—
Now this is interesting:
“Now Donald Trump is paying them $5,000,000 in September alone, in the hope that ‘profiling’ will take him all the way to the White House.” — CNN Reporter.
“Today in the United States, we have somewhere between 4 and 5,000 data points on every individual” — CA Chief Executive, Alexander Nix, London England.
Those are excerpts from this self-congratulatory video actually found on the Cambridge Analytica “About Us” web page:
Cambridge Analytica and US Election 2016
There is this “mission statement” of sorts, on that same CA “About Us” page too:
CA Political will equip you with the data and insights necessary to drive your voters to the polls and win your campaign. We offer a proven combination of predictive analytics, behavioral sciences, and data-driven ad tech.
With up to 5,000 data points on over 230 million American voters, we build your custom target audience, then use this crucial information to engage, persuade, and motivate them to act.
Our team of PhD data scientists, expert researchers, and seasoned political operatives have produced decisive results for campaigns and initiatives throughout the world. In the US, CA Political has successfully worked on projects for all three branches of government and at local, state, and national levels.
Among the many “services,” that they routinely leverage Big Data for, in order to benefit their Clients, are:
PREDICTIVE ANALYTICS
The global leader in predictive analytics, CA Political provides precise insights that will allow you to forecast voter behavior.
TV AND DIGITAL AD PLACEMENT
Through our detailed models, predictive analytics, and sophisticated ad-tech, you can find the most effective locations for ad placement and meaningfully impact your voters.
PERSUASION
More effectively engage and persuade voters using specially tailored language and visual ad combinations crafted with insights gleaned from behavioral understandings of your electorate.
Hmmm. Does that sound like any of the sophisticated Ad-Targeting techniques — that Russian forces used to “divide and conquer” the American Electorate last year? To locate those last-minute “fence-sitters” and give them a Big Data nudge, to the Donald’s side of the fence.
— — —
Here are some more “insights” from Cambridge Analytica’s Chief Executive, Alexander Nix, who was interviewed by NBC about the methods and the mechanics of what they do. Mr. Nix was only too happy to oblige them.
Here’s the NBC Link: [Video clip will not embed. Partial transcript given next.]
Cambridge Analytica Explain the Value of Big Data — Nov 04, 2016
Alexander Nix:
[...]
What our Clients are more interested in, is “insights” that the data provides. And these insights are, for instance: which target audiences are most relevant — for what reasons.
And these can then be used to drive all sorts of engagements — whether it’s digital, outreach, whether it’s television media buys, or direct mail campaigns. Or any other form of communication.
Were collecting many different types of data. And psychological attributes is just one ingredient — that is baked into the cake, if you like.
But what it allows us to do, is to look at people, and to understand them, in terms of ‘how they view the world.’
And that’s fundamentally important, in terms of driving your decision-making.
[...]
—
If only Orwell had known about the advent of the Personal Computing industry, and our cultural obsession about collecting data points on nearly every purchase — maybe then he would not have had to paint his Big Brother character, as such a sinister ominous, semi-omni-presence.
Maybe then he could have foreshadowed that Orwellian Surveillance Entity, more like the reserved, studious Cambridge Analytica — quietly churning away and crunching all our data points, in the background, as we sleep …
And no one would have been the wiser, to the futuristic entities quietly ‘compiling their Lists’ … upon Lists ...
Listen to that soothing sound of those Big Data gears “whirring” — it’s almost like … they are not even there.