The Rise and Fall of the Artificial State (w/ Jill Lepore) | TCHR

In this video, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Chris Hedges interviews historian Jill Lepore about her book “The Machine State: The Rise and Fall of Artificial Government” and the question of how artificial intelligence could reshape our political and social institutions.

Together, they examine the historical roots of technocracy, the growing power of Silicon Valley, and the increasing transfer of human decision-making to machines. The discussion goes far beyond the technical capabilities of AI: What role remains for human beings in an increasingly automated society — and what happens to democracy, freedom and political self-determination when more and more decisions are made by systems no one elected?

This video was produced by The Chris Hedges Report and published on their YouTube channel on the 8th of October, 2026. We have translated it into German and are republishing it today to help build opinion on this issue in Germany and beyond.

To read the transcript of this video: The Rise and Fall of the Artificial State (w/ Jill Lepore) | TCHR

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ABOUT JILL LEPORE

Jill Lepore ist eine US-amerikanische Historikerin, Autorin und Journalistin, die als David-Woods-Kemper-’41-Professorin für amerikanische Geschichte an der Harvard University sowie als Professorin für Rechtswissenschaften an der Harvard Law School tätig ist. Sie ist außerdem Redakteurin bei The New Yorker und Autorin zahlreicher Bücher über amerikanische Geschichte und Politik, darunter Diese Wahrheiten: Eine Geschichte der Vereinigten Staaten von Amerika, We the People: Eine Geschichte der amerikanischen Verfassung und Die Regierung der Maschinen: Aufstieg und Fall des Künstlichen Staates.

Thumbnail: Jill Lepore auf der Frankfurter Buchmesse 2026 – Foto: Elena Ternovaja, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/), bearbeitet.