Up to the Stars and Down into the Gutter: Elon Musk's Ascent/Descent to SpaceX and White Nationalist Violence

00:00:31 Andrew Keen: Hello, everybody. In this second weekend of June 2026, there's only one story out here in Silicon Valley. Of course, it's the story of, SpaceX's IPO. According to The Wall Street Journal, it proves the power of Elon Musk's superlative strategy. The journal describes it as a Goldilocks debut. Very impressed. New York Times is, as The New York Times is typically is, slightly more ambivalent, but headlines, SpaceX's unlikely journey from far out idea to $2 trillion juggernaut. And, of course, Keith Teare at That Was the Week, our weekly show on technology. Our summary also leads with, the SpaceX IPO. He has a piece about Elon and the balloon, and then he says civilization needs him. He suggests that, most commentators are grimacing at the valuation, the $2 trillion valuation, and the personal net worth of, Elon Musk. Keith, I'm not so sure about that. Where's all this grimacing? Where's the evidence? I mean, as I said, the journal is very impressed. Even the times in its own way acknowledges Musk's remarkable financial success.

00:01:57 Keith Teare: So do you, use the Internet at all, Andrew?

00:02:01 Andrew Keen: No. What is that? Come across that one. Yeah.

00:02:05 Keith Teare: You should just scroll through x or Facebook or LinkedIn, and the there's a huge pylon, that's p I l e, second word on, about Elon's becoming a trillionaire and how disgusting it is and the widening gap between the rich and the poor and the fact that SpaceX, lost $4 billion last year. How could it be worth this much money? It's everywhere, wall to wall, and very dominant.

00:02:36 Andrew Keen: Well, I am seeing as I said, I mean, if you look at the journal front page, and they're not always friendly to Musk.

00:02:44 Keith Teare: This is you and media. This is you and media. You're looking at the

00:02:48 Andrew Keen: Well, you bet you troll the bathroom, Keith. You go into the rubbish dump. You're always gonna find people who are upset for one reason. If it's not Elon, it's Bezos or Epstein or Trump or somebody else. So okay. So let's break it down. I mean, I mean, of course, you're right. A lot of people aren't particularly happy. There are a number of elements to what you call this grimace at the valuation. On the one hand, there's, the fact that people don't like Elon. We'll come to that later. I know you're a big fan. Should people like him simply because I mean, he clearly is an absolutely brilliant businessman. I mean, I don't think anyone could argue that.

00:03:36 Keith Teare: I don't think it matters whether you like him.

00:03:38 Andrew Keen: Well, it does.

00:03:39 Keith Teare: I'm not even sure I like him. I, you know, you assess him. You analyze him.

00:03:47 Andrew Keen: Well, you admire him. I mean, that's how we approach the world. I mean, we make moral judgments on people, and that's how we make sense of the world, isn't it?

00:03:58 Keith Teare: I think you judge him. And you judge him against a set of criteria. It's not an abstract judgment. It's, you know, your criteria really shapes your judgment. So if your criteria is as narrow as how much he's worth, you're gonna have a particular view. And if your criteria is the future of civilization, you might have a different view.

00:04:23 Andrew Keen: Yeah. I mean, you've you've used this word before, Keith, civilization. I have to admit I'm deeply ambivalent, but we'll come to that later. But there's no doubt that it's a I mean, you're an expert on IPOs and venture. I mean, it's it's a absolutely brilliant maneuver. How has he done this? I mean, how would you what narrative would you give? I mean, as, as the time says, this unlikely journey, and, of course, that's Musk's journey from far out idea to $2 trillion juggernaut. The BBC has, some images of his what they call their his stratospheric rise to trillionaire status. Back in 2020. He was the thirty fifth richest person in the world. Now, of course, he's the richest man by quite a large margin. So has he done this?

00:05:20 Keith Teare: Well, you let's ignore Tesla for a minute, and let's ignore, Neuralink. Let's just focus on SpaceX. SpaceX is 25 ish years old. So it, you know, it's a two and a half decade long effort. And it started with, a warehouse in, El Segundo near LA, which is an area where there's a lot of rocket scientists, weirdly, who are skilled in the art. And he started playing with the idea of a reusable rocket. And little by little, he failed and he failed. He actually bet almost all of his gains from Tesla on SpaceX and almost lost it all. Then finally, a rocket worked. And, since then, it's been iterative. You know, the rockets got better and bigger and more reliable. The reusability was proven. The payloads that he puts into space now makes SpaceX a virtual global monopoly on delivering payloads into space, satellites and the like, scientific equipment. And NASA now subcontracts to SpaceX for a lot of what NASA does. So it went from a warehouse in El Segundo to be a global monopoly in space. And then on top of that, he invented, Starlink. And Starlink was thought to be impossible. There were satellite Internet services before Starlink. I experimented with most of them, and they were very laggy. You couldn't do video calls on them, for example, because the latency was too much. And the bandwidth between Earth and space was unreliable. He perfected it to the point where Starlink now can sustain gigabit level connections pretty much everywhere

00:07:26 Andrew Keen: In the world. Even United are installing or supposed to be installing on their plane. So in one sense, this is the classic story. This is a parable of a brilliant entrepreneur who had a crazy idea that no one else shared, and he stuck to it. He literally, went for the stars, and he succeeded. I don't mean I mean, who would argue against that? I take your point, of course, that he isn't many people's most popular person. We'll come to that in a few minutes. But are there business people, start up people who are suggesting that this doesn't reflect well on Musk?

00:08:08 Keith Teare: No. No. It's wall to wall applause.

00:08:12 Andrew Keen: How is that? So there's no so coming back to your editorial, there's no grimacing at that. I mean, on the one hand, he is the model of a brilliantly a brilliant, brave, obstinate entrepreneur who had a crazy idea that nobody else shared, and he stuck to it for many years, and then he became successful.

00:08:35 Keith Teare: And he wasn't the big thing is he wasn't afraid to raise very large amounts of money,

00:08:43 Andrew Keen: And

00:08:43 Keith Teare: At least in an accounting sense, lose it whilst building a very large sustainable business, that is still today losing money.

00:08:55 Andrew Keen: Is it? So coming back so I take your point, and you and I always talk you this is one of your credos. Is SpaceX what is its business? Is it satellite subscriptions? I mean, what's the long term of this business? What's the short term, the current nature of the business? So and what's the vision?

00:09:18 Keith Teare: So SpaceX is unprofitable, but it has segments that make a profit if you wall them off, like Starlink. Starlink is profitable. Its business is really multi multifold. You know, in a space of about six weeks, it's gone from, not being a player to being the third largest data center provider to AI by doing deals with both Anthropic and Google for well over a billion dollars a month in lease fees for the Colossus data centers that it built for Grok. It owns Grok. [as spoken — Colossus was built by xAI for Grok; SpaceX leased Colossus 1 to Anthropic and Google. xAI/X, not SpaceX, owns Grok.] And so it has a data center business, and it's gonna extend that into space using, solar power to power, you know, orbiting data centers. So it has a data center business. Secondly, it has, a space, a rocket building and leasing business that allows anyone who wants to get stuff into space to put it onto a SpaceX rocket. It's getting to the point where it wants to be able to build four rockets a week and have hundreds of rockets all over the Earth to be able to do up to 200 flights a month. And he thinks of that payload business a little bit like the aeroplane business, where you want you know, if an aeroplane, had to be rebuilt every time it flew, you couldn't build a business. He wants that for space.

00:10:59 Andrew Keen: So maybe we'll get eventually, through, SpaceX, we'll get Uber in space. You can catch a rocket to a nearby planet. So it's clearly on that level, it's remarkably impressive. There's a real business there. As you know, he loses money, but that doesn't really matter that much. All these great Internet businesses began losing money, whether it's Google or Amazon. So there's that. So let's be clear. I agree with you that Elon Musk is a remarkable entrepreneur, and I don't know how many people would be grimacing at the valuation and the, the valuation. I mean, true is $2 trillion absurd? Any more absurd than Anthropic or OpenAI's trillion or $2 trillion valuation when they do their IPOs later this year?

00:11:50 Keith Teare: Look. I think all of these valuations, you can look at them in two ways. The first is you can look at current revenue and say, is it worth this much? And that's how most people think. Investors don't think like that.

00:12:08 Andrew Keen: Yeah. And you use, you use something from Brad Gerstner who compares the IPO price of companies like Nvidia, Apple, Google to today's price, and, obviously, dramatic rise. Although you could do it the other way. I mean, there are lots of companies that have failed for better or worse.

00:12:24 Keith Teare: Yeah. But the this is the focus on winners, which, we're trying to define the valuation of a winner when it first goes public, as either rational or irrational. And if you look at that list from Brad Gerstner, it's clear in retrospect what seemed at the time like big valuations. For example, you know, I didn't invest in most of these IPOs because I thought they were highly valued. Well, I was stupid because look at what look at the gap between where they started and where they ended up.

00:12:56 Andrew Keen: You, Keith? Stupid? Exactly.

00:12:59 Keith Teare: Exactly. One learns through life. And so the valuation looked at from the point of view of what it will become is what's meaningful. And the idea that SpaceX will only be worth $2 trillion ten or twenty years from now is probably wrong. It's probably gonna worth a lot, many, many times.

00:13:22 Andrew Keen: Right. I mean, I think it would be fair to say that I'd be worth a lot, lot more, a lot, lot less if it's not gonna stay at $2 trillion. I think it was like Eric Schmidt's remark when he bought YouTube that either it will be worth nothing or significantly many multiples more than, the billion dollars that he paid, and, of course, it is. Okay. So we're agreeing on that. I don't think there's any debate. Remarkable entrepreneur, remarkable achievement. So there's when it comes to the implications, leaving Elon aside for the moment, the New York Times has a piece about wages falling, wealth surging. No wonder Americans are unhappy. And they point out, and this is also part of this week's news, that the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported this week that the surge in energy prices had wiped out a year and a half of wage gains for the average American worker. So on the one hand, you have the end of wage gains for average American workers, and on the other hand, you have, Elon being worth a trillion dollars. Is that one of the areas, Keith, where people are grimacing? And don't they have a right to grimace at these very, very divergent numbers?

00:14:38 Keith Teare: Look. I think the New York Times article is a bit of a red herring. It really relates to the Middle East conflict and the price of energy, and it's it's it's probably very temporary. I think there's a bigger framing that you could put that discussion in, which is the impact of AI on jobs, which interestingly enough, recent evidence suggests that, those who say I AI will create jobs, at least for now, look right. Jobs are growing, not shrinking. But there is a transformation, and transformation leads to unease. And if unease takes the form of less money in your pocket, which it often does

00:15:23 Andrew Keen: For most people according to the times, at least.

00:15:26 Keith Teare: Then, you

00:15:27 Andrew Keen: They call it a stark juxtaposition. That's a very times phrase. Stark juxtaposition.

00:15:34 Keith Teare: Yeah. I think they used AI for that, probably.

00:15:37 Andrew Keen: I don't think they probably did, but, they couldn't think of that themselves. But isn't this stark, Keith? I mean, it's a reality whether or not it, in some ways, maybe reflects the Middle Eastern crisis, maybe some of Trump's mismanagement.

00:15:50 Keith Teare: Yeah. But it's not surprising, is it? I mean, whenever there is a spurt in wealth, you could think of it as the growth in GDP, the growth of value in the economy through whatever reason, it does exacerbate the gap between those who have the wealth and those who don't. So the wealth gap isn't recent. It's it's, endemic. It's when was the time, when there was no wealth gap? There is no such time. And it

00:16:27 Andrew Keen: Gets wider as wealth grows. But, again, you

00:16:34 Keith Teare: You have to put it

00:16:35 Andrew Keen: If you've read the, you read the Times piece, but the Times acknowledges that, and I'm quoting them, inequality is hardly a new feature in America. You're absolutely right. But then they say the explosion of wealth at the very top is without precedent in US history. True. The height hold on. At the height of the gilded age, the end of the nineteenth century, the richest handful of Americans had a net worth equivalent of about 3% the country's annual economic output. And now, the fortunes of that same 20 individuals make up roughly four times a larger share. So it is four times more than the gilded age, which also shocked people. So that's a reality. You can't just dismiss it.

00:17:17 Keith Teare: Well, you can't dismiss it. But if you're if you're a social scientist, you have to contextualize it.

00:17:23 Andrew Keen: And you're a social you got a PhD in social science from Canada.

00:17:27 Keith Teare: Exactly. I'm a doctor of the university.

00:17:30 Andrew Keen: You're very wise. So tell us why, the times is wrong to talk about this.

00:17:35 Keith Teare: It's always wrong to look back a very long time and then compare the ratios to the present as if there's a value judgment implied by the change. There's no value judgment. The change is just math. The wealth of the societies has grown massively. And, you know, the, the life of the average person has risen massively. You wouldn't have want to be a poor person in the Gilded Age compared to today.

00:18:08 Andrew Keen: Yeah. But historians would remind you that the Gilded Age ended with the first World War and then the Great Depression and then the New Deal. So, the journey from the Gilded Age to more economic equality was a rocky, violent, problematic one, so it's not inevitable or straightforward.

00:18:32 Keith Teare: Yeah. That's a that's a bit of a side conversation, but, the twentieth

00:18:36 Andrew Keen: Why is that a side conversation? I mean, that's what happened in history.

00:18:40 Keith Teare: Well, because the you're not wrong, but the twentieth century was a century in which, a leading empire, The UK, was eclipsed by others. And in order to be replaced, it required two world wars. The twentieth century was the century of Britain's decline. It may look like the century of fascism, the rise of America, but actually the narrative at the core of it is Britain's decline in replacement by The US that took two world wars.

00:19:15 Andrew Keen: Well, some people might say I don't know whether that's true or not, but some people might say that the story of the 20 century is a replacement of China. Well That's where the replacement of The United States by China, if that's how you look at history.

00:19:26 Keith Teare: Yeah. Before we get to the twenty first century, just one last point on the twentieth century. It was also the century of the greatest economic boom called the postwar boom, which speaks about nineteen fifties and sixties and early seventies ever. And so the that postwar boom led to, you know, all the things that you can look back at, the invention of home based washing machines and dryers, ironing, you know, all the things that bring technology into the home and make domestic life, easier. Women entering the workforce, votes for women. The, the, the progress of the twentieth century that went alongside those terrible things is self evident. And, and, and so today, AI, not only AI, but AI and many other technologies represent the modern form of the same thing. The pie is gonna grow just as it did in the twentieth century, and the pie is gonna grow very fast, very big. The average life of the average person is gonna get better and better as it did in the twentieth century despite the two world wars. And, Musk isn't, you know, a problem. Musk is a symptom of that success.

00:20:50 Andrew Keen: Musk is a symptom in what in his wealth and the fact that he's worth a trillion dollars. I mean, my view on Musk is if someone's gonna be the first trillion I don't think Musk is a particularly good pinup for I mean, he's on the one hand, he's clearly a brilliant entrepreneur. On the other hand, as you say, even you don't particularly like him, his politics are very troubling. I mean, on the one hand, where he's he's reaching for the stars. The other news this week is that there were riots in Northern Ireland after a white with white supremacists and, Musk and his old friend Tommy Robinson and a far right activist in The UK, orchestrating riot. So there's something weird, and the NBC talks about Elon Musk this week under so on the one hand, he makes a trillion dollars from this brilliant IPO. On the other hand, he's under fire for stoking anti immigrant riots in Belfast. One of the things that strikes me hold on. Hold on. One of the things that strikes me is this weird you know, New York Times talks about radical juxtapositions, or stark juxtaposition. That seems to be the most the starkest juxtaposition of Musk. On the one hand, he's reaching for the stars. On the other hand, he's stoking up racial animosity in Belfast.

00:22:11 Keith Teare: No. I actually think that Musk is more of a man of a people in this context than you are. Musk doesn't sweep under the carpet that a Sikh tried to behead a local Irish person and almost killed him. Failed, luckily.

00:22:31 Andrew Keen: I don't know if it was a Sikh, was it?

00:22:33 Keith Teare: It was a Sikh.

00:22:34 Andrew Keen: Yeah. And I think you're confusing that with, with what happened in Southampton.

00:22:41 Keith Teare: So

00:22:41 Andrew Keen: And, anyway, whether or not it was

00:22:43 Keith Teare: An immigrant, or that's not a

00:22:44 Andrew Keen: A generalization about war seats.

00:22:47 Keith Teare: There was an ethnic attack, by an immigrant that led to locals objecting to the introduction into Belfast of cultural norms that are not normal in Belfast. And normal people, not racist. To call them racist is disgusting. Normal people who just don't like being attacked protested that there was no policing of, what were asylum seeking immigrants, doing things on the streets that are not normal. And, you know, that's

00:23:29 Andrew Keen: Is that civilization falling into the attacking civilization?

00:23:33 Keith Teare: It absolutely is. The attack on civilization is coming from, people who want to kill Jews in North London, for example, that is not what has

00:23:42 Andrew Keen: Got to do with Musk. But coming back to Musk,

00:23:45 Keith Teare: Musk isn't wrong. Musk is taking the side of the common person in the face of events that are out extreme and outrageous.

00:23:55 Andrew Keen: So I'm just quoting again NBC. Musk has recently voiced support for Restore Britain, a breakaway political party from Farage's Reform UK, which is pretty radical in its own sense, which felt its immigration policies were not extreme enough. Musk also regularly shares messages with Tommy Robinson. We've talked about him before. A far right activist and convicted fraudster was served five jail terms. Very violent figure. So are you suggesting then hold on. Are you suggesting that there's no contradiction between Musk, the brilliant businessman, and Musk, the supporter of Tommy Robinson that they're all

00:24:31 Keith Teare: Actually, actually, I think here's how I think they're aligned. Most of the businessman is a logical, wants to get things right, science based person. Musk, the social commentator, believes the enlightenment and the gains of Western culture need to be protected and sees, especially Islamicists, as medieval and a throwback to prior civilization.

00:25:04 Andrew Keen: Well, you're talking about Sikhs. They're not Muslims.

00:25:08 Keith Teare: Well, I talked about one Sikh. Musk doesn't talk about Sikhs.

00:25:11 Andrew Keen: Yeah. I again, I mean, I'm not sure what it is.

00:25:14 Keith Teare: Musk's Musk's belief system on immigration in Europe is becoming mainstream in Europe. I think the left are blind to the impact of, anti Western views on the streets of Western cities.

00:25:35 Andrew Keen: Mhmm. You've put your political cards on the table, Keith. I wonder, whether there was an interesting piece of news also from Switzerland this week that Switzerland's voting on planning to cap its population at 10,000,000. These are clearly big issues in Europe and, indeed, in The US. So on the one hand, we've got these two again. Speaking of New York Times' juxtaposition, stock juxtaposition. So stock juxtaposition, leaving Musk out of it for the minute in the world is on the one hand, we have his SpaceX reaching for the stars, Uber in the sky, rockets being like cars. On the other hand, more and more scarcity on land. I mean, that's what the riots are about in Northern Ireland, in Southern England, about who can and can't come into this country, same in The US. So is that I mean, you're a big abundance guy. We've talked about land before, but I don't see any way of any tech that's gonna enable Switzerland to, I don't know, make its population a 100,000,000 or 15,000,000. So there's more and more scarcity when it comes to land and population and more abundance in other areas, maybe in space.

00:26:50 Keith Teare: Yeah. It's interesting. I mean, look. Have you ever gone on a train from Geneva to Zurich? If you have or if you haven't, I'll tell you. There's almost only open space. It isn't like there's cities everywhere in Switzerland, and there's no room. It Right.

00:27:11 Andrew Keen: There's a lot of mountains, but that's another issue.

00:27:13 Keith Teare: There are mountains, and there's certainly places where not inhabitable. But there isn't a lack of space. It is a small country, like, say, Wales, geographically small. I, you know, I personally don't think there's a genuine, desire to stop people moving around the world. I think there is a, absolute hatred of a refusal to integrate into the cultures that people come into. I think people want immigrants, but I think they want them to become British or American or German not to, you know, not to attack locals, for being infidels or whatever. I don't think they want to, import into their countries the jihad, but they do want immigrants and they're not against people of different color skin. I think, actually, Europe is one of the least racist places in the world as is America. I don't think Americans are against Mexicans. They are against illegal immigrants. And there is a quite a big distinction between being a racist and wanting to control the entry point into your country. That's kind of okay.

00:28:37 Andrew Keen: I wish that, so you're you're comfortable with this, though, on the one you're not bothered with the fact that Musk is very friendly and very supportive of this thuggish right wing character, Tommy Robinson.

00:28:53 Keith Teare: I don't consider Robinson right wing.

00:28:55 Andrew Keen: Actually, what do you consider him?

00:28:57 Keith Teare: I consider him to be a populist, that, agrees with and has become a focal point for ordinary working class people in The UK who are sick of being treated as second class citizens in the face, in the face of two decades of, you know, favoring minorities. They feel like they're the minority now. That isn't wrong. That I'm

00:29:27 Andrew Keen: I'm not well, you as I said, you put your political cards on the table. Coming to Europe, you have a couple of interesting pieces, one from Frank Fukuyama, old friend of Keen On America. He has a liberal vision of Europe. You're in some way sympathetic with what Fukuyama is saying, this liberal vision of Europe, and in some ways, you don't think he really understands the challenge of Europe. You also have a piece, on Europe 2031 about, from a group of European economists, technologists about what getting AI wrong means for us. So what's your interpretation both of the Fukuyama piece and Europe 2031? You've you've you've said that there are too many migrants in Europe, and they're not willing to become white working class Englishmen like yourself.

00:30:24 Keith Teare: No. I don't think there's I never said there's too many migrants. I said there isn't enough integration.

00:30:29 Andrew Keen: Yeah. Although, I'm not sure what they're integrating into. But, anyway, coming into Fukuyama, what's he saying?

00:30:36 Keith Teare: Fukuyama is trying to be optimistic, about Europe's future. The Europe twenty thirty one piece, which is very well researched, is doing the opposite. It's warning about the bad outcome unless Europe wakes up to the opportunity that AI gives it. So that in a way, they're contrasting pieces. Fukuyama's is hopeful and kind of ignores some of the structural reasons why Europe can't become liberal, the modern liberal democracy. The main one being the top heavy bureaucratism around the EU, which creates regulatory regimes that override countries, and you end up with, dislike of the EU pretty much in every country in Europe, even in France, which was the architect of European Union. So, I think Fukuyama is really, is in the middle of, but not really solving for how do you get a modern liberal Europe, very similar to The US, by the way. I mean, the rise of populism in as a reaction to the previous twenty years puts The US in a position where it's very hard to think of a liberal US. So I don't think they're actually all that different. I think populism is the price you pay for bad policy earlier.

00:32:09 Andrew Keen: Well, again, in the context of the Musk, SpaceX IPO, clearly a remarkable achievement company innovation. Meanwhile, government continues both in Europe and The United States to be in one kind of crisis or another. You talked about Fukuyama's concern with the failure of liberalism in Europe. There's an interesting piece in The Washington Post that you linked to by Fareed Zakaria, the CNN personality, about how California became a case study and failed government, which is particularly striking since you and I are talking here. Of course, it's the heart of Silicon. Silicon Valley is part of, part of California. I had Jonathan Weber on the show, this week. He has a new book out about San Francisco City on the Edge, Technology, Politics, and the Fight for the Soul of San Francisco. And Weber also talks about the dysfunctionality, historic dysfunctionality of city government. So it's state government, city government. Zakaria and Weber are talking about again, it's it's coming back to, our old friend at The New York Times' stark juxtaposition. On the one hand, remarkable innovation when it comes to technology and business in California, although, of course, SpaceX isn't a Californian business. And then the failure of government to keep up or even compete in any way. And something weird's going on, isn't it, Keith?

00:33:43 Keith Teare: Yeah. Look. I think government in The US is pretty separated from the people. I think the primary, the concept of a primary and a party political path to being elected means that you have a kind of a professional, political layer, very thin, but very, powerful that ends up electing their chosen people. And this is in both parties. And so the US is only a democracy in, you know, in a literal sense, but in a real people, controlling their, their representative sense, it really isn't. And, and that leads to corruption and separation. And, also, as you know, a kind of, lack of accountability on getting anything done. And it's only when citizens rise up, like say, Gary Tan organised, an Asian American reaction against the education system in San Francisco and was listened to because the people actually spoke and became powerful. The they tried to end math, for example, in schools, and they fought against that.

00:35:01 Andrew Keen: Woah. That's the end of civilization, isn't it?

00:35:04 Keith Teare: Certainly wouldn't be good if they're trying math.

00:35:06 Andrew Keen: Although, I think AI does math now. So that's how you end your, that's how you end your editorial this week. You say planning beats complaint. So, you also talk about, an interesting editorial by John O'Farrell, former general partner at Andreessen Horowitz. He resigned in protest in some ways from that big VC firm. He has an op ed in the New York Times. We can't let my former venture capital colleagues buy off democracy. So he's against this overinvestment, shall we say, by wealthy venture capitalists or mask in politics. What are we supposed to do, Keith? Where's the answer?

00:35:50 Keith Teare: So that piece I mean, I don't actually blame Andreessen for spending money on trying to capture politics

00:35:57 Andrew Keen: Because Regulatory capture as it's,

00:36:00 Keith Teare: But in the American system, you almost have no choice. Now it's kind of interesting. Bernie Sanders this week doubled down on his idea of a sovereign wealth fund that would own 50% of the equity in all of the high growth AI companies. And on honesty, I think it's the first time he has had an insight. And I said last week, 50% is not enough, but it's the right direction. He has an insight which could literally give every citizen ownership in a sovereign wealth fund. I mean, literally ownership shares. And the sovereign wealth fund could, you know, be the main beneficiary of economic growth fueled by AI, and everyone could be uplifted through it. And that probably is a bottoms up distributed politics driven by economics that leads to real, participation.

00:36:59 Andrew Keen: Yeah. I agree. I mean, rather than complaining about Musk and all the inequality, I think you're right. And then let's give, let's let's give credit to Bernie Sanders. He's not just complaining. He's actually thinking about reform, Elizabeth Warren as well, many people on the left. I think that's what the group that's missing are centrist democrats.

00:37:21 Keith Teare: Well, I actually, David Sacks on the podcast agreed with Bernie and said it should be 75%, and Sacks is considered right wing. So I actually think these right left labels don't help us understand things. It's really about the path that money created through capitalism finds its way to rise raise up everybody. And if David Sacks and Bernie Sanders can agree, then everyone can agree.

00:37:51 Andrew Keen: Well, that's, that's gonna be good for civilization. If Bernie Sanders and David Sacks can agree on anything, Keith, do you are you still hopeful about civilization, or is it gonna get swept away by all those angry Muslims on the streets of England?

00:38:08 Keith Teare: I'm not against Muslims, Andrew. I'm against Islamicists. And Islamicism is a specific it's like a Well, that

00:38:29 Andrew Keen: Well, that is clear. That was a interesting week, week of Elon Musk becoming a trillionaire. We will, I'm sure, come back to this, subject. I'm away next week, so we'll probably recongregate in a couple of weeks. Have a good couple of weeks, Keith.

00:38:47 Keith Teare: You're away.

00:38:49 Andrew Keen: Yeah. But I'll be back, Keith. Don't worry.

00:38:52 Keith Teare: Thank you, everyone.