Cambridge Analytica’s backers linked data misuse directly to far-right political campaigns

Evidence

This is important because some of the principal investors in Cambridge Analytica were the American alt-right hedge-fund billionaire Robert Mercer and former executive chair of Breitbart News, Steve Bannon, who also served as Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign manager. Investigative journalist Carole Cadwalladr, who broke the Cambridge Analytica story in a 2017 Guardian feature, has detailed the personal connections between Cambridge Analytica’s campaigns and the far-right political interests of Mercer, Bannon, Trump – and former leader of the UK’s Brexit Party, Nigel Farage – in detail. — Sander van der Linden, Foolproof, 499

Categorization

• XREF: Directly relevant to the China-india blueprint material in The New Crusades and the manufactured-consent threads in Essential Essays. — connects to: Cambridge Analytica merely repurposed routine surveillance capitalist machinery toward politics — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 873; Cambridge Analytica was a hoax that still catalysed real awareness of data weaponization — W. David Marx, Blank Space: A Cultural History of the…, 494; Contemporary platform scandals obscure the deeper question of data appropriation for capitalism — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 40

Broader Connections

• Cambridge Analytica merely repurposed routine surveillance capitalist machinery toward politics #qualifies (0.80) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 873
• Contemporary platform scandals obscure the deeper question of data appropriation for capitalism #complicates (0.75) — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 40
• Cambridge Analytica was a hoax that still catalysed real awareness of data weaponization #qualifies (0.70) — W. David Marx, Blank Space, 494