Hidden Forces Podcast Summary
Episode: "The Information State: Politics in the Age of Total Control"
Guest: Jacob Siegel | Host: Demetri Kofinas
Date: March 23, 2026
Overview:
This episode features journalist and Tablet magazine editor Jacob Siegel discussing his new book, "The Information State: Politics in the Age of Total Control." The conversation explores the transformation of politics and society wrought by digital technology, tracing intellectual roots from McLuhan to modern cybernetics. Kofinas and Siegel examine the historical evolution from industrial democracies to the “information state,” defining its unique mechanisms of power, and scrutinize its implications for civic freedom, propaganda, and mass formation. They grapple with the paradoxes of control and disorder in our online era, discuss how these trends undermine individual and collective agency, and consider whether solutions—technological, civic, or policy-driven—are still possible in this environment.
Key Discussion Points
1. Intellectual Foundations & Influences
- Early Influences: Siegel credits James Beniger’s "The Control Revolution" (1986) as pivotal in understanding info-tech’s historical and political context. Beniger frames the evolution of information systems as a necessary response to the overwhelming complexity created by the Industrial Revolution.
"What Beniger shows is that the explosion of mechanical processes... required the new technologies of information control just to get a handle on the sheer volume." — Siegel [06:15]
- Media Theorists: Siegel discusses his engagement with thinkers like Marshall McLuhan, Harold Innis, Neil Postman, and Jacques Ellul—arriving at a critical, often skeptical perspective on technological culture after his military experience.
"My sort of secular education was in these theorists of technology and media culture." — Siegel [11:55]
2. Post-Deployment Cultural Shock & The Digital Swarm
- Returning from Afghanistan (2012): Siegel describes re-entering a U.S. society transformed by online mass formation, digital swarms (e.g., Anonymous, 4chan), and incoherent, transient collective identities enabled by anonymity and the velocity of digital communications.
"There was no direct anchoring of an individual expressing a belief... creating no dissonance within the movement." — Siegel [14:44]
- Mass Online Movements: The nature of these digital swarms is fundamentally different from previous mass political or ideological formations: rapid, amorphous, often incoherent, and highly susceptible to exogenous (including state or foreign) manipulation.
"The incoherence became its own kind of defense... the more incoherent, the more powerful the claim." — Siegel [17:30]
3. Endogenous vs. Exogenous Manipulation
- Simulacra of Mass Movements: Siegel notes how digital attacks (e.g., DDoS by Anonymous) blurred the boundary between actual and simulated mass participation, making “organic” collective action indistinguishable from manipulation.
"What appeared to be a mass movement was in fact... an imitation or simulation of a mass movement." — Siegel [21:26]
- On Truth and Disinformation: Citing George Kennan and Peter Pomerantsev, the conversation links the breakdown of clear truth/falsehood boundaries online to military techniques and universalized “wildernesses of mirrors.”
"What is fundamentally a military technology, which is the Internet, became the essential medium through which all discourse... takes place." — Siegel [26:24]
4. Is This Merely Technological or Deeper Cultural Malaise?
- Tech as Amplifier: Siegel leans on McLuhan’s idea—technology does not create ex nihilo but magnifies intrinsic human tendencies. The acceleration of crisis and the dizzying speed of narrative formation is evidence of the digital’s amplifying role.
"The rate of change is the clearest indication of the impact... the cycling through one crisis after another at such a blinding rate." — Siegel [31:40]
- Historical Roots: The conversation traces this control imperative to 17th-century philosophy (Leibniz, binary code), cybernetics (Norbert Wiener), and the Cold War military-industrial development of the Internet.
"What this leads to is a global communications technology... that attempts to subject the entire planet to a grid of rational control." — Siegel [34:10]
5. The Information State as a New Political Regime
- Defining the Information State:
- Unlike authoritarian regimes (force) or democracies (consent), the information state governs by controlling digital codes and protocols—engineering public compliance by fractionally adjusting perceptions, monopolizing attention, and shrinking spaces for organic voluntary association.
"Such a state rules by monopolizing attention... It dictates the parameters of user experience on social media and other shared online domains." — Kofinas [49:12]
- Collapse of Old Civic Mechanisms: Industrial-era pluralism and voluntary civic life are “obliterated” or radically weakened—agency now mediated by opaque platforms and algorithmic governance.
"Almost across the board, all of these means... have been obliterated. It's not that you can't find the residue of them, but the residue... is not enough." — Siegel [42:36]
6. Control, Power, and the Limits of Reform
- Current Propaganda Less Effective? Kofinas suggests 21st-century digital information control is actually less effective than traditional propaganda (Chomsky/Herman’s “Manufacturing Consent”) of the broadcast era—the narrative has fractured. Siegel maintains that, while brittle, the information state is paradoxically more intrusive and totalizing.
"The distinction that you're making between state and private power... is effaced because the social media platforms... are themselves brought directly under the influence of the government." — Siegel [59:38]
- Loss of Social/Civic Agency: Siegel expresses skepticism that solutions lie in reviving old civic forms—"What civic life? It's gone already. You can't wish it back." Yet he denies being a nihilist; it’s a call for recognizing the scope of challenge.
"Individual and social agency are all important… I didn’t want to go through… throat-clearing… I wanted the book not to be. I'm sorry if the effect that it has... is to suggest that what they do doesn't matter. Because I think that that's all that matters." — Siegel [41:21]
- Policy and Data Rights: Siegel acknowledges potential in public policy and data rights, referencing his co-authored Tablet essay advocating for “fundamental restructuring of the political economy of the Internet.”
"The only way to deal with this is through the Internet... I have argued explicitly that... there needs to be a fundamental restructuring... arguing for data rights." — Siegel [48:26]
Notable Quotes & Moments
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On the Function of Information (Beniger):
"What information does at the cellular level in our bodies, and that's what information technologies do. They organize the world around them." — Siegel [07:20]
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On Digital Swarms’ Power:
"There was no need for internal coherence at all... The incoherence became its own kind of defense in a way, or its own method of propagation." — Siegel [17:25]
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On Information as Military Technology:
"Features once specific to the world of espionage became generalized... within which it became virtually impossible... to distinguish between active measures carried out by one's own government and... by a hostile government." — Siegel [27:12]
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On Human Agency and Loss of Civic Life:
"Almost across the board, all of these means... have been obliterated... the digital world of the Internet... have rapidly replaced, but somewhat invisibly replaced, the basic mechanisms of political sovereignty..." — Siegel [42:30]
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On Solutions:
"No, largely no, because. Which civic organizations? What civic life? It's gone already. You can't wish it back. It largely doesn't exist anymore." — Siegel [45:54]
Important Timestamps
- 03:34 — Introduction; discussion of Siegel’s intellectual influences
- 13:40 — Siegel’s observations returning from Afghanistan; how digital mass formation overtook culture
- 17:30 — Speed and incoherence of digital swarms; nature of online activism
- 21:19 — Exogenous manipulation vs. endogenous formation in digital movements
- 25:34 — Truth, fiction, and the “wilderness of mirrors”; espionage’s influence on society
- 30:52 — Is this mainly technological or a deeper cultural decline?
- 34:10 — The origin of control society: Leibniz, binary code, cybernetics, Cold War
- 41:20 — Siegel’s view on agency, the stark challenge of the information state
- 45:54 — Can civic organizations or civic life be revived? Siegel’s answer: “largely no”
- 49:12 — The novel definition of the information state; attention monopolies vs. consent/force
- 59:38 — The convergence of state and private power on digital platforms; new vulnerabilities of information environments
- 62:07 — Kofinas & Siegel outline key disagreements to be continued in the premium segment
Tone & Language
- The entire dialogue is earnest, deeply intellectual, and sometimes elegiac—Siegel frequently stresses the enormity and tragic quality of the shifts he describes but resists outright fatalism.
- Kofinas is probing but sympathetic, pushing Siegel to specify distinctions and clarify where (if anywhere) hope survives.
- Both use precise, theoretically rich language, referencing philosophy, history, and technical detail alongside contemporary examples.
For Listeners Short on Time
- The episode moves from theory to contemporary observation, highlighting the speed and incoherence of modern digital politics.
- Siegel argues the “information state” is a fundamentally new regime—not one of overt force or democratic contest, but covert algorithmic manipulation and attention control.
- There’s an unresolved tension on whether civic revival or reform is possible; Siegel is skeptical but not hopeless, advocating for data rights and regulatory recalibration rather than retreat or nihilism.
- The conversation situates our current crisis at the intersection of long-evolving philosophies and urgent technological change—suggesting solutions, if any, must begin by reckoning with both.
End of summary. For a deep dive into regulatory responses and the contested future of the information state, see the second hour on the premium feed.