Historian Jill Lepore says Silicon Valley misreads science fiction and undermines democracy
Historian Jill Lepore, a Harvard professor and Pulitzer Prize-winning New Yorker writer, argues in her forthcoming book "The Rise and Fall of the Artificial State" that technology companies are increasingly taking over functions once performed by democratic governments. Speaking on TechCrunch's Equity podcast, she described this as a largely unconsented, gradual shift towards "rule by algorithms, corporations, machines," warning it risks reversing centuries of progress on democracy and equal rights.
Lepore said she is not opposed to technology itself, noting she is married to a computer scientist, but objects specifically to private corporations assuming state-like powers. She traces the intellectual roots of this "artificial state" back through decades of technocratic thought and science fiction, and singled out figures such as Elon Musk, arguing that Silicon Valley leaders often misread or misapply pulp science fiction and comic-book influences in ways that contradict their own stated political beliefs. She noted that while early efficiency-driven tech adoption in government was often well-intentioned, the last 20-25 years have seen more deliberate attempts by tech entrepreneurs to move beyond the traditional nation-state.
- Historian Jill Lepore says tech firms are replacing state functions without consent
- New book "The Rise and Fall of the Artificial State" traces this technocratic trend
- She says Musk and others misread sci-fi, undermining their own political values
Both sides, in good faith
The strongest fair case each way — we don't pick a winner.
The case for
Advocates for Lepore's argument would say democratic accountability matters precisely because it is slow, contestable and answerable to citizens, whereas a handful of unelected technology executives are now shaping infrastructure, communication, currency and even space policy with minimal public consent or oversight. They would argue that dressing this up in the language of efficiency or futurism obscures a real transfer of power away from institutions bound by law and towards private actors bound only by shareholders, and that history's technocratic movements offer real cautionary lessons about concentrating authority outside democratic checks.
The case against
Those sceptical of this framing would argue that private companies have always built infrastructure and provided services once run by the state, from railways to utilities, without this amounting to a takeover of government itself, and that competitive markets and consumer choice provide their own form of accountability distinct from but not inferior to the ballot box. They might add that technologists pursuing ambitious visions of the future, even ones inspired loosely by science fiction, are exercising ordinary entrepreneurial and free-speech freedoms, and that framing this as a sinister erosion of democracy risks pathologising innovation and dismissing genuine efficiency gains that slow-moving bureaucracies have struggled to deliver.