Jill Lepore, a Harvard historian and staff writer for The New Yorker who recently won a Pulitzer Prize for her history of the U.S. Constitution, argues in her forthcoming book The Rise and Fall of the Artificial State that private technology companies are increasingly taking on roles traditionally performed by democratic governments. On TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, Lepore described this development as “a return to tyranny and mystification in the form of rule by algorithms, corporations, machines.”
What Lepore means by the "artificial state"
Lepore uses the term "artificial state" to describe a construct and a real social phenomenon in which machine-driven governance and corporate exercise of public functions supplant the liberal-democratic nation-state in the United States and elsewhere. In her book she traces both the intellectual history of the idea that societies should be governed by machines and the recurring belief in literature that such arrangements are ultimately unsustainable.
The issue is not technology itself but private firms' role
Lepore emphasizes she is not opposed to technology per se — she is married to a computer scientist and welcomes many intellectual revolutions. Her central concern is that private corporations have steadily taken on state-like functions without democratic consent. She describes this as a gradual transformation that began in the United States and became more deliberate over the past 20–25 years, as some tech leaders and futurists explicitly promoted moving beyond the nation-state.
According to Lepore, many 1990s futurists, some influenced by libertarian ideas, saw the internet’s spread as a way to weaken or erase national governance. Those intellectual currents contributed to later technocratic outlooks embraced by parts of Silicon Valley.
Historical turning points and cultural touchstones
Lepore points to cultural moments that illustrate changing attitudes toward technology and governance. She highlights Apple’s 1984 Super Bowl advertisement for the Macintosh, which framed mainframe computers as totalitarian and promoted the personal computer as a liberating instrument. Lepore argues that the ad was clever marketing and that those at Apple probably did not literally believe the personal computer would transform civic life; still, the image became part of a longer fantasy that technology inherently promotes freedom.
Over time, Lepore says, some companies and charismatic leaders have begun to imitate the trappings of nation-states. She cites recent examples: after the 2016 U.S. election Facebook established a so-called "Supreme Court" for content decisions; last year Anthropic hired a moral philosopher to draft a kind of constitution for its systems; and Sam Altman suggested on the Joe Rogan Show that an "AI president would be a great idea." Lepore sees these moves as signs that corporations are assuming state-like roles.
The Twitter example: a distorted public square
Lepore uses Twitter to illustrate how platforms can be mistaken for democratic institutions. Twitter started informally and not as a mission to save democracy, yet political actors adopted it to amplify messages and reach audiences. By 2012 Twitter published a Politics and Elections Handbook advising politicians on use of the platform, and the company began promoting the idea that Twitter was a kind of town hall.
Lepore argues that claim was false. At one point roughly one in five Americans had a Twitter account; most account holders did not use the service actively, and more than 90% of tweets about politics were produced by fewer than 10% of the most active users. That concentration, she says, made Twitter a ‘‘distortion machine’’ rather than a representative public square, producing misleading signals for politicians who treated it as evidence about public opinion.
Science fiction, the artificial state and why it collapses
The second half of Lepore’s book examines how science fiction has repeatedly imagined versions of the artificial state: machines take on more human functions, eventually rule or render humans unnecessary, and collapse or oppress humanity. She references E. M. Forster’s 1909 story The Machine Stops, which depicts a society in small isolated rooms where a central machine supplies all needs and human contact is mediated by screens. In Forster’s tale the machine ultimately stops and society collapses.
Lepore identifies a recurring tension in these narratives between the artificial state and the natural world: artificial systems rely on natural resources even as they degrade and distance humans from nature. That contradiction, in many fictional accounts, makes the artificial state unsustainable on a habitable planet.
What does defeat or correction look like?
Lepore does not offer a detailed playbook for dismantling the artificial state. Her principal recommendation is political: decisions about technologies that perform public functions should be made democratically and in consultation with those governed. She notes concrete examples of local resistance to tech projects — for instance, public opposition to data centers — where communities ask about energy and water use, jobs and environmental impacts. Lepore cited a Salt Lake example where she said well over 70% of local people opposed a proposed data center, yet their representatives supported it, which she sees as a failure of representation.
She suggests these local disputes will have political costs visible at elections if democratic institutions remain functional enough for voters to respond.
Critique of "disruptive innovation" and a call for historians to engage
Lepore recalled a New Yorker piece she wrote more than a decade ago criticizing Clayton Christensen’s theory of disruptive innovation. She still stands by that critique, arguing that disruptive innovation is a theory about why businesses fail and should not be treated as a universal historical law. Lepore urges more engagement between historians and technologists so lessons from past technological transitions (for example, how the arrival of the automobile led to new laws, licensing and regulatory frameworks) can inform present policy debates.
Conclusion
In Lepore’s account, the rise of the artificial state has deep intellectual and literary roots and presents a democratic challenge when private corporations perform state-like functions without democratic oversight. While she believes this form of governance carries internal contradictions and is ultimately unsustainable, Lepore emphasizes democratic decision-making and historical insight as necessary elements in addressing the problem rather than technological fatalism.
