aceThe Rise and Fall of the Artificial State by Jill Lepore review – an ominous warning of tech takeover
Abstract: Pulitzer prize-winning US historian Jill Lepore’s new book addresses the threat posed to liberal democracy by artificial intelligence. According to Lepore, the extraordinary power of private tech companies led by men whose priorities may not align with the wellbeing of the Earth or its inhabitants is set to destroy civilisation as we know it. Lepore’s concept of the Artificial State is capacious. It includes both a fantasy desired by a select few and a reality that is already with us. The fantasy is of an atomis…
On 19 August 2026 The Guardian reviewed Jill Lepore's The Rise and Fall of the Artificial State, which frames AI as enabling both a billionaire fantasy of escaping democratic constraints and an existing shift of public discourse onto private, attention-monetizing platforms populated by manipulative bots.
The framing matters because it links AI development to measurable civic and environmental harms like polarization and datacentre energy use, but the review itself questions whether lumping chatbots, industrial robots and social media algorithms together obscures what specific democratic strategy should address.
- Review describes Jill Lepore's concept of the Artificial State as both a fantasy of rule by automation and a present reality of discourse on private platforms.
- Article cites X as riddled with bots whose activity contributes to an algorithmic flood that polarizes citizens.
- Article notes tech leaders prioritizing compute and space travel while energy-guzzling datacentres scorch the Earth.
AI-driven private platforms and bot activity are shifting public discourse to monetized attention systems that polarize citizens and threaten liberal democracy, while energy-guzzling datacentres damage the climate.
The rundown
The Guardian review from 19 August 2026 summarizes Lepore's argument that a small number of Silicon Valley billionaires including Musk, Zuckerberg, Bezos, Thiel and Altman are pursuing an Artificial State that would abandon constitutional democracy for government by machine.
The review details how public discourse has moved to privately owned platforms where feeds are crafted to manipulate behavior, and points to X as an example riddled with state, criminal and corporate bots, while also criticizing the book's grumpy tone and conflation of different technologies.
Sources
- JournalismThe Guardian2026-08-19
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