33exhibited certain psychological characteristics could be pushed
into ever more extreme beliefs and conspiratorial thinking.
“Rather than using data to interfere with the process of radical-
ization, Steve Bannon was able to invert that,” Wylie said. “We
were essentially seeding an insurgency in the United States.”
Cambridge Analytica was dissolved in 2018, shortly after
its CEO was caught on tape bragging about using bribery and
sexual “honey traps” on behalf of clients.
(The firm denied that it actually used such
tactics.) Since then, some political scien-
tists have questioned how much effect its
“psychographic” targeting really had. But
Wylie—who spoke with me from Lon-
don, where he now works for H&M, as a
fashion-trend forecaster—said the firm’s
work in 2016 was a modest test run com-
pared with what could come.
“What happens if North Korea or Iran
picks up where Cambridge Ana lytica left
off?” he said, noting that plenty of for-
eign actors will be looking for ways to
interfere in this year’s election. “There are
countless hostile states that have more
than enough capacity to quickly replicate
what we were able to do ... and make it
much more sophisticated.” These efforts
may not come only from abroad: A group
of former Cambridge Analytica employ-
ees have formed a new firm that, accord-
ing to the Associated Press, is working
with the Trump campaign. (The firm has
denied this, and a campaign spokesperson
declined to comment.)
After the Cambridge Analytica scan-
dal broke, Facebook was excoriated for
its mishandling of user data and complic-
ity in the viral spread of fake news. Mark
Zucker berg promised to do better, and
rolled out a flurry of reforms. But then,
last fall, he handed a major victory to lying politicians: Candi-
dates, he said, would be allowed to continue running false ads on
Facebook. (Commercial advertisers, by contrast, are subject to
fact-checking.) In a speech at Georgetown University, the CEO
argued that his company shouldn’t be responsible for arbitrating
political speech, and that because political ads already receive so
much scrutiny, candidates who choose to lie will be held account-
able by journalists and watchdogs.
To bolster his case, Zucker berg pointed to the recently
launched—and publicly accessible— “library” where Facebook
archives every political ad it publishes. The project has a certain
democratic appeal: Why censor false or toxic content when a little
sunlight can have the same effect? But spend some time scrolling
through the archive of Trump reelection ads, and you quickly see
the limits of this transparency.
The campaign doesn’t run just one ad at a time on a given
theme. It runs hundreds of iterations—adjusting the language,
the music, even the colors of the “Donate” buttons. In the 10
weeks after the House of Representatives began its impeachment
inquiry, the Trump campaign ran roughly 14,000 different ads
containing the word impeachment. Sifting through all of them
is virtually impossible.
Both parties will rely on micro-targeted ads this year, but the
president is likely to have a distinct advantage. The Republi-
can National Committee and
the Trump campaign have
reportedly compiled an aver-
age of 3,000 data points on
every voter in America. They
have spent years experimenting
with ways to tweak their mes-
sages based not just on gender
and geography, but on whether
the recipient owns a gun or
watches the Golf Channel.
While these ads can be used
to try to win over un decided
voters, they’re most often
deployed for fundraising and
for firing up the faithful—
and Trump’s advisers believe
this election will be decided
by mobilization, not persua-
sion. To turn out the base, the
campaign has signaled that it
will return to familiar themes:
the threat of “illegal aliens”—
a term Parscale has reportedly
encouraged Trump to use—and
the corruption of the “swamp.”
Beyond Facebook, the cam-
paign is also investing in a text-
ing platform that could allow
it to send anonymous messages
directly to millions of voters’
phones without their permis-
sion. Until recently, people had to opt in before a campaign
could include them in a mass text. But with new “peer to peer”
texting apps—including one developed by Gary Coby, a senior
Trump adviser—a single volunteer can send hundreds of mes-
sages an hour, skirting federal regulations by clicking “Send”
one message at a time. Notably, these messages aren’t required
to disclose who’s behind them, thanks to a 2002 ruling by the
Federal Election Commission that cited the limited number of
characters available in a text.
Most experts assume that these regulations will be overhauled
sometime after the 2020 election. For now, campaigns from
both parties are hoovering up as many cellphone numbers as
possible, and Parscale has said texting will be at the center of
Trump’s re election strategy. The medium’s ability to reach voters
is un paralleled: While robocalls get sent to voicemail and email
blasts get trapped in spam folders, peer-to-peer texting companies
say that at least 90 percent of their messages are opened.SHADY POLITICAL
ACTORS ARE
D I S C OV E R I N G
HOW EASY IT IS
TO WAGE AN
UNTRACEABLE
WHISPER
CAMPAIGN BY
TEXT MESSAGE.