The Rise and Fall of the Artificial State ultimately asks the question, "How did we cede control of our democracy to the machines, and can we get it back?" according to the Harvard's Arts and Sciences site, FAS Current:

The new title finds Lepore, who used to teach a course at the College titled "The Rise and Fall of the Machine," charting the ascent of what she calls the artificial state: the digital communication infrastructure by which governments and private corporations automate and ultimately control public discourse. Following her Pulitzer Prize win for "We the People: A History of the U.S. Constitution" (2025), "I wanted to think about whether liberal constitutional democracies can ...