In her forthcoming book The Rise and Fall of the Artificial State, historian Jill Lepore argues that technology companies are increasingly "replacing the functions of democratic government" — a shift she characterizes as “a return to tyranny and mystification in the form of rule by algorithms, corporations, machines.”TechCrunch

Speaking on TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, Lepore, a Harvard historian and recent Pulitzer Prize winner for her history of the U.S. Constitution, describes a long‑running intellectual project: “the idea that we should live under an artificial state or government by machines.”TechCrunch

Her argument is not that technology itself is the problem. As she puts it, “I’m not an anti‑technologist… I’m really excited about all kinds of intellectual revolutions that we’re in the midst of right now.” Her concern, rather, is “the ways in which private corporations have increasingly taken on the functions of the state,” a transformation she says “no one consented to.”TechCrunch

From Technocracy to the ‘Artificial State’

Lepore defines the “artificial state” as “a kind of state that is replacing the liberal democratic nation‑state in the United States and around the world. It’s both a real thing, a construct, but it’s also an idea.” In The Rise and Fall of the Artificial State, she says she “trace[s] the rise of the idea that we should live under an artificial state or government by machines,” and also “trace[s] the notion that this is an inevitable failure, that the artificial state cannot survive,” following that idea “through science fiction.”TechCrunch

When pressed on why she views this shift in such stark terms, Lepore reiterates that the problem is not “technology itself or modes of technology,” but the emergence of an alternative form of governance based on “rule by algorithms, corporations, machines.”TechCrunch

Not Anti‑Tech, Anti‑Privatized Governance

Lepore is explicit that she is not opposed to technology itself. “I’m not an anti‑technologist,” she stresses, noting that she is “married to a computer scientist” and is “really excited about all kinds of intellectual revolutions” now underway.TechCrunch

Her “beef,” as she puts it, is “the ways in which private corporations have increasingly taken on the functions of the state.” She describes this as “a kind of gradual, largely accidental transformation of how many nation‑states around the world work — it’s happened first in the United States.” According to Lepore, innovations that brought “new technologies to the operations of government” were “often… extremely well intentioned”; they “originate with an interest in efficiency and speed and cheapness.” But, she argues, “only in the last 20, 25 years or so have these decisions been purposeful and deliberate as a kind of usurpation of the role of the nation‑state.”TechCrunch

Lepore adds that this is “not [her] speculation.” She notes that “a lot of very prominent tech entrepreneurs talk about wanting to move beyond” the existing nation‑state framework.TechCrunch

For policymakers, the implication is that debates about AI and platforms are, in part, debates about whether core state functions are being informally re‑assigned to private entities without explicit public consent.

Platforms as Pseudo‑Public Institutions

Lepore is particularly sharp on the language used by technology leaders to describe their creations. She calls it “bananas” to refer to a social media platform such as Twitter as a digital town hall.TechCrunch

The metaphor, in her telling, obscures the distinction between traditional public institutions and corporate platforms. Where a town hall is a familiar image of civic life, Twitter and similar services are built and governed by companies whose obligations are defined by private law and corporate purpose. Treating the latter as if they straightforwardly were the former, Lepore suggests, risks hiding the extent to which private rules and opaque systems now shape much of contemporary public discourse.

For regulators, her critique underscores the importance of not allowing marketing language — “digital town hall,” “public square” — to substitute for clear legal analysis of who sets the rules, who is accountable, and under what authority.

Bad Readings, Bad Governance

Lepore’s critique extends beyond institutions to the stories that technology leaders tell about themselves and their work. She argues that many in Silicon Valley are “bad readers” of science fiction, and says that “many of Silicon Valley’s ‘charismatic or not‑so‑charismatic leaders’ — especially Elon Musk — seem to be ushering in a future pulled from misread pulp science fiction and comic books.”TechCrunch

She singles out Musk, observing that “the stuff he likes actually completely defeats and defies all of his political beliefs.”TechCrunch While Lepore’s comments here are literary and cultural, their policy resonance is clear: if influential founders and executives derive their political imagination from simplified or misunderstood narratives, those narratives will inevitably shape how they approach questions of governance, regulation, and the proper role of the state.

For lawmakers and regulators, her admonition is implicit but pointed: the stories underpinning technology development matter. A regulatory conversation conducted in the shadow of mythic “disruption” and heroic engineers will have difficulty grappling with Lepore’s contention that some of these systems now exercise powers once associated with states.

The Artificial State as Policy Problem

Lepore contends that the rise of what she calls the artificial state “marks the end of centuries of democracy and equal rights,” and represents “a return to tyranny and mystification in the form of rule by algorithms, corporations, machines.”TechCrunch

Tyranny, in this framing, is not a metaphor for any use of technology. It describes a situation in which crucial decisions about social order are made by entities that were not granted that authority through democratic means. Mystification arises when such rule is presented as neutral, technical, or inevitable rather than as a contestable political choice.

For policymakers designing AI regulation, Lepore’s analysis suggests that the central questions are institutional: who is actually making which decisions, on what legal basis, and with what mechanisms for accountability and redress. Her warning is that when these questions go unanswered, the accumulated effect is the construction of an “artificial state” alongside, and sometimes in place of, the democratic one.

Reasserting Democratic Governance in the Age of AI

Lepore maintains that the artificial state “cannot survive,” describing its failure as inevitable in the science‑fiction tradition she surveys.TechCrunch The outstanding question, for contemporary policymakers, is how that failure will manifest: through deliberate reform, through crisis, or through gradual adaptation.

From a governance standpoint, her work points toward several directions of inquiry, rather than a detailed regulatory blueprint. Legislatures may ask: which governmental functions, if any, should never be effectively outsourced to private technical systems? Regulators may examine how to ensure that when public authorities rely on corporate platforms and AI services, they do so under conditions consistent with democratic accountability. And across these efforts, there is a need to see past the rhetoric of inevitability — to recognize, as Lepore insists, that the rise of the artificial state is a historically specific project, not an inescapable law of nature.

In an era when algorithms and platforms mediate access to information, services, and community, those questions are no longer abstract. They are the quiet constitutional issues beneath many of today’s technology policy debates. Whether democratic governments can, or will, reassert their authority over this emerging “artificial state” will shape the trajectory of AI far more than any individual breakthrough or business model.