A Historian Says Silicon Valley Is Writing Fake Constitutions. She Has a Book to Prove It.
Jill Lepore's forthcoming book, first noted by TechCrunch AI, argues that tech companies borrow the language of government founding documents to dress up product launches, and she thinks that tells us something uncomfortable about who really holds power.
Key points - Historian Jill Lepore has a new book, The Rise and Fall of the Artificial State, examining how tech companies use government-style language to describe their products. - Lepore connects platforms like Twitter, which once called itself "a town hall in your pocket", to AI lab documents like Anthropic's Claude character document. - The argument is that this language signals tech companies see themselves as something closer to sovereign powers than to ordinary businesses. - The book has not yet been published; no release date is confirmed in available sources.
Jill Lepore keeps returning to a single observation: tech companies talk about their products the way the American founders talked about building a nation.
Lepore, a Harvard historian, addresses that observation in her forthcoming book, The Rise and Fall of the Artificial State, first noted by TechCrunch AI. The title borrows a political science term: an "artificial state" is one whose borders and rules were drawn by outside powers rather than by the people living inside them. Lepore turns that term on Silicon Valley.
Two weeks ago we reported on Gil Durán's argument that big tech's richest owners have stopped being innovators and started acting like rulers; Lepore is making a related but distinct case, focused on language rather than money.
What is she actually arguing?
Tech companies, Lepore says, dress up product decisions in constitutional clothing, and that habit reveals an unsettling ambition.
The examples are easy to spot once you look. Twitter's old marketing described the platform as "a town hall in your pocket", framing a private service as a public institution belonging to everyone. Anthropic, the AI safety company behind the Claude family of assistants, publishes a character document for Claude, a written set of principles meant to guide how the AI behaves, borrowing heavily from the genre of founding charters.
Lepore's point is not that these companies are lying. It's that the language does real work. When a company frames its terms of service as a constitution, or its content rules as a bill of rights, it quietly claims the moral authority that real governments earn through elections and accountability.
A sub-argument involves science fiction. Tech founders read a lot of it, Lepore suggests, but tend to read it badly. They absorb the triumphant parts, the inventor who builds a new world, and skip the cautionary ones, the world that pushes back.
Why does this matter for ordinary people?
For anyone governed by a "community standards" document on a social platform or a chatbot, Lepore's argument is worth sitting with.
Those documents look like civic guarantees. In practice they're contracts written by a private company, changeable at any time, with no vote required. Understanding that gap isn't a reason to panic, but it is a reason to read the terms more sceptically.
The book hasn't been published yet, so its full evidence and conclusions aren't available for review. What the available material suggests is a political and cultural argument rather than a legal or technical one.
Common questions
What is Anthropic's Claude character document?
It is a written document published by Anthropic that sets out the values and personality its Claude AI assistant is designed to follow. Anthropic treats it as a guiding charter for the model's behaviour.
Is Lepore saying AI companies are breaking any laws?
The argument is cultural and political: that borrowing government language gives private companies an unearned legitimacy. No legal wrongdoing is alleged.
When does the book come out?
No confirmed publication date is available from current sources.
