Letter to the Editor

A new Netflix documentary called “The Great Hack” based on a book by Britanny Kaiser called “Targeted” should be viewed and read respectively by anyone concerned about our democracy because of its revelations. The subject is the relationship between Cambridge Analytica and Facebook.

Cambridge Analytica (CA) was an offshoot from the taxpayer-funded SCL, an intelligence service put together after 9/11 to identify potential terrorists from their correspondence and associates. CA was based in and named after Cambridge, England and given that name by Steve Bannon of Breitbart News and former advisor to Pres. Donald Trump.

In concert with Facebook, who sold data gleaned from its millions of user to CA, Cambridge Analytica in turn marketed that data, which included about 5000 data points on each person, to various political organizations around the world. One such buyer included the Trump campaign committee headed up by Steve Bannon, who weaponized that data in favor of his campaign for the presidency.

The goal was to identify those voters who were undecided and persuadable or who could be discouraged from voting at all if they didn’t fit the proper profile. They were micro targeted based on those 5000 data points and especially targeted if they were single issue voters who could be manipulated by either fear or hatred or both.

This approach turned out to be quite effective in several campaigns: (1) the Trump campaign; (2) the breakup between the EU and England called Brexit and (3) the election in Trinidad. Hate and fear were the prime motivators in each case and the same strategy as employed with uninformed voters in the genesis of the Third Reich.

As for the Trump campaign, several minorities were targeted that included Muslims, migrants especially from Central America and anyone who didn’t conform to white America. And to win over Wyoming voters he touted the beauty of clean coal and the financial gains from fossil fuels in general when it was apparent that coal was losing out to renewables like wind power.

The prospect of losing their jobs in the coal mines was a tangible fear factor, as it remains today. With the help of the Electoral College, where states like Wyoming are over represented, he won the Presidency in spite of losing the popular vote by about 3,000,000 votes.

Axiomatically, one antidote for this condition is an informed electorate. Being aware of the issues crying out for a solution includes watching thoughtful news programs, reading newspapers like the Casper Star-Tribune, Sundance Times, magazines like Time, Newsweek, the Nation et. al. and if possible speaking with other people and writing informative articles.

Another is the destruction of these micro targeting operations. Though the multi-billion dollar company, Cambridge Analytica, is no longer in business, the 500 billion dollar corporation called Facebook is and the tools for repeating this scenario are still out there ready to be used surreptitiously if the occasion presents itself. Fear and hatred with the help of micro targeting is the ticket to losing our democracy.

Rod Knudson