5/21/2018

Headline May 22, 2018/ ''' CAMBRIDGE *ANALYTICA* CAMPINGS '''


''' CAMBRIDGE *ANALYTICA* 

CAMPINGS '''




NEARLY THREE decades ago, an ambitious young London advertising executive named Nigel Oakes fell out with his partners, two psychologists-

Over a central claim of his new business : That using the tools of social science, he could *plant motivations in people's brains without their knowledge*, prompting them to behave as a client wished.

The psychologists considered his claims unscientific and severed the relationship.

''He wanted to exaggerate what was possible to do using psychology,'' said Barrie Gunter, one of the psychologists. Adrian Furnham, the other, said Mr. Oakes was convinced of ''that mystical, incredible power of the subliminal.''

For years, Mr. Oakes kept trying, convinced he was on to something. But there was no breakthrough until the United  States and its allies occupied Afghanistan and Iraq and began looking for contractors to win ''hearts and minds.''

The ad man rebranded himself as a psychological operations specialist, founder of an organization called Strategic Communication Laboratories and money started to flow.

Today, Mr Oakes's SCL Group - which spawned many smaller companies, including the American political consultancy Cambridge Analytica - is at the center of a trans-Atlantic scandal over data mining and voter manipulation.

Investigators have focused on Alexander Nix, the former chief executive of Cambridge Analytica, who led efforts to use  personal data  scraped from social media in political campaigns.

Mr. Oakes, whose firm has held military contracts with the  British and American governments, has stayed studiously in the background.

He was a star witness in the in absentia last week at parliamentary hearing in London, when an academic shared recordings of him speaking admiringly of the oldest and simplest way of shaping public opinion :

*Stirring up a resentment toward a minority group''.

Adolf Hitler ''didn't have a problem with the Jews at all, but people didn't like the Jews,'' he told the academic, Emma L. Briant, a senior lecturer in journalism at the  university of Essex.

He went on to say that *Donald J Trump had done the same thing by tapping into grievances towards immigrants and Muslims*.

The sort of campaign he continued, did not require bells and whistles from technology or social science.

''What happened with Trump, you can forget all the microtargeting and microdata and whatever, and come back to some very, very simple things,'' he told Dr. Briant.

''Trump had the guts, and I mean, really the guts, to say what people wanted to hear.''

Mr. Oakes dis not responded to requests for comment. A spokesman for the Cambridge Analytica endeavored to distance the company from Mr. Oakes and his comments, saying he-

''Never had any role at Cambridge Analytica, has never worked for Cambridge Analytica and did  not work on the Trump campaign in any way whatsoever.''

The company said his comments had been made ''in a personal capacity about the historical use of propaganda to an academic he knew well from her work in the defense sphere''.

The hearings marked a sudden public exposure for Mr. Oakes, an upper-crust Englishman whose air of mystery was also a selling point.

From its inception, the central promise of the SCL Group was to shape public opinion without being seen.

Dr. Briant, who interviewed Mr. Oakes repeatedly for her book:

''Propaganda and Counter-Terrorism Strategies for Global Change,'' said she suspected that for Mr. Oakes , the hearings had been a painful experience.

''You need to bear in mind, these are powerful arrogant men,'' she said. ''They think they own the world. I honestly think they thought they were invincible.''

The Honor and serving of the latest ''Operational Research'' on Data, Analytics, and  State of the World continues. !WOW! thanks Ellen Barry.

With respectful dedication to the Students, Professors and Teachers of the world. See Ya all ''register'' on wssciw.blogspot.com for the upcoming elections, and Twitter-!E-WOW! - the ecosystem 2011:

'''Laughs- Levers'''

Good Night and God Bless

SAM Daily Times - the Voice of the Voiceless

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