Keen On

Lenin quipped that "there are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen." The post Liberation Day drama of early April 2025, That Was The Week’s Keith Teare suggests, will be remembered as one of those weeks. While the world isn’t exactly ending, Keith suggests, the “West” - or at least a post Bretton Woods American centric west - is finished. He may well be right in seeing Trump’s clownish tariffs as a symptom of American decline. But if the United States is the past and China the future, then where - Keith and I discuss - does that leave Silicon Valley? What becomes of supposedly pioneering American AI technology in a China centric world? And can traditional Big Tech leviathans like Apple and Google survive the end of the West? FIVE TAKEAWAYS * Shift in global economic power: Our conversation highlights a dramatic change in global trade patterns from 2000 to 2024, with China replacing the US as the dominant trading partner for most countries. This i