The Artificial State is the factory farming of humans, the sorting and segmenting, the isolation and alienation, the destruction of both human community and the capacity for self-government'', writes the prizewinning historian Jill Lepore in her astounding, Orwellian account of how technology has undermined democracy around the world. Tracing the rise and fall of what she calls the ''Artificial State'' over more than a century, Lepore examines how political campaigns have been reduced to the digital manipulation of attention-mining algorithms, how multinational corporations control public discourse, and how the era of the liberal nation-state is coming to an end, replaced by the rule of artificially intelligent machines . In a luminous, anguished rumination on everything from robot rights and Elon Musk''s origins to what data centres cost wildlife, Lepore offers a vantage and a history wholly missing from the debate about the decay of democracy, the destruction of the natural world, and the future of humanity.>

Autorentext
Jill Lepore is the David Woods Kemper '41 Professor of American History at Harvard University and Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. She is also a staff writer at the New Yorker. Her many books include the international bestseller These Truths: A History of the United States. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

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**Longlisted for the Financial Times Business Book of the Year 2026

'Superb' Philip Pullman
'Revelatory' George Saunders**

It presented itself as a form of futurism. But the future envisioned by the architects of the Artificial State looked, chillingly, like the very worst of the past...

We live in the age of data. Over the past century, rapidly evolving technologies have transformed every aspect of our society, in troubling and seemingly unstoppable ways. Political campaigns have been reduced to attention-mining algorithms, multinational corporations control public discourse, and the era of the liberal nation-state seems to be coming to an end, replaced by the rule of artificial intelligence. Today, power is maintained through mystification: machines, we are told, know what humans cannot. Yet nothing about any of this was, or is, inevitable.

In this astounding account of how technology has corroded democracy around the world, prizewinning historian Jill Lepore traces the rise and fall of what she calls the 'Artificial State'. Examining everything from robot rights and Elon Musk's origins to what data centres cost wildlife, Lepore offers a history - and a perspective - wholly missing from the debate.

History, Lepore demonstrates, is driven not by machines but by individuals, societies, cultures and ideas. The architects of the Artificial State had no theory of governance, nor did they have any interest in the rule of law, or any capacity for restraint. They drew their ideas not from science, but from science fiction. Yet everything destructive that they have done can be undone. By illuminating the origins of the Artificial State, Lepore reveals how we can escape it - helping us to imagine, and fight for, a different future.