Jill Lepore on the ‘Artificial State’ and why Silicon Valley’s leaders are bad sci-fi readers

We have a language problem in tech. If you listen to the way founders talk about their projects lately, they sound less like product managers and more like aspiring heads of state. We aren't just building apps anymore; we are building 'ecosystems,' 'constitutions,' and 'digital town squares.' It sounds grand, but according to historian Jill Lepore, it is actually a sign of a massive intellectual failure in Silicon Valley.

The Illusion of the Artificial State

Lepore has been digging into a concept she calls the Artificial State. The premise is simple but damning: tech leaders are trying to replace the traditional functions of government with software, but they are doing it without any of the accountability or historical context that makes a government actually work. They are effectively treating the messy business of human society as a series of bugs that can be patched with code.

For those of us building in crypto and AI, this hits close to home. We talk about decentralization as if it is a moral imperative, but often, it is just a way to sidestep the friction of existing legal frameworks. When Anthropic talks about a 'constitution' for its AI, or when Twitter claimed to be a global town square, they weren't just using metaphors. They were signaling an intent to govern behavior outside the bounds of the nation-state.

Bad Readers of Science Fiction

One of Lepore’s sharpest critiques is that the people leading these companies are terrible readers of science fiction. They grew up on stories about the future, but they seem to have missed the point. Most sci-fi is cautionary. It is a warning about what happens when technology outpaces our ability to remain human. Yet, the current crop of founders treats these stories like instruction manuals or blueprints.

Think about the term 'Metaverse.' In the book Snow Crash, where the term originated, it wasn't a utopian playground. It was a bleak, corporate-controlled escape from a collapsed society. When a CEO stands on stage and says they want to build the Metaverse, they are essentially saying they want to build the dystopia we were warned about. They took the cool tech and left the warning on the shelf.

The Founder’s Ego and the Missing History

We see this lack of historical awareness everywhere. There is a specific kind of founder hubris that assumes the world started in 2008 with the iPhone or the Bitcoin whitepaper. They believe that because they have discovered a new way to move data, they have discovered a new way for humans to relate to one another. But human nature doesn't change as fast as your tech stack.

When you try to build a 'state' without understanding history, you end up repeating every mistake that previous civilizations already solved. You run into issues of censorship, power consolidation, and inequity. The difference is that a government, at least in a democracy, has mechanisms for the people to push back. A private platform has a Terms of Service agreement and an EULA. That isn't governance; that's a lease.

What This Means for Builders

If you are building a protocol or an AI model, you need to be careful about the 'god complex.' It is tempting to think your tool is going to save the world, but your tool is just a tool. It exists within a pre-existing social contract that you didn't write and you can't easily replace.

• Stop using political metaphors for software. A codebase is not a constitution. A Discord server is not a town hall. Using this language sets expectations you can't meet and invites regulatory scrutiny you don't want.
• Study the 'why' before the 'how.' If you are building something that affects how people communicate or transact, look at how we did it 100 years ago. The tech has changed, but the incentives haven't.
• Acknowledge the friction. Good governance is slow. It involves compromise and debate. If your tech is designed to 'move fast and break things,' it is by definition bad at governing.

The Decentralization Trap

In the crypto space, we love to talk about how we are 'replacing' banks and governments. But Lepore’s work reminds us that when you remove the centralized authority, power doesn't just evaporate. It moves. Usually, it moves to the people who wrote the code or the people who own the most tokens. We aren't creating a more equal state; we are creating a more opaque one.

This 'Artificial State' is built on the idea that math is more neutral than humans. It isn't. Math is applied by humans, and code is written by people with biases, blind spots, and bank accounts. When we hide our governance behind an algorithm, we aren't being more fair; we are just making it harder for people to see who is actually in charge.

The Takeaway

Building great technology is hard enough. We don't need to pretend we are building new civilizations. The most successful founders of the next decade won't be the ones trying to play God or President. They will be the ones who understand that technology is a layer that sits on top of society, not a replacement for it. If we keep reading sci-fi as a roadmap instead of a warning, we shouldn't be surprised when the world starts looking like a dystopia.

The goal shouldn't be to build an artificial state, but to build tools that make the real world a little more functional for the people living in it.

We need to get back to basics. Solve a problem, fix a workflow, or create a new way to share value. Leave the nation-building to the historians and the voters. We have enough bugs to fix in our own code before we start trying to rewrite the social contract.

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