Former Cambridge Analytica contractor Christopher Wylie said he assisted developing a “psychological warfare weapon” in order to capitalize on “vulnerabilities” of Facebook users.
The comments come after Cambridge Analytica, the data analytics firm which worked worked for President Trump’s campaign, and Wylie were suspended from thesocial media platform after it was revealed the firm did not delete data it had improperly obtained from Facebook users.
According to Wylie, former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon wanted to change politics by first changing culture, which could be achieved by obtaining an “arsenal of information weapons.”
“What we worked on was … data harvesting programs where we would pull data from users of apps and all of their friend networks and run that data through algorithms that could profile their personality traits and other psychological attributes,” Wylie told CNN’s Don Lemon Monday evening.
Wylie said the ultimate goal was to obtain information in order to “exploit mental vulnerabilities that our algorithms showed that [Facebook users] had.”
Former Cambridge Analytica contractor Christopher Wylie tells CNN’s @donlemon that he helped build a “psychological warfare weapon” to “exploit mental vulnerabilities that our algorithms showed that [Facebook users] had.” https://t.co/3u8JNn3DlO pic.twitter.com/GhIFPU1sci
— CNN (@CNN) March 20, 2018
In addition to Wylie and Cambridge Analytica, accounts of Cambridge Analytica’s parent company, Strategic Communication Laboratories, and those of a University of Cambridge psychologist Aleksandr Kogan were also suspended.
The accounts were suspended because Facebook received reports that data that had been shared with Cambridge and Wylie from Kogan’s app may not have been completely deleted. Kogan’s app was removed in 2015 and Facebook said they had been previously provided certifications that the data had been deleted.
“Several days ago, we received reports that, contrary to the certifications we were given, not all data was deleted,” Facebook said Friday. “We are moving aggressively to determine the accuracy of these claims. If true, this is another unacceptable violation of trust and the commitments they made. We are suspending SCL/Cambridge Analytica, Wylie and Kogan from Facebook, pending further information.”
Special counsel Robert Mueller asked Cambridge Analytica last fall to surrender emails from any of its employees who worked for the Trump campaign, the Wall Street Journal reported in December. The firm complied to the request.
Mueller’s team is conducting an investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election and is looking into whether members of the Trump campaign colluded with the Kremlin.
