Technology, agency, and the American man

“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, studied history at Boston University, enlisted in the US Army after September 11, and fought in Iraq and Afghanistan. In Afghanistan, as an intelligence officer, he had the latest drones, sensors, Palantir databases, and predictive models at his fingertips — but still couldn’t get a coherent answer about what, exactly, America was trying to accomplish in its war with the Taliban. To him, the technology was as extraordinary as the incoherence of the war.

In his new book, The Information State: Politics in the Age of Total Control, Siegel argues that within a few years of coming home, those same tools were being used on American citizens. This “Information State” was born in Herat and Kandahar. It came home to our iPhones.

But Siegel’s Information State isn’t the conventional leftist critique of Big Tech. Siegel argues that the Obama administration elevated the war on terror’s surveillance apparatus into an art of progressive government — not as Orwellian censors but through a sprawling network of NGOs, fact-checkers, and media organisations that made authoritarian control look like liberal consensus. Ben Rhodes, one of the principal architects of the Information State, called it the echo chamber. Trump’s version is cruder, more monarchical, more wannabe Orwellian. But the infrastructure, Siegel says, is the Internet itself. Digital society has spawned its own form of government regardless of who’s in charge. 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 on Terror’s Tools Came Home: Siegel was an intelligence officer in Afghanistan with drones, sensors, Palantir, and predictive databases at his fingertips — and couldn’t get a straight answer about what America was trying to accomplish. Within a few years of returning, those same tools were being used on American citizens. The information state was born in Herat and Kandahar.

•       Obama Built It. Trump Inherited It. Neither Owns It: The Obama administration elevated the war on terror’s surveillance tools into an art of government — not as Orwellian censors but through a progressive gloss of rationality and correct social ideals. Trump’s version is cruder, more monarchical, more direct. But the infrastructure is the Internet itself. Digital society spawns its own form of government regardless of who’s in charge.

•       The System Grows More Powerful by Failing: This is the Kafkaesque horror at the heart of the book. A system that never achieves its stated goals — winning in Afghanistan, rationalising society, controlling public opinion — yet continues to grow larger and more powerful. If a system is rewarded for failing, the system itself has become the purpose.

•       Twitter Under Musk Is a Horrifying Factory of Schizophrenia: Siegel is no Musk apologist. He thinks the early campaign against mass censorship was a good step. But the result — Musk’s Twitter — is social dissolution, not liberation. Removing government control didn’t solve the fundamental problem of how we mediate social relations online.

•       The Human Subject Has Been Diminished: The digital world has relocated human agency into opaque systems. The crisis of the American man — and, Siegel concedes, of the American woman too — is bound up with a technological transformation on the order of the printing press. Industrial-era social relations cannot persist under digital conditions. The information state is the first draft of what comes next.

About the Guest

Jacob Siegel is a contributing editor at Tablet magazine and co-editor of the anthology Fire and Forget: Short Stories from the Long War. He served as a US Army officer in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Information State is published by Henry Holt.

References:

•       The Information State by Jacob Siegel (Henry Holt, 2026) — the book under discussion.

•       Episode 2845: Let’s Ban Billionaires — Noam Cohen on the Know-It-Alls and the theft of civilisation. Siegel’s argument from the other side.

•       Episode 2847: America’s Suez Moment? — Soli Özel on the Iran war. The information state meets real war.

About Keen On America

Nobody asks more awkward questions than the Anglo-American writer and filmmaker Andrew Keen. In Keen On America, Andrew brings his pointed Transatlantic wit to making sense of the United States — hosting daily interviews about the history and future of this now venerable Republic. With nearly 2,800 episodes since the show launched on TechCrunch in 2010, Keen On America is the most prolific intellectual interview show in the history of podcasting.

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Chapters:

• (00:00) - Introduction: the wages of bitterness and the information state
• (02:52) - Brooklyn, Boston University, and the unfocused student
• (05:05) - September 11 and the American man who enlisted
• (06:02) - Anatole Broyard, not Nathan Zuckerman
• (08:09) - McCarthy, the Red Scare, and the fertile fifties
• (11:17) - Iraq, Afghanistan, and the disjunction between technology and war
• (14:44) - Palantir, drones, and the dream of total control
• (15:45) - The war on terror’s tools come home to America
• (17:00) - Obama’s progressive information state: not Orwellian, worse
• (20:35) - Six Espionage Act prosecutions and the echo chamber
• (28:09) - Trump’s quasi-monarchical version vs. Obama’s sprawl
• (32:10) - Gramsci, cultural hegemony, and the single national ruling class
• (34:02) - The Kafkaesque horror: a system that grows by failing
• (43:50) - Twitter under Musk: a horrifying factory of schizophrenia
• (44:32) - The crisis of the American man and the diminished human subject