The Information State, Jacob Siegel
The Information State, Jacob Siegel
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The Information State
Politics in the Age of Total Control

Author: Jacob Siegel

Narrator: Jacob Siegel

Unabridged: 12 hr 2 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 03/24/2026

Synopsis

We’re often told that disinformation is everywhere and that it’s endangering our democracy. But what if the war on disinformation itself is really just a weapon to squash any and all legitimate dissent? This program is read by the author.

The Information State is an incisive examination of how we reached the point where anything that contradicts the dominant narrative can be labeled dangerous disinformation. Tablet contributor Jacob Siegel charts how the technological infrastructure built to make society safer and more rational has steadily replaced democratic freedoms with systems of digital control. Commercial Internet applications now double as military-grade surveillance and influence tools. Government tech partnerships established after 2001 in response to the global war on terror took on a life of their own and now target Americans.

Instead of competing for voters’ support, the information state uses censorship, mass surveillance, and algorithmic manipulation to shape public perceptions as it tries to engineer reality. Government officials requested that social media companies boost stories about Donald Trump’s alleged connections to Russia, while censoring those about Hunter Biden’s laptops, the origins of the COVID-19 virus, and the war in Ukraine.

An alliance between government and tech companies formed to wage the war on terror has evolved into an unholy new kind of technocratic state and turned against America’s own citizens. Laws signed by President Obama as he left office fused together the media, NGOs, the national security complex, and big tech companies into an unelected ruling party. In short, the information war came home and completely overtook American politics during the hyperpolarization of the Trump era and the isolation of the COVID-19 pandemic. The Information State is an urgent, necessary audiobook that sounds the alarm on where society is headed in the age of AI if we don’t relearn how to think for ourselves and ask searching questions about whether information can ever be a substitute for truth.

A Macmillan Audio production from Henry Holt & Company

About Jacob Siegel

Jacob Siegel is a contributing editor at Tablet and a coeditor of and contributor to the anthology Fire and Forget: Short Stories from the Long War. He served as a US Army officer in Iraq and Afghanistan and later returned to the Middle East as a journalist. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Free Press, Politico, The Baffler, and elsewhere.

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Quotes

"Sure to be the most important and explosive book of 2026... The great value of The Information State is how well it is organized, brilliantly it is written, and carefully it marshals the evidence that makes its case."
—Chronicles

"Jacob Siegel’s investigative history is eloquent and incriminating. Over the decades, technical protocols, regulatory bullying and privatized surveillance came to steer our speech and trammel our politics. This is the process that The Information State unearths. To anyone who has felt silenced but unable to explain who or what is doing the silencing, Siegel provides a commanding explanation."
—Christopher Caldwell, New York Times bestselling author of The Age of Entitlement

"There are innumerable studies of the rise of the surveillance state, but only one that examines the control of information as a means of government from ancient times to the present. Moving from Mesopotamia to the First World War and the Cold War, Woodrow Wilson's propaganda to the disinformation programs of Barack Obama and the maneuvers of the tech titans in the shadow of Trump, Jacob Siegel gives us a comprehensive analysis that is unparalleled and mind-opening. If there is a single book you must read on the role of information in politics, this is it."
—John Gray, author of The New Leviathans: Thoughts After Liberalism

"In The Information State, Jacob Siegel shows how the emancipatory promise of the Internet has given way to the chilling reality of government by algorithm and the emergence of a “digital leviathan” that threatens liberty and democracy alike."
—Michael Lind, author of The New Class War: Saving Democracy from the Managerial Elite

"Jacob Siegel’s book is essential reading if you want to understand the evolution and trajectory not just of information, but our societies. He joins the likes of pioneers like Daniel Bell and Jaron Lanier in dissecting the origins of the information state and its likely future. Dangerous, revealing and necessary reading."
—Joel Kotkin, author of The New Geography: How the Digital Revolution Is Reshaping the American Landscape

"In The Information State, Jacob Siegel details a rolling coup d’etat, nothing less, by which sovereignty has been relocated from the American people to a network of quasi-state actors. The authority to decide basic matters now rests with this self-credentialing blob, unaccountable by design, with the result that we are now well into a full-blown crisis of state legitimacy. This book is chilling, a real page-turner, and is indispensable for any political theory of the present, whether from the Left or the Right. In fact, Siegel shows the obsolescence of that division."
—Matthew Crawford, author of Shop Class as Soulcraft

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