--- title: Historian Jill Lepore says Silicon Valley misreads... description: Harvard historian and Pulitzer Prize winner Jill Lepore discusses her upcoming book 'The Rise and Fall of the Artificial State,' arguing that tech companies... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/historian-jill-lepore-says-silicon-valley-misreads-science-fiction-and-undermines-democracy-ckoucyvdo twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Historian Jill Lepore says Silicon Valley misreads science fiction and undermines democracy | daily.dev og:description: Harvard historian and Pulitzer Prize winner Jill Lepore discusses her upcoming book 'The Rise and Fall of the Artificial State,' arguing that tech companies... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/historian-jill-lepore-says-silicon-valley-misreads-science-fiction-and-undermines-democracy-ckoucyvdo og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/ckOUcYVdO.png og:image:alt: Historian Jill Lepore says Silicon Valley misreads science fiction and undermines democracy og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Historian Jill Lepore says Silicon Valley misreads science fiction and undermines democracy **[TechCrunch](https://daily.dev/sources/tc)** · 19 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary Harvard historian and Pulitzer Prize winner Jill Lepore discusses her upcoming book 'The Rise and Fall of the Artificial State,' arguing that tech companies are increasingly usurping democratic government functions. She traces this trend from the 1984 Apple Macintosh ad through the 1996 Telecommunications Act, Twitter's political evolution, and current AI leaders like Sam Altman and Elon Musk. Lepore contends that Silicon Valley leaders misread science fiction warnings as blueprints, and that the artificial state is ultimately doomed because it destroys the natural resources it depends on. She calls for democratic consultation on tech decisions, citing data center opposition as an example of public pushback, and advocates for more engagement between historians and technologists. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Questions this post answers ### What is Jill Lepore's 'artificial state' concept and how does it relate to tech companies? The artificial state refers to private corporations increasingly taking over functions traditionally held by democratic nation-states — without public consent. Lepore traces this from early internet policy decisions like the 1996 Telecommunications Act through modern examples: Facebook creating its own 'Supreme Court,' Anthropic hiring a philosopher to write a constitution, and Sam Altman endorsing an AI president. She sees it as a return to rule by algorithms and corporations. _Developers shaping AI products that touch governance will find the policy debate around this on daily.dev._ ## Community take How the wider developer community reacted, aggregated from 1 discussion and 145 comments across hackernews (as of 2026-08-09). **TL;DR:** Commenters broadly agree that tech oligarchs treat dystopian sci-fi as a blueprint rather than a warning, and that their wealth insulates them from consequences — but the thread quickly splinters into debates about government competence, free speech on X, and whether Lepore's analysis is itself cherry-picked. **Sentiment:** 15% positive · 35% mixed · 50% skeptical **The case for** - Several commenters affirm the core observation that figures like Musk and Zuckerberg explicitly cite sci-fi works as inspiration rather than cautionary tales (the 'Torment Nexus' dynamic). - One commenter who read an ARC of Lepore's book says her coverage of tech oligarchs misreading science fiction is detailed, consistent, and wide-ranging enough to be assigned in a survey course on SF. - Commenters note that extreme wealth shields tech leaders from the consequences of bad decisions, producing a kind of permanent adolescent certainty that they know best. - The point that weakening rule of law ultimately destroys the property rights and GDP growth that billionaires depend on is raised as a self-defeating irony in their worldview. **The pushback** - Several commenters argue Lepore's analysis is cherry-picked and that reading Heinlein or Asimov doesn't make someone a technocratic libertarian — millions of ordinary sci-fi fans read the same books. - One commenter contends the interview conflates tech leaders 'misreading' fiction with simply disagreeing with its message, and that the framing is unfair. - A commenter suggests the real driver is simply that getting ultra-rich changes your material interests, not any philosophical misreading of fiction — making the sci-fi angle a red herring. - The argument that technological change (containerized shipping, the internet) is the principal cause of nation-state erosion — not tech oligarchs' ideology — is raised as an alternative explanation Lepore underweights. **By community** - hackernews (mixed): Broadly sympathetic to the critique of tech oligarchs but divided on whether Lepore's sci-fi-misreading thesis holds up, with significant side debates about government efficiency, X's censorship, and the psychology of billionaires. **Hottest debate:** Whether X under Musk has genuinely low censorship or merely selectively amplifies right-wing content while suppressing others. **Open questions** - If sci-fi fans across the world read the same Heinlein and Asimov, why do only a handful of billionaires translate that into anti-democratic ideology — is the fiction actually causal? - What concrete democratic mechanisms could realistically constrain tech companies that already have more resources than many governments? - Does the 'artificial state' thesis account for the role of globalization and technology itself (not just its leaders' ideology) in eroding nation-states? **Highlights** > They know exactly what they are doing. Elon Musk talks a lot about freedom but he has never practiced it with regards to others, only himself. He has always considered the technologically well educated to be superior. He is also an egotistical narcissist. You can't believe anything he says he believes because he projects what he wants others to believe of him, not what he truly believes. The same is true of many of the techno bros whose actual technical abilities are heavily accentuated by their salesmanship. They lie and manipulate and call it human progress while actually being focused on their net worth. It's exactly what these sci-fi stories warned us about, but they used it as a playbook, not a warning, because they envisioned themselves as the tyrannical leader, not as the repressed masses beneath them. > — [RevEng on hackernews · 1 comments](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49232614) > In the US at least, we've been brainwashed to think that government, by definition, must be bloated, corrupt and inefficient. Believing this axiom, people vote to hand over every possible service to private enterprise. Now we are in a situation where a handful of unelected business men have more power over our lives than the elected government. > — [yoyohello13 on hackernews · 6 comments](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49232799) > This was a fascinating interview, and there were a lot of ideas packed into it. Honestly, it makes me want to read her book. That said, I disagree with a lot of her conclusions. Contra her assertions, I believe that technological change is the principal cause of historical change. Lawrence Lessig wrote Code is Law, which highlights how specific software system decisions constrained the available legal regimes that could apply. The same thing happens for all technology: the invention of containerized shipping plus the internet led to globalization, which is the real reason nation states are eroding. I do agree with her about the undesirability of an "artificial state"--an algorithmic government that rules by deterministic rules instead of representative human judgement. And I do agree that many technologists think that we'd be better off being ruled by machines instead of people. But that is (a) not a new phenomenon, and (b) equally found outside Silicon Valley. Paul Krugman often writes about Asimov's psychohistory being a strong influence on him. He longs for a world of Philosopher Kings who make decisions logically and without the messy delusions of the masses. > — [GMoromisato on hackernews · 4 comments](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49233002) > I happened to read an ARC of her forthcoming book. Lapore is well aware and discusses in detail the history of technocratic dreams dating back centuries. The book also deep and wide-ranging analysis of tech oligarchs ability to misread science fiction. So detailed and consistent is her coverage of the genre that I can actually imagine the book being assigned in a survey course on SF. > — [msabalau on hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49233682) > It's basically the Torment Nexus meme: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torment_Nexus ... but I guess some people took this as positive reinforcement. > — [verandaguy on hackernews · 1 comments](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49232741) **Source threads** - [hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49232221) · 168 points · 145 comments ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [The Chicken Littles of Silicon Valley: Why AI Doomsayers Are Repeating History’s Greatest Mistake](https://daily.dev/posts/the-chicken-littles-of-silicon-valley-why-ai-doomsayers-are-repeating-history-s-greatest-mistake-tibubxcsb) · Security Boulevard · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Marc Andreessen is a Demilich of Tech](https://daily.dev/posts/marc-andreessen-is-a-demilich-of-tech-mrmbjxx6t) · Jay Little · 5 upvotes · 2 comments --- Tags: [#ai](https://daily.dev/tags/ai), [#startup](https://daily.dev/tags/startup), [#ai-governance](https://daily.dev/tags/ai-governance) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/historian-jill-lepore-says-silicon-valley-misreads-science-fiction-and-undermines-democracy-ckoucyvdo) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"Historian Jill Lepore says Silicon Valley misreads science fiction and undermines democracy","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/historian-jill-lepore-says-silicon-valley-misreads-science-fiction-and-undermines-democracy-ckoucyvdo","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/historian-jill-lepore-says-silicon-valley-misreads-science-fiction-and-undermines-democracy-ckoucyvdo"},"datePublished":"2026-08-09T15:03:19.048Z","dateModified":"2026-08-09T19:19:09.510Z","description":"Harvard historian and Pulitzer Prize winner Jill Lepore discusses her upcoming book 'The Rise and Fall of the Artificial State,' arguing that tech companies...","image":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/6e5612f746f58a80a698ec8593deb8fa?_a=AQAEuop","thumbnailUrl":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/6e5612f746f58a80a698ec8593deb8fa?_a=AQAEuop","isAccessibleForFree":true,"articleSection":"TechCrunch","inLanguage":"en","publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180}},"author":{"@type":"Organization","name":"TechCrunch","logo":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/t_logo,f_auto/v1/logos/tc","url":"https://daily.dev/sources/tc"},"commentCount":0,"discussionUrl":"https://daily.dev/posts/historian-jill-lepore-says-silicon-valley-misreads-science-fiction-and-undermines-democracy-ckoucyvdo","interactionStatistic":[{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":0},{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"CommentAction"},"userInteractionCount":0}],"keywords":"ai,startup,ai-governance","timeRequired":"PT19M"} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https://daily.dev"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"TechCrunch","item":"https://daily.dev/sources/tc"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"name":"Historian Jill Lepore says Silicon Valley misreads science fiction and undermines democracy"}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"FAQPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/historian-jill-lepore-says-silicon-valley-misreads-science-fiction-and-undermines-democracy-ckoucyvdo#faq","mainEntity":[{"@type":"Question","name":"What is Jill Lepore's 'artificial state' concept and how does it relate to tech companies?","acceptedAnswer":{"@type":"Answer","text":"The artificial state refers to private corporations increasingly taking over functions traditionally held by democratic nation-states — without public consent. 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