Mindf*ck by Christopher Wylie

Author:Christopher Wylie
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2019-10-07T16:00:00+00:00

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A FEW MONTHS BEFORE the first round of Lukoil meetings, Cambridge Analytica had connected with a man named Sam Patten, who had lived a colorful life as a political operative for hire all over the world. In the 1990s, Patten worked in the oil sector in Kazakhstan before moving into Eastern European politics. When CA hired him, he had just finished a project for pro-Russian political parties in Ukraine. At the time, he was working with a man named Konstantin Kilimnik, a former officer of Russia’s Main Intelligence Directorate (the GRU). Although Patten denies that he gave his Russian partner any data, it was later revealed that Paul Manafort, who was for several months Donald Trump’s campaign manager, did pass along voter polling data to Kilimnik in a separate instance. Patten and Kilimnik had met in Moscow in the early 2000s and later worked in Ukraine for Paul Manafort’s consultancy. The two became formal business partners soon after Patten was brought onto CA.

Patten was a perfect fit to navigate the world of shady international influence operations. He was also well connected among the growing number of Republicans joining Cambridge Analytica, so he was initially assigned to work in the United States. Patten was tasked with managing the logistics of research operations in America, including focus groups and data collection, and writing some of the polling questions. In spring 2014, he started working in Oregon, taking over for some of Gettleson’s projects conducting social and attitudinal research on American citizens.

Soon enough, weird questions began popping up in our research. One day I was in my London office, checking reports from the field, when I noticed a project involving Russia-oriented message testing in America. The U.S. operation was growing rapidly, and several new people had been brought in to manage the surge in assignments, so it was hard to keep track of every research stream. I thought that maybe someone had started exploring Americans’ views on international topics. But when I searched our repository of questions and data, I could only find data being collected on Russia. Our team in Oregon had started asking people, “Is Russia entitled to Crimea?” and “What do you think about Vladimir Putin as a leader?” Focus group leaders were circulating various photos of Putin and asking people to indicate where he looked strongest. I started watching video recordings of some of the focus groups—and they were strange. Photos of Vladimir Putin and Russian narratives were projected on the wall, and the interviewer was asking groups of American voters how it made them feel to see a strong leader.

What was interesting was that even though Russia had been a U.S. adversary for decades, Putin was admired for his strength as a leader.

“He has a right to protect his country and do what he thinks is best for his country,” said one participant as others nodded in agreement. Another told us that Crimea was Russia’s Mexico, but that, unlike Obama, Putin was taking action. As

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