Christopher Wylie told the Senate Judiciary Committee about Steve Bannon’s use of Cambridge Analytica to suppress Democratic votes in a plan one can only describe as diabolical.
The key points of Wylie’s Wednesday testimony were sent to PoliticusUSA. Wylie’s testimony reveals the details of Bannon’s objective of making Cambridge Analytica a “full service propaganda machine”. Clearly, Bannon saw that as the ideal way to help Donald Trump win the 2016 election.
According to Wylie, Bannon clearly stated in writing and verbally that one of his objectives was to suppress votes by Democrats.
“Q: Did Steve Bannon ever specifically direct the research of, or say that he wanted to do research that would help with, voter disenfranchisement or depressing Democratic turnout?
A: There is one document which I have that specifically says—in bold terms—voter disengagement as an objective in the United States.
Q: Did you ever hear Steve Bannon specifically talk about voter disenfranchisement or voter disengagement?
A: Yes. If by that term you mean discouraging particular types of voters who are more prone to voting for Democratic or liberal candidates, if that’s what you mean by that term, then yes.”To get more stories like this, subscribe to our newsletter The Daily.
Wylie’s testimony reveals the details of activities designed to meet that objective.
1. Bannon directed CA to test market messages which were later used by the Trump campaign.
Wylie testified,
“Some of the things that emerged from that were—my understanding was that “Drain the Swamp,” like, verbatim was tested, and used in some of the message testing. Walls were discussed in the qualitative section. There are two research streams, the quantitative stream and the qualitative stream, and qualitative stream is where many of the ideas or hypotheses got generated. People would just talk about immigration and think of it quite literally as somebody just walking across the border and someone might just build the wall. That would come up. So, the themes that emerged sounded very familiar.”
2. Bannon instructed employees to develop a psychological profile of American voters, using data stolen from Facebook. The purpose was to target messaging at people who would be most susceptible to election disengagement messaging. He described Cambridge Analytica’s services as a “full service propaganda machine”
“Cambridge Analytica was set up to be essentially a full service propaganda machine. So from beginning to end, in the sense of acquiring data, to creating algorithms that profile people’s psychological disposition and also predict things they will respond to, to then crafting and curating content, so messaging, that then targets those particular constructs. And then disseminating that information, predominantly using digital means to the target groups that it is identifying.”
Wylie also told the Committee about a directive for CA to test market images and messages pertaining to Russia and Vladimir Putin.
“I’m not sure who authorized this, because this wasn’t part of the direct group I was managing—but one of the things I had access to is testing that the company was doing specifically on Vladimir Putin and Russia and Russian expansion in Eastern Europe. It was the only foreign issue, or foreign leader, I should say, being tested at the time I was there. I can’t explain why it was that they picked Vladimir Putin to talk about in focus groups or to do message testing or to do models on, and why that would be useful to Steve Bannon. But what I can say is that they were also testing images of Vladimir Putin and asking questions about Russian expansion in Eastern Europe.”
When Wylie described CA as a full service propaganda machine, it wasn’t an exaggeration, as reflected in his remarks about building psychological profiles based on stolen data and targeting the message at people most susceptible to the message’s content – content which doesn’t have to be true, just believed to be true.
Bannon’s views about spreading false information reflect the character of a man, who like Trump, believes ethics, morality and honesty are secondary to victory in a “culture war.”
“Q: Earlier, you said that Alexander Nix said that the information that they were spreading in these ads didn’t have to be true—folks just had to believe it was true. Did Steve Bannon ever articulate that sentiment to you?
A: Yes.
Q: When?
A: I can’t recall a specific date of a conversation, but he made it quite clear to me that his—so, when you think about the idea of a culture war, and he uses that term pointedly. So, war is battle, and therefore, it is about winning. And that speaks volumes to Mr. Bannon’s character—that he goes and seeks out a foreign military contractor to help build tools for that war.”
The Cambridge Analytica connection to Trump’s campaign reveals a disturbing plan to brainwash American voters based on data stolen from their Facebook profiles.However, Wylie’s testimony helps us understand how far Bannon and Cambridge Analytica were willing to go to hand Trump the presidency.
Aside from Bannon’s diabolical plan to brainwash Americans, Wylie told the committee that Cambridge Analytica relied completely on foreign workers and contractors employed by a UK Company, SCL Elections – in direct violation of US election law.
“Something that’s really important, I think, for people to understand is that Cambridge Analytica doesn’t have staff, or at least at the time that I was there, never had staff. All of the consultants, employees, any kind of worker that was involved with Cambridge Analytica was actually paid—your pay stub would be from SCL, not Cambridge Analytica. Having looked at legal correspondence, for example, between The Guardian and Cambridge Analytica, they have said as recently as several months ago that they have no staff. So it is, for all intents and purposes, more of a concept than anything else. Everything happens in London, at SCL Group.”
This helps us understand how Russia would know who to target with fake news. As importantly, the content of Russian fake news coincides with Bannon’s criteria of disengaging Democratic voters, spreading propaganda that doesn’t have to be true in the name of being believable and spreading it to people most susceptible to that sort of messaging.
Wylie’s testimony tells of a diabolical plan designed to hand Donald Trump a victory by using stolen data to build a profile of voters most vulnerable to “messaging” that need not be true, as long as they believe it.
This helps explain how Russia knew who to target with fake news to benefit Donald Trump. Moreover, the content of “messaging” originating from Russia is strikingly similar to Bannon’s objectives and content.
Wylie’s testimony does not connect the dots between Cambridge Analytica and Vladimir Putin’s pro-Trump propaganda campaign. However, it provides a basis to investigate if this data was shared with Russia and by whom. If Trump isn’t afraid, he should be. Not only does Wylie’s testimony raise questions about the legitimacy of Trump’s election victory, it provides additional insight into motives Trump would have to conspire with Russia.
Former contributor.
