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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."
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 15 2017, @05:02PM (1 child)
Is it really these slandered men who are subverting democracy, or the whispering whiners who hold the lower classes in disdain for voting the wrong way?
I'm reminded of the story of the The Ant and the Grasshopper [wikipedia.org]. It's not disdain for voting "the wrong way," as your strawman puts it. It is the fact that people were told incorrect things, believed them despite the ability to find the truth with casual searching, and voted according to misinformation.
For example, how much money does the UK send to the EU each year? We could save $350m pounds [theguardian.com] a week by leaving the EU! That could all go to the NHS! Except that number isn't even close to right, and it couldn't all be spent on the NHS. Just look how fast they backpedaled that promise once they actually won the referendum.
I could go on with pretty much every argument for Brexit: How are laws made in the EU imposed on the UK, the number of refugees the UK has been "forced" to take, the ability to continue free-trade without free movement of people, etc.
It's not disdain for voting the "wrong way," it's disdain for the willful ignorance for voting for somebody who promises to, "lower taxes, lower debt, increase social services, and increase military spending. I can do it because I'm a winner." I think it's very reasonable for the Ant to be angry at the Grasshopper for being shocked that Winter came again this year when the Grasshopper comes demanding food and shelter.
(Score: 2) by GungnirSniper on Wednesday May 17 2017, @04:10AM
There you go with describing the lower classes as idiots who believe untruths.
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