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posted by Fnord666 on Monday May 15 2017, @05:24AM   Printer-friendly
from the psyops dept.

The Guardian has an interesting article describing how Robert Mercer, Steve Bannon and Nigel Farage used techniques developed within the military to influence Britain's vote to exit the EU. Although it appears that the companies involved (AggregateIQ and Cambridge Analytics) are private companies, they have deep roots within the military.

The article describes Britain as a "managed democracy", with major decisions controlled by a US Billionaire.

[ n1: The article is an interesting read, including a reference to how in 2013, Google Founder Eric Schmidt's daughter Sophie suggested Cambridge Analytics get in touch with Palantir, Peter Thiel's data mining contractor for the GCHQ and many US military and intelligence agencies. Sophie currently works at Uber. According to a former employee, in 2013 Cambridge Analytics was just a "psychological warfare firm [...] before we became this dark, dystopian data company". ]

It was with AggregateIQ that Vote Leave (the official Leave campaign) chose to spend £3.9m, more than half its official £7m campaign budget. As did three other affiliated Leave campaigns: BeLeave, Veterans for Britain and the Democratic Unionist party, spending a further £757,750. “Coordination” between campaigns is prohibited under UK electoral law, unless campaign expenditure is declared, jointly. It wasn’t.

[...] The Electoral Commission has written to AggregateIQ. A source close to the investigation said that AggregateIQ responded by saying it had signed a non-disclosure agreement. And since it was outside British jurisdiction, that was the end of it. Vote Leave refers to this as the Electoral Commission giving it “a clean bill of health”.

[...] I asked David Banks, Veterans for Britain’s head of communications, why they spent the money with AggregateIQ. “I didn’t find AggegrateIQ. They found us. They rang us up and pitched us. There’s no conspiracy here. [...] Their targeting was based on a set of technologies that hadn’t reached the UK yet. A lot of it was proprietary, they’d found a way of targeting people based on behavioural insights."


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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by AthanasiusKircher on Monday May 15 2017, @02:37PM (4 children)

    by AthanasiusKircher (5291) on Monday May 15 2017, @02:37PM (#510032) Journal

    It's interesting that someone modded you "troll" for an extended quotation from a future Supreme Court justice, from a memo that basically created an agenda for the modern conservative movement.

    Starting Score:    1  point
    Moderation   +1  
       Interesting=1, Total=1
    Extra 'Interesting' Modifier   0  
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   3  
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 15 2017, @02:43PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 15 2017, @02:43PM (#510036)

    Do you hear that? It's the sound of snowflake melting:
    "REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE"

  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by DeathMonkey on Monday May 15 2017, @05:37PM (2 children)

    by DeathMonkey (1380) on Monday May 15 2017, @05:37PM (#510139) Journal

    It's interesting that someone modded you "troll" for an extended quotation from a future Supreme Court justice, from a memo that basically created an agenda for the modern conservative movement.

    I think the trollish bit is where he tries to blame the left for the actions of a Nixon appointee.

    • (Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Tuesday May 16 2017, @12:15AM (1 child)

      by AthanasiusKircher (5291) on Tuesday May 16 2017, @12:15AM (#510308) Journal

      I think the trollish bit is where he tries to blame the left for the actions of a Nixon appointee.

      ??

      Seriously, I'm confused by your post. I'd appreciate clarification. With the exception of the first sentence of the post (which talks about the effect of propaganda), the entire rest of the post is a quotation from Powell's memo from the link.

      Exactly where does Mr. Runaway (with whom I very rarely agree) "blame the Left" for Justice Powell's actions? He quotes Justice Powell's own views, which blame the Left for various propaganda efforts -- and, frankly, while we can disagree with the extent to which Powell was correct, his viewpoint was very influential on the conservative movement. And there certainly is a lot of truth to the history of psychological propaganda used by both the Left and the Right. Powell was legitimately noting the appropriation of psychological techniques within leftist political ideology in the 1960s, which was subsequently appropriated by the Republicans in the 1970s (partly in response to things like Powell's memo), ultimately leading to things like the Reagan revolution.

      It's a lesser-known part of history. But I still don't understand the "troll" mod for this particular post. Clearly other people do, since they have modded you "insightful." If I'm missing something, please explain it.

      • (Score: 2) by aristarchus on Tuesday May 16 2017, @02:04AM

        by aristarchus (2645) on Tuesday May 16 2017, @02:04AM (#510348) Journal

        It's a lesser-known part of history. But I still don't understand the "troll" mod for this particular post.

        Athanasius! Do not try to understand the troll. That is impossible. Only try to understand the truth: there is no troll. There is just Runaway, who is a troll. Does it all make sense now? (Wasn't my mod, by the way.)