Science & Technology

Why historian Jill Lepore thinks Big Tech CEOs read sci-fi all wrong | Equity Podcast

Historian Jill Lepore has a theory about why tech companies often use soaring language to describe their products — almost as if they’re forming a new government. And whether you’re thinking of Twitter’s old “town hall in your pocket” or Anthropic’s Claude constitution, it’s a theory that doesn’t paint Silicon Valley in a very flattering…

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2 months ago

August 7, 2026

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In Lepore’s upcoming book, The Rise and Fall of the Artificial State, the Pulitzer Prize-winning Harvard historian and New Yorker writer argues that tech companies are gradually taking on the functions of democratic government — whether that’s Twitter giving a distorted picture of the electorate or Facebook displacing local news. In her view, these leaders often mistake technological advancement for political progress, all while outright declaring their intention to replace the nation-state.

On this episode of TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, Anthony Ha talks with Lepore about her book and why she thinks today’s AI leaders — who promise a future where AI makes government more efficient, more responsive, and maybe even unnecessary — are selling an old fantasy in new packaging.

Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod.

Chapters:

00:00 Intro

0:49 Defining the “artificial state”

2:17 Why corporations quietly took over state functions

4:43 Could the internet have gone another way?

9:01 From the 1984 Macintosh ad to Anthropic’s constitution

10:20 The Twitter “town hall” myth

13:36 Structuring the book: history meets science fiction

17:46 The Machine Stops, and other bad manuals for the future

19:16 Musk, Heinlein, and misreading sci-fi

19:41 Why Lepore thinks the artificial state is “doomed”

21:51 Data centers, local politics, and the death of local news

24:44 Revisiting disruptive innovation, ten years later

26:54 Outro

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1 Comment

@katiecannon8186

August 9, 2026 at 6:49 am

My MAGA family definitely feels like they’ve voted to moving the functions of the state to the corporation.

It’s just that they don’t pay attention to logical oxymorons, so they also think they’ve voted for “taking back our government”

Reply

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Windows, Surface and Nvidia Event Highlights: Everything Announced in 16 Minutes

Watch Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and the Windows team introduce the next era for the OS, including more trustworthy AI agents, the Surface Laptop Ultra and Nvidia-powered laptops and PCs for creators and developers. Read more about the Windows Event on CNET.com Surface Laptop Ultra Preorders: Everything Announced at Microsoft’s Windows and Surface Event Timecode…

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Read more about the Windows Event on CNET.com
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#windows #windows11 #satyanadella #surfacelaptop #nvidia #ai #artificialintelligence #aiagents #aiagent #agenticai

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Unboxing the $1,199 Dell XPS Googlebook

The smallest of the Googlebooks, the XPS has the same high-end look and feel as the XPS 13 Windows laptop. It has a great design with a full aluminum body that weighs 2.2 pounds. Some notable specs: 💻 Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite 💻 16 or 32GB of memory 💻 512GB of storage 💻 13.4-inch 2.5K-resolution…

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The smallest of the Googlebooks, the XPS has the same high-end look and feel as the XPS 13 Windows laptop. It has a great design with a full aluminum body that weighs 2.2 pounds.

Some notable specs:

💻 Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite
💻 16 or 32GB of memory
💻 512GB of storage
💻 13.4-inch 2.5K-resolution touchscreen, 500-nit brightness
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Unbox it with us. #unboxing #dell #googlebook #dellxps #android

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0:36 Amazon Prime Video with NFL Thursday Night Football
0:42 Amazon Music Prime
0:50 Prime Reading
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1:51 Ctegory 2: Dining, Travel and Daily Perks
1:55 Free Grubhub+ membership for free delivery fees
2:14 Gas/Fuel Savings with the Earnify App
2:39 Category 3: Gaming & Tech Freebies
2:42 Prime Gaming Free Monthly PC Game
2:51 Free Twitch Channel Subscription
2:55 Amazon Luna Cloud Gaming
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3:06 Amazon No-Rush Shipping Digital Promotional Credits
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4:37 Early Lightning Deals Access
4:45 Free Woot! Shipping
4:54 Category 6: Discounted Add-On Health Perks
5:01 RXPass Prescription Drug Subscriptions
5:08 One Medical Membership
5:21 Final Thoughts & Outro