The Artificial State

 

I have just started reading Jill LePore's  The Rise and Fall of the Artificial State (video above) and it is really a great read (especially for someone who has lived their life in Technology). ChatGPT gives the following summary:

The Rise and Fall of the Artificial State is a

history of how the modern effort to make

government more efficient through machines

and data could culminate in the replacement of

democratic self-government by algorithmic

systems controlled by private technological

elites-and Lepore's warning is that this

outcome is neither inevitable nor irreversible.

And, in terms of my interests in Technology:

Just one comment and then I hope you will enjoy reading the book with me:

LePore follows one thread of Techological-Political History and projects it out in to the future. No one knows the future but Liberal Democracies and Authoritarian Regimes each have one major problem: the people who can rise to power and who can command whatever technology exists at the time.

Notes

• The Rise and Fall of the Artificial State (2026) Jill LePore.
• Jill LePore an American historian and journalist. She is the David Woods Kemper '41 Professor of American History at Harvard University and a staff writer at The New Yorker, where she has contributed since 2005. She writes about American history, law, literature, and politics.
• Artificial Intelligence he capability of computational systems to perform tasks typically associated with human intelligence, such as learning, reasoning, problem-solving, perception, and decision-making. It is a field of research in engineering, mathematics, and computer science that develops and studies methods and software that enable machines to perceive their environment and use learning and intelligence to take actions that maximize their chances of achieving defined goals.
• Large Language Model an AI model (typically a neural network) trained on a vast amount of text for natural language processing tasks, especially language generation. LLMs can typically generate, summarize, translate, and analyze text in many contexts. They are the basis for many modern chatbots, such as ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Grok, and DeepSeek.
• Neural Network a computational model inspired by the structure and functions of biological neural networks.
• Technocracy an expert-based type of governance. In its strongest sense, it is a form of government in which decisions across all sectors and policy domains follow evidence-based, efficiency-oriented procedures grounded in scientific methods and instrumental rationality. In a weaker sense, the term refers to hybrid models that delegate specific functions to experts or implement expertise-driven decision procedures in areas such as central banking, public health, or environmental regulation.
• Technocracy Movement a social movement active in the United States and Canada in the 1930s which favored technocracy as a system of government over representative democracy and partisan politics. Historians associate the movement with engineer Howard Scott's Technical Alliance and Technocracy Incorporated prior to the internal factionalism that dissolved the latter organization during the Second World War.
• Right-Wing Populism right populism and national populism, is a political ideology that combines right-wing politics with populist rhetoric and themes. Its rhetoric employs anti-elitist sentiments, opposition to the Establishment, and speaking to or for the common people. Recurring themes of this political ideology include neo-nationalism, social conservatism, economic nationalism, and fiscal conservatism. Frequently they aim to defend a national culture, identity, and economy against perceived attacks by outsiders.
• Techno-Fascism a combination of technocracy and populism that connects voters to leaders via expertise, sometimes termed techno-fascism when political rights are gained solely by technical expertise or the use of advanced technology, such as surveillance and data analysis, to maintain authoritarian control.
• Elon Musk a businessman and former public official who is the CEO and largest shareholder of Tesla and SpaceX. Musk has been the wealthiest person in the world since 2025, and briefly became the only trillionaire (in terms of US dollars) in June 2026; as of August 14, 2026, Forbes estimates his net worth to be US$864 billion.
• Peter Theil a German-American entrepreneur, venture capitalist, and conservative political activist. A co-founder of PayPal (1998), Palantir Technologies (2003), and Founders Fund (2005), he was also the first outside investor in Facebook (2004). As of August 2026, Forbes estimated Thiel's net worth at US$32 billion.
• Tech Manifesto Palantir released a 22-point summary of Karp's 320-page book, "The Technological Republic: Hard Power, Soft Belief, and the Future of the West," that the billionaire tech CEO co-wrote and published in early 2025.
• Social Media new media technologies that facilitate the creation, sharing and aggregation of content (such as ideas, interests, and other forms of expression) amongst virtual communities and networks.
• Late Capitalism  a concept in Marxist political economy, political science and sociology. It is used by social critics to describe the current or contemporary phase of capitalist civilization. The idea was first used by the German economist and sociologist Werner Sombart (1863-1941) to name the new social order which emerged in the aftermath of World War I. However, beyond some brief comments and outlines, Sombart never provided a systematic or comprehensive theory of late capitalism.
• Technology the application of conceptual knowledge to achieve practical goals, especially in a reproducible way. The word technology can also mean the products resulting from such efforts, including both tangible products such as tools or machines, and intangible ones such as software.