The Information State

We're constantly told that disinformation is everywhere and that it's ruining our democracy. But what if the war on disinformation itself is really just a weapon to squash any and all legitimate dissent?
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 writer Jacob Siegel charts how a technological infrastructure built to make society more rational and progressive has steadily replaced democratic freedoms with systems of digital control. 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.
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. 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 pandemic. The Information State is an urgent, necessary book 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.

Jacob Siegel is a contributing editor at Tablet. He is a US Army veteran who served in Iraq and Afghanistan. He edited and contributed to Fire and Forget: Short Stories from the Long War, the first anthology of fiction by veterans of the global war on terror. Since 2013, he has worked as a journalist and essayist covering war, digital technology, and the convulsions in the American scene.