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

**Demetri Kofinas** (0:00)
What's up, everybody? My name is Demetri Kofinas, and you're listening to Hidden Forces, a podcast that inspires investors, entrepreneurs and everyday citizens to challenge consensus narratives and learn how to think critically about the systems of power shaping our world. My guest in this episode of Hidden Forces is Jacob Siegel, a writer and editor at Tablet Magazine, a veteran of the United States Army who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the author of the new book, The Information State, Politics in the Age of Total Control. Jacob and I spent the first hour of this conversation tracing the intellectual and historical roots that informed the foundations of his argument about the Information State, from the work of media theorists like Marshall McLuhan, Harold Innis, Neil Postman and Jacques Ellul, to James Beniger's 1986 book, The Control Revolution, to the 17th century philosophy of Gottfried Leibniz and its downstream influence on the cybernetic frameworks that gave rise to the Internet. We discussed the rise of digital swarms, the Anonymous Movement, and what Jacob observed when he returned from Afghanistan in 2012 to find American culture being reshaped by the velocity and incoherence of online mass formation. We then examine his central thesis, that the Internet, born out of Cold War Pentagon research and reconsolidated under government auspices after 9-11, has given rise to a third form of political regime he calls the Information State. One that governs not by force or democratic consent, but by consolidating the codes and protocols of the digital public arena to engineer the public's compliance with its programs. The second hour is devoted to examining how the Information State differs in kind from the analog propaganda systems of the 20th century, and why Jacob believes it is simultaneously more powerful and more brittle than what came before. We dig into the paradox at the heart of his argument that the same informational infrastructure built to extend elite control also created the conditions for the digital insurgencies now convulsing Western politics. We explore Jacob's critique of the counter disinformation establishment, his views on the concentration of private platform power, and what a coherent policy response to the dysfunctions of the modern information environment might look like, including antitrust regulation, private data ownership, and the legitimate prosecution of foreign disinformation campaigns, while preserving the essential distinction between the speech rights of citizens and non-citizens alike. If you want access to all of this conversation, go to hiddenforces.io/subscribe and join our premium feed, which you can listen to on your mobile device using your favorite podcast app, just like you're listening to this episode right now. If you want to join in on the conversation and become a member of the Hidden Forces Genius Community, which includes Q&A calls with guests, discounted access to third-party research and analysis, and in-person events like intimate dinners and weekend retreats, you can also do that on our subscriber page. And if you still have questions, feel free to send an email to info at hiddenforces.io, and I or someone from our team will get right back to you. And with that, please enjoy this incredibly thoughtful and important conversation with my guest, Jacob Siegel.
Jacob Siegel, welcome back to Hidden Forces.

**Jacob Siegel** (3:34)
Thanks for having me, Demetri. I'm happy to be here.

**Demetri Kofinas** (3:37)
Do you know when you were on the show last time?

**Jacob Siegel** (3:39)
It would have been not long after the Tablet essay that spawned this book was published, so maybe April, 2023

**Demetri Kofinas** (3:49)
So it was 2024, but you see you have that touchstone. I don't. I thought it was longer. I thought it was longer than that. I think it was actually in the fall of 2024 So it's only been like two and a half years. And I've wanted you on the show since, because I think you're such an important voice on the topics that we're going to talk about today. And you told me when I reached out, I actually got a book coming out. Let's save it for then. So we've saved it for now. The book that is coming out, I think it's publishing the day after this interview airs, right? Or is it publishing tomorrow?

**Jacob Siegel** (4:20)
March 24th.

**Demetri Kofinas** (4:21)
Right. So it's going to be the day after this episode publishes. The book is titled The Information State, Politics in the Age of Total Control. Before we get into the book, I would love to have a brief discussion with you about intellectual foundations. And I told you that Shoshana Zuboff's book came up quite a bit in my own mind while I was reading this book, though that's not necessarily an indication of alignment. I think there are areas where you guys align in areas where maybe you depart. I know you've read the book. That book is almost a decade old, but many of the concepts that we have for thinking about some of the ideas explored in your book originate with her. And I should emphasize some of those ideas. That said, her intellectual influences seem to draw more from the American progressive and certain German academic traditions, most notably Hannah Arendt and her work on totalitarianism. You both incorporate Jeremy Bentham's Panopticon into your argument, but you seem to be much more influenced by the work of certain media theorists like Marshall McLuhan, Harold Innis, Neil Postman, and of course, French philosopher Jacques Ellul, who has come up often in some of our previous conversations on this show, notably with Michael Tsakasas and Paul Kings North. Before we begin our discussion about the book, Jacob, I'd love to know whose work has done the most to shape your thinking on the topics we're going to discuss today.