“What conclusion do you draw if you see a system that continues to grow more powerful despite failing at the things it says it’s going to accomplish?” — Jacob Siegel
Jacob Siegel grew up in Brooklyn, enlisted after 9/11, and fought in Iraq and Afghanistan. As an intelligence officer, he had drones, Palantir, and predictive databases at his fingertips — but couldn’t get a coherent answer about what America was trying to accomplish. The technology was as extraordinary as the incoherence of the war.
In The Information State, Siegel argues that those same tools came home to American citizens. This isn’t the conventional leftist critique. Obama elevated the surveillance apparatus into progressive government — not Orwellian, but sprawling, technocratic, invisible. Ben Rhodes called it the echo chamber. Trump’s version is cruder. But the infrastructure is the Internet itself.
This Kafkaesque system grows more powerful despite failing at everything it claims to do. You may not be interested in the Information State, but it sure is interested in you. Such is politics in the age of total control.
Five Takeaways
• The War Came Home. Drones, Palantir, predictive models — built for Afghanistan, now used on American citizens.
• Obama Built It. Trump Inherited It. Neither Owns It. Progressive gloss or monarchical authority — the infrastructure is the Internet itself.
• The System Grows by Failing. Never wins its wars, never rationalises society. Gets more powerful anyway. That’s the horror.
• Twitter Under Musk: Schizophrenia Factory. Removing censorship didn’t solve the problem. Social dissolution is not liberation.
• The Human Subject Is Diminished. Agency relocated into opaque systems. A transformation on the order of the printing press.
About the Guest
Jacob Siegel is a contributing editor at Tablet. The Information State is published by Henry Holt.
References
The Information State: https://www.amazon.com/Information-State-Politics-Total-Control/dp/1250363128
Jacob Siegel at Tablet: https://www.tabletmag.com/contributors/jacob-siegel
About Keen On America
Nobody asks more awkward questions than the Anglo-American writer and filmmaker Andrew Keen.
Website: https://keenon.tv/ Substack: https://keenon.substack.com/ YouTube: https://youtube.com/@KeenOnShow
Chapters:
00:00:00 Introduction: the wages of bitterness and the information state
00:02:52 Brooklyn, Boston University, and the unfocused student
00:05:05 September 11 and the American man who enlisted
00:06:02 Anatole Broyard, not Nathan Zuckerman
00:08:09 McCarthy, the Red Scare, and the fertile fifties
00:11:17 Iraq, Afghanistan, and the disjunction between technology and war
00:14:44 Palantir, drones, and the dream of total control
00:15:45 The war on terror’s tools come home to America
00:17:00 Obama’s progressive information state: not Orwellian, worse
00:20:35 Six Espionage Act prosecutions and the echo chamber
00:28:09 Trump’s quasi-monarchical version vs. Obama’s sprawl
00:32:10 Gramsci, cultural hegemony, and the single national ruling class
00:34:02 The Kafkaesque horror: a system that grows by failing
00:43:50 Twitter under Musk: a horrifying factory of schizophrenia
00:44:32 The crisis of the American man and the diminished human subject