Cambridge Analytica



This was a criminal enterprise which clearly wanted to subvert the will of the people — through manipulation, through propaganda. There must be criminal culpability. In Hacking The Electorate, I laid out the rationale (with data) about the severe limits of microtargeting in campaigns. Post 2016/ Post Cambridge Analytica update: No update required. Every claim about psychographics etc made by or about the firm is BS. Cambridge Analytica (CA) is a UK data-mining company that attempts to use "psychographics" to sway voters based on analysis of big data, social media, and pushing propaganda back at the potential voters via "microtargeting". Basically, CA evolved to convince people to vote against their own self-interest in support of ultra-conservative causes. It was founded by and Steve Bannon in 2013. Cambridge Analytica was influential both in the 2016 Brexit referendum and in supporting Trump during the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

CA is also associated with Frontier Services Group (whose CEO is Erik Prince ), which provides security to Chinese businesses in Africa.

CA supported Ted Cruz's and Ben Carson's 2016 presidential campaigns simultaneously (a conflict of interest) and Thom Tillis's North Carolina Senate campaign. It has also supported "Make America Number 1" PAC and the "John Bolton PAC". CA has also claimed involvement with over 200 elections in several countries, including Argentina, Colombia, Czechia, India, Indonesia, Italy, Kenya, Malaysia, Nigeria, South Africa, St. Kitts & Nevis, Thailand, and Trinidad and Tobago.

Efficacy
Steve Bannon's psychological warfare mindfuck tool I think Cambridge Analytica is a better marketing company than a targeting company. He’s an adman bigging up his data-science firm. There are lots of them. The actual efficacy of CA's product is somewhat unclear due to company secrecy, but the underlying method of psychographics to microtarget voters has been roundly criticized by political scientists as being ineffective. One potential and several former clients have criticized CA's product as being not worth the cost.

A meta-analysis of the effect of US political campaigns found that "the best estimate of the effects of campaign contact and advertising on Americans’ candidates choices in general elections is zero." A study of the influence of Facebook on 2010 US Congressional elections, conducted in conjunction with Facebook, found that social messages significantly influenced voter turnout, and "the messages not only influenced the users who received them but also the users' friends, and friends of friends". A similar study on the 2012 Presidential Election found less clear evidence of increased turnout, consistent with people having stronger preconceived opinions being less easily swayed. Even though turnout certainly could affect the result in a close election, this research does not match the use of personalised, targetted messages by Cambridge Analytica.

Psychographics and microtargeting might be effective for marketing products, but are unlikely to be effective for swaying voters. This is because of both the problems inherent in personality tests such as those used in psychographics, and the ineffectiveness of microtargeting for political purposes.

Corey Lewandowski, one of Trump's 2016 campaign managers, rejected CA's proposals three times, and members of both the Cruz and Carson campaigns said that CA's work was not worth the cost. On the other hand, Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, bragged about the value of the $5.9 million that they paid to CA.

Crime
In 2018, CA was alleged to have committed illegal acts before and during the 2016 Presidential election campaign, including with Facebook data. The old-school allegations of illegal acts include bribes and use of prostitutes to entrap politicians. CA's CEO, Alexander Nix, was suspended shortly after the release of Channel 4's secret recording of his interviews during a sting operation. Ironically, Nix was secretly recorded by Channel 4 admitting that CA secretly recorded entrapping politicians committing illegal acts (bribery and prostitution).

In 2014, CA was advised not to use employees who were neither US citizens nor permanent residents of the US on US election campaigns in any capacity because it would be a violation of several laws. Despite this warning, at least three former CA staff members revealed that only foreign nationals were embedded into US election campaigns. If shown to be true, that would also mean that whoever supervised the embedded employees would have also committed crimes, regardless of the supervisors' nationalities (e.g., potentially Bannon and Nix). Special counsel Robert Mueller requested that CA turn over documents relating to its work with the Trump campaign in 2017, indicating that non-US CA employees might be under investigation for breaking election law.

Goodbye, hello
In May 2018, following news of the scandal and loss of revenue, CA declared bankruptcy and began employee layoffs. Following the shutdown of CA, many of the same principals (e.g., two of the Mercers) are running a company called Emerdata in the same building that housed CA.