James Pethokoukis is a Washington D.C.-based economist, journalist, and author who holds the DeWitt Wallace Chair at the American Enterprise Institute. He writes the 'Faster, Please!' Substack newsletter - one of the leading voices in techno-optimism and pro-progress policy - hosts the 'Political Economy with Jim Pethokoukis' podcast, and authored 'The Conservative Futurist: How to Create the Sci-Fi World We Were Promised' (2023). A longtime CNBC contributor, he argues that culture - not capital - is the real barrier to the abundant, innovative future humanity could build.
Marc Andreessen co-invented the Mosaic browser as a $6.85/hour student programmer, then went on to co-found Netscape, help birth the modern internet, and eventually build Andreessen Horowitz into a $42B+ venture capital juggernaut. The man who wrote 'software is eating the world' in 2011 spent the next decade proving himself right by backing Twitter, Facebook, Coinbase, and GitHub. In 2023 he published the Techno-Optimist Manifesto and in 2024 pivoted to advising the Trump administration's DOGE initiative - cementing his status as Silicon Valley's most opinionated, polarizing, and consequential voice.