On October 21st, the Straus Center for Torah and Western Thought鈥檚 Senior Scholar and Impact Office Director Dr. Tevi Troy introduced Tablet Magazine鈥檚 Special Features Editor Jacob Siegel, author of The Information State: Politics in the Age of Total Control, and invited him to explain the book鈥檚 central concept in an event cosponsored by The Jay and Jeanie Schottenstein Honors Program. Siegel described an information state as a society in which political power increasingly operates through control of information and data flows, rather than solely through traditional physical institutions and formal rules. He compared this shift to the information economy: physical assets still matter, but digital systems increasingly mediate how they are organized and controlled. In his account, constitutional government and the information state coexist, yet influence increasingly gathers at digital choke points that shape access to information.
Siegel argued that digitalization represents a phase change, not merely an incremental technological improvement. Earlier governments, including the Soviet Union, sought to control news and narratives, but lacked the capacity to turn nearly every aspect of life into searchable, transferable data. The internet and digital systems, he said, expanded information at scale, first reshaping commerce, then social life, and eventually governance. This change makes information control more pervasive and consequential than in earlier eras. It also blurs boundaries between private and public life, and between sovereignty and cross-border networks, as a RAND (independent nonprofit research arm of the Department of Defense and of the U.S. government) paper from 1996 had anticipated.
A central concern was the weakening of American civic life. Siegel said freedom once depended on 鈥渢he institutions of civil society, the intermediate layers between the individual and the state.鈥 He argued these institutions have declined and been displaced by digital platforms and top-down coordination among government, finance, academia, and media. As examples of the risks, he discussed debanking and loss of access to social platforms, arguing that such measures can penalize people without judicial process. He compared this infrastructure with China鈥檚 social-credit mechanisms, while stressing that technological convergence does not make the political systems equivalent.
On whether technology alone produced this outcome, Siegel said policy choices mattered too. He described a sharp shift in U.S. attitudes, noting that 鈥渦p until around 2016, all of these processes, this digital expansion, the internet itself, was largely viewed as a kind of once-in-a-century revolutionary force for democratization, liberation, and progress.鈥 After 2016, he said, the internet was increasingly blamed for disinformation and political disruption. He identified the Patriot Act and post-9/11 surveillance as turning points, arguing that government surveillance functions migrated into private technology companies like social media outlets.
On questions about the Orthodox community, Siegel said local institutions such as synagogues and walking-distance communal life may provide some insulation by preserving face-to-face ties and shared values. He also discussed Israel and the 鈥渋nformation war,鈥 cautioning that online attention can turn conflicts into successive global causes. He argued that Israel must consider 鈥渢he trade-offs between engaging in a global battle for public opinion and the near-term existential imperatives of contesting physical enemies on the ground.鈥 More broadly, he urged students to build context and values outside the internet, since online systems deliver information faster and at a greater scale than people can thoughtfully absorb.
Responding to questions about AI, data centers, and ownership, Siegel attributed AI鈥檚 persuasive abilities chiefly to computational speed and scale, not a sudden mathematical breakthrough. Because people cannot match the speed or volume of digital systems, he recommended strong offline institutions that teach people how to interpret information. He viewed protests against AI infrastructure as understandable but unlikely to change outcomes without a durable political plan. He raised questions about how much data society needs, whether data centers might serve public purposes, and whether individuals whose posts train commercial AI should receive property rights or compensation.
Siegel ended his session with a bit of practical advice: 鈥淭ake in less information, read less news, concern yourself less with the affairs of the global news environment that don't really concern you, and then I think you'll find your perspective sharpening as a result.鈥
