{"podcast":{"title":"Hidden Forces","slug":"hidden-forces-203667","podcast_index_feed_id":203667,"rss_url":"https://hiddenforces.libsyn.com/rss","website_url":"https://www.hiddenforces.io","image_url":"https://static.libsyn.com/p/assets/5/3/8/c/538c7b5356701516e5bbc093207a2619/New_HF_Logo.jpeg","author":"Demetri Kofinas","episode_count":509,"summary":"Get the edge with Hidden Forces where media entrepreneur and financial analyst Demetri Kofinas gives you access to the people and ideas that matter, so you can build financial security and always stay ahead of the curve.","last_synced_at":"2026-06-28T12:20:10.482078+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/hidden-forces-203667"},"episode":{"title":"The Information State: Politics in the Age of Total Control | Jacob Siegel","slug":"the-information-state-politics-in-the-age-of-total-control-jacob-siegel","published_at":"2026-03-23T07:00:00+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/hidden-forces-203667/the-information-state-politics-in-the-age-of-total-control-jacob-siegel","show_page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/hidden-forces-203667","url":"https://hiddenforces.io/podcasts/information-state-politics-in-the-age-of-total-control-jacob-siegel","audio_url":"https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/traffic.libsyn.com/secure/hiddenforces/Ep.470_Jacob_Siegel_Main_Feed_3-23-26.mp3?dest-id=457899","summary":"In Episode 470 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with Jacob Siegel — writer and editor at Tablet Magazine, U.S. Army veteran, and author of The Information State: Politics in the Age of Total Control — about the intellectual and historical roots of his argument that the internet has given rise to a fundamentally new form of political regime, one that governs not through force or democratic consent, but by controlling the codes and protocols of the digital public arena. The first hour traces the theoretical and historical foundations of Siegel's argument, from the media theory of Marshall McLuhan, Harold Innis, Neil Postman, and Jacques Ellul, to James Beniger's 1986 work The Control Revolution, to the 17th-century philosophy of Gottfried Leibniz and its downstream influence on the cybernetic frameworks that gave rise to the internet. They discuss the rise of digital swarms, the Anonymous movement, and what Siegel observed when he returned from Afghanistan in 2012 to find American culture being reshaped by the velocity and incoherence of online mass formation. The hour closes with an examination of his central thesis: that the internet — born out of Cold War Pentagon research and reconsolidated under government auspices after September 11th — has given rise to a third form of political regime he calls the information state. The second hour examines how the information state differs in kind from the analog propaganda systems of the 20th century, and why Siegel believes it is simultaneously more powerful and more brittle than what came before. They dig into the paradox at the heart of his argument — that the same informational infrastructure built to extend elite control also created the conditions for the digital insurgencies now convulsing Western politics — and…","meta_description":"In Episode 470 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with Jacob Siegel — writer and editor at Tablet Magazine, U.S. Army veteran, and author of The Inf…","key_points":[],"chapters":[],"topics":[],"duration_seconds":3960,"processing_state":"not_requested","actions":[{"name":"request_transcript","method":"POST","url":"https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/hidden-forces-203667/episodes/the-information-state-politics-in-the-age-of-total-control-jacob-siegel/transcription-requests","description":"Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode."},{"name":"read_markdown","method":"GET","url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/hidden-forces-203667/the-information-state-politics-in-the-age-of-total-control-jacob-siegel.md","description":"Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource."}]}}