"I will say that QAnon was right and I was wrong." — Pepper Culpepper
From Bannon and Trump to Summers, Gates, Blavatnik and Chomsky, the Epstein scandal has revealed elites of all ideological stripes behaving shamefully together. The Oxford political scientist Pepper Culpepper argues this is exactly the kind of corporate scandal that can save democracy—not despite its ugliness, but because of it. His new co-authored book, Billionaire Backlash, shows how scandals activate "latent opinion," bringing long-simmering public concerns to the surface and triggering society-wide demand for regulation. We discuss why Cambridge Analytica led to California privacy law, how Samsung's bribery scandal sparked Korea's Candlelight Protests, and why China's authoritarian approach to corporate malfeasance actually undermines trust.
Culpepper, himself the Blavatnik Professor of Government at Oxford's Blavatnik School, acknowledges an uncomfortable truth. "I would say that QAnon was right," he admits, "and I was wrong." The specifics might have been fantasy, but the underlying suspicion about elite corruption was justified. And policy entrepreneurs—obsessive individuals who channel public outrage into actual legislation—matter more than we think. For Culpepper, billionaire backlash isn't a threat to democracy—it might actually be what saves it.
About the Guest
Pepper Culpepper is Vice Dean of the Blavatnik School of Government at the University of Oxford. He is the co-author, with Taeku Lee of Harvard, of Billionaire Backlash: The Age of Corporate Scandal and How It Could Save Democracy (2026).
References
The Epstein scandal revealed that elites across politics, finance, and academia were connected to Jeffrey Epstein's network of abuse: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_Epstein
Cambridge Analytica (2018) exposed how Facebook leaked data on 90 million users: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook%E2%80%93Cambridge_Analytica_data_scandal
The Samsung bribery scandal led to South Korea's Candlelight Protests and President Park Geun-hye's resignation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016%E2%80%932017_South_Korean_protests
The 2008 Chinese milk scandal killed six infants due to melamine contamination: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Chinese_milk_scandal
Policy entrepreneurs mentioned:
Carl Levin was a US Senator who shepherded the Goldman Sachs hearings: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Levin
Margrethe Vestager served as EU Competition Commissioner: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margrethe_Vestager
Max Schrems is an Austrian privacy activist who brought down the US-EU data transfer agreement: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Schrems
Alastair Mactaggart pushed through California's privacy regulations: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alastair_Mactaggart
Also mentioned:
Lee Jae-yong is the heir apparent to Samsung: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Jae-yong
Michael Sandel is a Harvard political philosopher: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Sandel
Patrick Radden Keefe wrote Empire of Pain about the Sackler family: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empire_of_Pain
The Thermidor was the French Revolutionary period when the Jacobins were overthrown: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermidorian_Reaction
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.
Website: https://keenon.tv/
Substack: https://keenon.substack.com/
YouTube: https://youtube.com/@KeenOnShow
Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/keen-on-america/id1448694012
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4MvPXVxAI8u5LtMJIr4S1b
Chapters:
00:00:22 The Epstein opportunity
00:01:21 Elite overreach exposed
00:03:12 Scandals without partisan charge
00:05:04 The Vice Dean's credibility problem
00:06:21 Latent opinion explained
00:09:39 Is there anything wrong with being a billionaire?
00:11:47 American vs. European scandals
00:14:48 Saving democracy vs. saving capitalism
00:17:05 Corporate scandals and economic vitality
00:18:33 Policy entrepreneurs: Carl Levin and Margrethe Vestager
00:19:54 Max Schrems and the obsessive crusaders
00:23:36 The danger of overreaction
00:24:28 QAnon was right and I was wrong
00:26:53 A little bit of Thermidor
00:27:32 Cambridge Analytica: did it actually work?
00:30:17 Korea and the Candlelight Protests
00:33:38 The China model fails
00:38:22 Billionaires in politics
00:41:13 The Sackler scandal