The more we learn, the more the dots connect, as more facts emerge or take on new significance in the saga of the Trump campaign and their relationships with both Facebook and Cambridge Analytica. And what is becoming ever more clear is how closely linked the Trump Campaign, Facebook and Cambridge Analytica were during the 2016 presidential campaign.
In a 60 Minutes Interview with Trump Campaign Digital Director Brad Parscale after the 2016 election, Parscale proudly noted that Facebook had had skilled advertising experts embedded at his San Antonio headquarters, obviously to help guide the effort to locate just the kinds of Facebook users it wanted to get to, among other things:
People who hated Hillary to reinforce that hatred,
people who could be convinced that Dems gave Bernie Sanders a raw deal,
African Americans and minorities in efforts to convince them to either not vote or vote for a third party candidate like Jill Stein.
And Parscale was happy to credit Facebook experts with making that possible:
Fleshed out, Parscale is the man behind the Trump campaign’s digital media efforts in 2016. He was hired to create a website for $1,500 (as he explained in that “60 Minutes” interview) and then his role expanded until he was managing tens of millions of dollars intended to promote the presidential candidate online.
The point of the interview was, in part, to serve as a profile of Parscale but, more broadly, to explain the primary way in which those millions were spent. Per Parscale’s accounting, that was largely on Facebook advertising. Trump’s team advertised on other platforms, too, but “Facebook was the 500-pound gorilla, 80 percent of the budget kind of thing,” Parscale said.
He also revealed that Facebook even sent staff — whose political persuasion had been cleared by the company — to aid in that effort, to help Parscale “know every, single secret button, click, technology [they] have,” as he said in the interview. The campaign poured money into Facebook, sending thousands of versions of tweaked ads to maximize response. Then it won the presidency by a margin narrow enough that Parscale (and Facebook) can justifiably take credit.
But Facebook alone had one set of information vital to the Trump effort…..how to reach voters most susceptible to being persuaded, manipulated, convnced to take those key actions.
The other partner in the trio, it is now very clear, was Cambridge Analytica. And what did they offer? How to identify Facebook users who were most likely to take such actions if presented with carefully crafted information.
Step One: Cambridge Analytica….tell me who we need to reach.
Step Two: Facebook...show me how best to reach them.
Rinse later repeat.
And let us remember the players in all of this:
Steve Bannon: VP and Secretary of the Cambridge Analytica board until he stepped down to run the Trump campaign in 2016.
Robert Mercer: The main financial backer for Cambridge Analytica, not only during the Trump campaign, but well before when CA played a role in the surprise Brexit campaign victory for proponents of a British withdrawal from the European Union.
Mercer and Bannon and suddenly Bannon leaves CA and goes to work for the Trump campaign.
UPDATE: Today I learned something else of real interest. Another member of the Cambridge Analytica Board, at least for a time was….Michael Flynn. More dots, more connections.
And further note that when Bannon comes to the Trump campaign team as manager, he immediately brings with him...Cambridge Analytica….the company he helped launch, funded by the Mercers, and one he had been involved with for at least a couple of years. He sends CA senior staff to San Antonio to work with Parscale.
During his time with CA, Bannon had to know that CA was working with Aleksander Kogan (see below) and that much of his company’s ability to potentially manipulate voters was based on tools developed using data from Facebook users Kogan may have hidden from his UK academic colleagues just what he was doing with the data he had gotten from Facebook, but you have to think that Bannon would know exactly what he was doing. It was the basis for the company, and it seems likely Bannon know of Kogan’s ties in Russia….not just to academia, but to organizations like Lukoil, the ostensible Russian oil company with direct links to Putin.
Whistleblower Christopher Wylie knew that was going on and was disturbed by it. And that certainly means that Bannon knew it and was pleased as punch that Facebook user data could be weaponized by CA….which was why he formed the company in the first place and why he asked Wylie to help him do it and why when he went to the Trump campaign (at the urging of the Mercers) one key tool he took with him was his company CA.
CONTINUING: I have long argued that the Brexit campaign was, in effect, a dry run for the Trump election campaign. It helped CA show what its systems and algorithms could do and helped them refine those tools for increased impact in 2016, not only with advertising, but in targeting potential donors (a process that generated tens of millions of dollars in donations to the Trump campaign.)
Since Christopher Wylie’s revelations about how Cambridge Analytica collected the Facebook user data and conducted the surveys that further refined the effectiveness of that data and its altogithms, Facebook has tried to claim that CA took its user data without its permission.
However, even if you accept that claim as true at the time, how do you explain how both firms were working hand in glove in 2016 on Trump’s behalf without anyone at Facebook saying, “What is CA doing here? What is their role? And how did they develop the tools that appear to be behind Parscale’s desire to reach this particular set of our customers?” Nobody appears to have been concerned. Obviously that raises at least the possibility that Facebook knew exactly what CA was up to and that its staff “whose political persuasion had been cleared by the company” were more than eager to work together with CA to, as Mark Turnbull, another senior figure at Cambridge Analytica was quoted: “
...create "proxy organizations" to feed negative material about opposition candidates onto the internet and social media. Turnball said "charities or activist groups" were useful for such a purpose. The unflattering material could be spread through the internet, but without branding or other identifiers that could be traced back Cambridge Analytica.
Note too that Mr. Nix, the CEO of CA was in direct contact with Julian Assange and Wikileaks during the campaign, a connection that raises questions about further links between Wikileaks, Assange and the Russians who hacked the Democratic e-mails then circulated via WikiLeaks. And we have evidence that Roger Stone was also directly in touch with Assange and appears to have had advance knowledge of what was going to be released and when.
And let us not forget the Russian connections to CA via Aleksander Kogan:
Kogan's company provided data on millions of Americans to Cambridge Analytica beginning in 2014. The data was gathered through a personality test Facebook application built by Kogan. When Facebook users took the test they gave Kogan access to their data, including demographic information about them like names, locations, ages and genders, as well as their page "likes," and some of their Facebook friends' data.
Facebook says that Kogan told them he was gathering the data for academic purposes and that by providing the data to Cambridge Analytica he had breached Facebook policy. On Friday, Facebook suspended both Kogan and Cambridge Analytica from its platform. The suspension came ahead of reporting in The New York Times and The Observer in London on Saturday that alleged Cambridge Analytica may not have deleted the data when it was asked to do so by Facebook in 2015 — a claim Cambridge Analytica denies.
Kogan conducted his surveys on FB in 2014 and fed the data to CA. FB says he claimed he was doing so for academic purposes. They have now suspended him and CA from their platform.
But again the key question…..how did FB AND CA work together for months in San Antonio for the Trump campaign and FB never questioned CA’s role or its product and how it was developed and what it was based on?
Remember….Parscale and the Trump team had screened these embedded staff for their political loyalty to Trump...both CA and FB. So all three parties were made up of Trump zealots committed to his cause and apparently with no qualms about what they were doing.
Let us hope that Robert Mueller’s investigations (and similarly, those of the British government which has obtained warrants to search CA offices and files) will be able to capture the communications taking place between all three parties before and during the campaign.