fully autonomous weapons, it's the use of AI to destroy jobs."
32:41 Andrew Keen He's already articulated that, although hasn't taken a formal position. It'll be interesting to see how Amodei responds to this. And I mean whether you like him or not, I think you've got to admire the guy for at least being out there and making himself vulnerable.
33:00 Andrew Keen He could have done a Tim Cook and just shut up and taken his client's money.
33:04 Keith Teare I you know I don't actually admire him. I think he's unsophisticated in diplomacy and negotiation.
33:12 Andrew Keen If he's unsophisticated then I rather like that. Maybe we should admire his lack of sophistication in contrast to say Tim Cook who I guess in your mind is sophisticated, although not much of a moral model I think for people.
33:29 Keith Teare Well I think if you talk to Tim Cook and ask him his personal views you'd agree with almost all of them.
33:35 Andrew Keen But isn't that a point? That you would agree and you'd like him and he's clearly a progressive character, he probably behaves very well in his private life, and yet he's not willing to stand up to evil.
33:50 Andrew Keen How as the CEO of Apple... I mean this comes back Keith to the you know what we've been talking about in the context of being CEO of Apple.
34:00 Keith Teare No because I think you underestimate the extent to which innovation requires the ability to execute, and the ability to execute requires negotiating with governments.
34:12 Keith Teare And successful innovators have to be excellent diplomats. They have to be.
34:17 Andrew Keen This is a subject that is certainly not going away. An interesting week, an important week I think in Amodei challenging the government.
34:28 Andrew Keen And in finally Jack Dorsey doing—being the little kid in The Emperor Has No Clothes and announcing that he's going to get rid of 40% of the people in his company because they're no longer of any value.
34:42 Andrew Keen We shall see Keith, there'll be more of this to come. That Was The Week in technology, the last day of February, February 28th. I will see you Keith in March. Keep well, keep employed, keep thinking.
34:58 Keith Teare Bye everyone.
35:00 Andrew Keen Hi, this is Andrew again. Thank you so much for listening or watching the show. If you enjoyed it, please subscribe... on Substack, YouTube, Apple, Spotify, all the platforms.