The Information State

“It’s hard to imagine that a more important book than Jacob Siegel’s The Information State will be published this year. I can’t put it down.”
–Rod Dreher

“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

“Illuminating … . Incisive… . Every so often a political book arrives that reshapes how we understand the ground beneath our feet … . The Information State is that rare achievement in contemporary political writing: a book of ideas that also tells a gripping story.”
–The Baffler

“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

“The Information State is one of the most important books of the twenty-first century. In a virtuoso performance, Jacob Siegel harmonizes political theory, investigative journalism, and contemporary history to demonstrate how Americans are now governed… An elegant and insightful panorama of the twilight of American liberalism.”
–Nathan Pinkoski, First Things

“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

Jacob Siegel is a contributing editor at Tablet. He served as an officer in the US Army National Guard, deploying to Iraq for 15 months in 2006-2007 during “the surge.” In 2012, he deployed to Western Afghanistan.

He co-edited and contributed the lead story to Fire and Forget: Short Stories from the Long War, the first anthology of fiction by Iraq and Afghanistan veterans. Since 2013, he has worked as a journalist covering war, surveillance, technology, and the convulsions in the American scene.

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