Cambridge Analytica and the art of weaponizing data and the story of manipulating people's fears to win elections and control them. The torrent of information related to CA that's been published over the past days is amazing and frightening, although it turns out this stories has a very long history. Any liberal progressive type who wants to influence the upcoming election needs to learn about the details.
There's a lot at stake folks. If you're fearful for America's future and opposed to the trump team and the Koch Klan of oligarchs with their plans for Our American government (That would be to reduce government to the size where they can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub. Their words, not mine, look it up.) Following this interesting video and some quotes from it, I share links to a number of articles from 2016 and 2017 that tell different aspect of this important story, more to follow as time allows:
There's a lot at stake folks. If you're fearful for America's future and opposed to the trump team and the Koch Klan of oligarchs with their plans for Our American government (That would be to reduce government to the size where they can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub. Their words, not mine, look it up.) Following this interesting video and some quotes from it, I share links to a number of articles from 2016 and 2017 that tell different aspect of this important story, more to follow as time allows:
Did Cambridge Analytica play a role in the EU referendum? BBC Newsnight - Jul 13, 2017
The great British Brexit robbery: how our democracy was hijacked. Carole Cadwalladr | May 9, 2017
MI6 Chief Alex Younger full speech, December 8, 2016 | Vauxhall Cross
Major Trump donor Robert Mercer to sell stake in far-right news site Breitbart David Smith | Nov 2, 2017
Ukip whistleblowers raised fears about Breitbart influence on Brexit. Kirchgaessner Hopkins | Oct 30, 2017
Will Brexit Masterminds Work for Trump? SHANE HARRIS, GIDEON RESNICK | 07.03.16
WILL DONALD TRUMP’S DATA-ANALYTICS COMPANY ALLOW RUSSIA TO ACCESS RESEARCH ON U.S. CITIZENS? By Ann Marlowe | August 22, 2016 | Tablet Magazine
MEET ROBERT MERCER, THE MYSTERIOUS BILLIONAIRE BENEFACTOR OF BREITBART
BY MAX KUTNER ON 11/21/16
What Does the Billionaire Family Backing Donald Trump Really Want? Rosie Gray JAN 27, 2017
A Special Relationship & the Birth of Cambridge Analytica. TEXTIFIRE | May 18, 2017
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Cambridge Analytica:
Whistleblower reveals data grab of 50 million Facebook profiles
Channel 4 News | Published on Mar 17, 2018
The British data firm described as “pivotal” in Donald Trump’s presidential victory was behind a ‘data grab’ of more than 50 million Facebook profiles, a whistleblower has revealed to Channel 4 News. In an exclusive television interview, Chris Wylie, former Research Director at Cambridge Analytica tells all.
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1:00 - Chris Wylie, former Research Director at Cambridge Analytica
2:00 - 2013 Cambridge, psychometrics research
2:20 - Chris Wylie explains how it works.
On social media you curate yourself …
3:15 - SCL and then Steve Bannon
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3:30-
Reporter: “What did Steve Bannon want?”
Chris Wylie: “Steve wanted weapons for his culture work that's what he wanted and that’s what we offered him, a way to accomplish what he wanted to do which was which was changed the culture of America.”
Bannon's big idea says Wiley was this - could they replicate the academics work profiling people's personalities on Facebook on a massive scale across the American electorate they had the money from billionaire Republican backer Robert Mercer and his daughter Rebecca. (now Bannon’s gone international )
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10:35
Reporter: “By the time Cambridge Analytica had been hired by the Trump campaign they had profiles from numerous datasets on more than 230 million Americans, or so Cambridge Analytica boasted”
Cambridge Analytica’s Alexander Nix: “This is real data from the Republican primary”
Reporter: Enabling them, as their boss Alexander Nix, showed Channel four News two years ago, to micro-target different personality types with bespoke emotionally resonant messages
CA’s Nix: “Someone who's neurotic is someone who's quite emotional and might respond in this case to a stimulus of fear.”
Reporter: “From stimulating US Republican campaigns to elections in Africa Asia and beyond, Cambridge Analytica are now the big data strategists with the big name.
Some allege however, with little time for ethics.
Among their number now the former insider who claims there's a dangerous alchemy to Cambridge Analytica's art”
Chris Wylie: “There is a lack of awareness it is coercive people.
If I am studying you and I have enough information about you
because you've curated your entire self online, and I capture that.
I can anticipate what are your mental vulnerabilities what cognitive biases
might you display in certain situations and I can exploit that."
might you display in certain situations and I can exploit that."
Reporter: “Wait, are you saying that Cambridge analytical lies in its political
messaging because that's something they would completely deny?”
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12:15
Chris Wylie: “They knowingly misrepresent the truth in such a way that is conducive to their objective.”
Reporter: “What's your proof for that?”
Chris Wylie: “I was there. We worked on we worked on all kinds of experiments about what would what would lead a person from A to B”
Reporter: “But if you're working on behalf of a political client you're allowed to try and persuade voters?”
Chris Wylie: “Persuade, not manipulate!
Persuade, not manipulate, there's a difference.”
Reporter: “But I ask you what the evidence for manipulation as opposed to trying to persuade?”
Chris Wylie: “This gets at the heart of, why is it that you're taking this psychological approach. Why do you need to you know study neuroticism in people, what's going to make them fearful? I was there, I set it up, I was the research director, like this is what it is.”
Reporter: “Some people might say it's rank hypocrisy for you to sort of try and claim the moral high ground now but at the time when you were involved you were instrumental in all of this.”
Chris Wylie: “Totally you yes I want.”
Reporter: “Yet you allowed it to continue in fact you were you were at the heart of it.”
Chris Wylie: “I was, I was instrumental I was at the heart of it. I agree with you. But I was naive I made a mistake I made a big mistake and that's why I'm talking to you because the very least that I can do is to own up to that mistake."
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Did Cambridge Analytica play a role in the EU referendum?
BBC Newsnight - Jul 13, 2017
The great British Brexit robbery: how our democracy was hijacked
Carole Cadwalladr | May 9, 2017
This article is the subject of legal complaints on behalf of Cambridge Analytica LLC and SCL Elections Limited.
“The connectivity that is the heart of globalisation can be exploited by states with hostile intent to further their aims.
[…] The risks at stake are profound and represent a fundamental threat to our sovereignty.”
Alex Younger, head of MI6, December, 2016
MI6 Chief Alex Younger full speech,
“REMARKS BY THE CHIEF OF THE SECRET INTELLIGENCE SERVICE”
December 8, 2016 | Vauxhall Cross
“It’s not MI6’s job to warn of internal threats. It was a very strange speech. Was it one branch of the intelligence services sending a shot across the bows of another? Or was it pointed at Theresa May’s government? Does she know something she’s not telling us?”
Senior intelligence analyst, April 2017
In January 2013, a young American postgraduate was passing through London when she was called up by the boss of a firm where she’d previously interned. The company, SCL (Strategic Communication Laboratories) Elections, went on to be bought by Robert Mercer, a secretive hedge fund billionaire, renamed Cambridge Analytica, and achieved a certain notoriety as the data analytics firm that played a role in both Trump and Brexit campaigns. But all of this was still to come. London in 2013 was still basking in the afterglow of the Olympics. Britain had not yet Brexited. The world had not yet turned. …
Follow the data: does a legal document link Brexit campaigns to US billionaire?
Read more
“That was before we became this dark, dystopian data company that gave the world Trump,” a former Cambridge Analytica employee who I’ll call Paul tells me. “It was back when we were still just a psychological warfare firm.”
Was that really what you called it, I ask him. Psychological warfare? “Totally. That’s what it is. Psyops. Psychological operations – the same methods the military use to effect mass sentiment change. It’s what they mean by winning ‘hearts and minds’. We were just doing it to win elections in the kind of developing countries that don’t have many rules.” …
7:45 - Alexander Nix assures us, Cambridge Analytica’s military division is separate from its political division, there’s a firewall. Delusional claim, knowledge flows back and forth, particularly when winning is all that matters.
Alexander Nix, (gotta love Al’s chutzpah, listen to this) Military and political units are governed by separate BODs, they have their own security clearances, “so the only commonality between them would be some key personal and possibly some shareholders.” Key Personal? Perhaps some key share holders? Lets look at that:
Major Trump donor Robert Mercer to sell stake in far-right news site Breitbart
David Smith in Washington
Nov 2, 2017 12.23 EDT Last modified on Fri 9 Feb 2018 13.36 EST
Major Trump donor Robert Mercer to sell stake in far-right news site Breitbart
… Mercer was a leading financial backer of Cambridge Analytica, a data mining company that worked with the Trump campaign. The WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said last month that Cambridge Analytica had approached it during the election but did not give further details. …
Trump was a guest last December at Mercer’s annual holiday costume party at Owl’s Nest, his Long Island estate. The president’s adviser Kellyanne Conway tweeted a picture: “Honoring the ultimate hero at the Mercer ‘Heroes and Villains’ party on Long Island. …
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Oh and there’s this:
Revealed: Ukip whistleblowers raised fears about Breitbart influence on Brexit
Sources tell Guardian that senior ‘volunteers’ in Ukip before EU referendum were paid by the rightwing US website
Mon 30 Oct 2017 01.00 EDT
Last modified on Wed 14 Feb 2018 10.30 EST
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Will Brexit Masterminds Work for Trump?
Cambridge Analytica has made a name for itself playing off citizens' fears of immigration, and they might be joining the Trump campaign.
SHANE HARRIS, GIDEON RESNICK | 07.03.16 12:15 AM ET
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WILL DONALD TRUMP’S DATA-ANALYTICS COMPANY ALLOW RUSSIA TO ACCESS RESEARCH ON U.S. CITIZENS?
Tracing the suspicious-looking, and messy, ties between a Ukrainian oligarch, an elections-information firm, and the GOP candidate’s former campaign manager
By Ann Marlowe | August 22, 2016 | Tablet Magazine
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MEET ROBERT MERCER, THE MYSTERIOUS BILLIONAIRE BENEFACTOR OF BREITBART
BY MAX KUTNER ON 11/21/16
… Yet by giving millions to a conservative super PAC, Make America Number 1, which his daughter Rebekah chaired, Mercer seems to have bought more influence over Trump’s campaign than any other donor. Rebekah also has ties to Stephen Bannon, the controversial Breitbart News Network executive chairman who was recently named the new administration’s chief strategist and senior counselor, records show. A campaign ethics watchdog and a political group are now calling on the Federal Election Commission (FEC) and the FBI to investigate those connections because they believe the entanglements between the Mercers, the super PAC and the Trump campaign are illegal. …
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What Does the Billionaire Family Backing Donald Trump Really Want?
The Mercers are enjoying more influence than ever with their candidate in the White House—but no one seems to know how they intend to use it.
Rosie Gray JAN 27, 2017 | The Atlantic
She owns a cookie store. He loves model trains. They both hate the Clintons. And beyond that, not much is clear about the motivations of the Mercer father-daughter duo of Republican megadonors who have become two of the most powerful people in the country over the last 18 months.
Hedge-fund billionaire Robert Mercer and his daughter Rebekah were among the earliest and strongest backers of Donald Trump while other elite donors still disdained him. It turned out to be a good investment.
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high frequency trading (HFT)
A Special Relationship & the Birth of Cambridge Analytica
Bridging the Atlantic to bring radical nativists of Trump & Brexit together via military tech & ad money, one donation or dataset at a time.
TEXTIFIRE - we out here | May 18, 2017
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