The Information State: Its Impact On Freedom

Jacob Siegel’s brand new book focuses on how rulers and elites use digital tools to calibrate information and control the masses.

Janet Levy | June 30, 2026

In his many articles for Tablet and other outlets, Jacob Siegel, a journalist and war veteran, has focused on how rulers and elites use digital tools to calibrate information and control people. His new book, The Information State: Politics in the Age of Total Control, traces the evolution—from 9/11 to the advent of AI—of a mammoth alliance between government and Big Tech that subverts our constitutional republic and enslaves Americans.

According to Siegel, the foundation of the information state is a “whole-of-society” approach to governance that aligns “the most powerful institutions behind the dictates of the state.” Tech platforms, NGOs, academia, and even individuals are enlisted to enforce government policies, creating what he calls a “360-degree police force” comprising the companies you do business with, civic organizations, and even your neighbors.

This top-down method, now preferred over building grassroots support by appealing to voters, originated in aid organizations' efforts to modernize Third World countries. It entered our political system during the post-9/11 global war on terror, and the Obama administration reshaped it into a community-led initiative—read surveillance via social media—to counter violent extremism. In practice, though, it evolved into leftist activism that seeks to control minds and behavior, promoting certain ideologies and suppressing or censoring others.

The most recent and pernicious advance has been the so-called war on misinformation and/or disinformation, launched in full force after the COVID pandemic and the prevailing narrative were questioned. Anything that opposes what the government and its technocrats want you to believe can be labeled disinformation and squashed through algorithmic intervention by the social media giants aligned with the government.

Is there any room left for genuine dissent? How did this come about? These are among the questions that Siegel seeks to answer, making his book an important and much-needed work of........

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