He's going to get called out on using Microtargeting by the Russians to manipulate the election is my guess. "Microtargeting" of content is really interesting. Because Robert Mercer, the billionaire hedgefund guy behind Trump, is the main investor in Cambridge Analytica - a company that specializes in exactly that. It's parent company is SCL Group (Strategic Communication Laboratories) which has been described as a "global election management agency" known for involvement "in military disinformation campaigns to social media branding and voter targeting". In short, they specialize in military propaganda or ‘psyops’.
Cambridge Analytica was brought in by Mercer to help Trump win.
Cambridge Analytica: The company claims to use “data enhancement and audience segmentation techniques” providing “psychographic analysis” for a “deeper knowledge of the target audience”. The company uses the OCEAN scale of personality traits. Using what it calls "behavioral microtargeting" the company indicates that it can predict "needs" of subjects and how these needs may change over time. Services then can be individually targeted for the benefit of its clients from the political arena, governments, and companies providing "a better and more actionable view of their key audiences."
Combining data and content obtained through nefarious means (hacking) with sophisticated software and targeting to maximize its effectiveness is evil genius. All the pieces are coming together now. What is becoming much clearer now is that Trump's victory was no bumbling accident.
Interestingly, Cambridge Analytica's software is based on models developed by Cambridge academic Michal Kosinski - he didn't want to have anything to do with the company. The guy that first approached Kosinski was Aleksandr Kogan, a Russian. It was Kogan that apparently introduced SCL to Kosinki's models. Kogan then moved to Singapore and changed his name to Alexander Spectre. Was he working for Russian Intelligence? Given the key role Cambridge Analytica and SCL played in the US election (and in Brexit), it would be good to know who exactly is behind them.
Who exactly owns SCL and its diverse branches is unclear, thanks to a convoluted corporate structure, the type seen in the UK Companies House, the Panama Papers, and the Delaware company registry. Some of the SCL offshoots have been involved in elections from Ukraine to Nigeria, helped the Nepalese monarch against the rebels, whereas others have developed methods to influence Eastern European and Afghan citizens for NATO. And, in 2013, SCL spun off a new company to participate in US elections: Cambridge Analytica.
It gets more interesting. The largest shareholder of SCL was on record as being Vincent Tchenguiz, an Iranian-British businessman. Tchenguiz is a business partner with Ukrainian oligarch Dmitry Firtash, who is known as a Putin protégé. Tchenguiz used the same Guernsey holding company, Wheddon Ltd., to invest both in Cambridge Analytica’s parent company and in another privately held U.K. business whose largest shareholder was the Ukrainian gas middleman Dmitry Firtash - a close friend of Putin who is currently indicted and awaiting extradition on corruption and racketeering charges.
Over the same time period, other documents show, bankers close to Putin granted Firtash credit lines of up to $11 billion. That credit helped Firtash, who backed pro-Russian Viktor Yanukovich's successful 2010 bid to become Ukraine's president, to buy a dominant position in the country's chemical and fertiliser industry and expand his influence.
And guess who was Dmitry Firtash's former business partner? Paul Manafort - Trump's former campaign manager. Manafort of course worked directly for Yanukovych and Firtash was the middleman between Putin and the Yanukovych electoral operation in Ukraine.
So the largest shareholder of Cambridge Analytica is a business partner with Firtash, who has direct ties with Putin. Firtash is known to operate as a financing middleman for Putin's foreign policy "operations". Could SCL, parent of CA, be a front for a Russian Intelligence operation? If you think about it, SCL specializes in new sophisticated technology models for military propaganda. If you read up on new Russian military doctrine, it's clear they are placing a big emphasis on information warfare. The 'Gerasimov Doctrine’ is quite insightful about how Russia views defeating their enemies:
The role of nonmilitary means of achieving political and strategic goals has grown, and, in many cases, they have exceeded the power of force of weapons in their effectiveness....All this is supplemented by military means of a concealed character, including carrying out actions of informational conflict.
Among such actions are the use of special-operations forces and internal opposition to create a permanently operating front through the entire territory of the enemy state, as well as informational actions, devices, and means that are constantly being perfected.
Did Russia view Bannon/Trump and co as the perfect vehicles to ferment and support "internal opposition"? Was Cambridge Analytica one of the vehicles to achieve this and to help execute their ideas around information warfare?
Guess who a Board Member of Cambridge Analytica was? Steve Bannon. And it was Robert Mercer that bankrolled Steve Bannon and Breitbart to the tune of $10 million - no doubt to be the front-facing tool to execute on their ideas around influence, manipulation and propaganda.
And with the help of Russian Intelligence, it is entirely plausible Breitbart was involved in using bots and social media to help propagate news they knew would damage Hillary and help Trump.
There are very clear and direct ties between powerful Russian/Ukrainian figures and Cambridge Analytica - which specializes in military propaganda. Steve Bannon was a board member and Robert Mercer was its biggest investor. And of course Mercer, Banner, Cambridge Analytica and Brieitbart all played a key roll in helping Trump get elected. It's not a big stretch to suggest that there was cooperation and collusion with Russian Intelligence, who provided hacked data to Cambridge Analytica, who then used it to carry out a sophisticated propaganda campaign, with Breitbart as the lead.
Cambridge Analytica also played a key role in BREXIT - offering Firage and the Leave campaign their services for free.
The firm is said to have advised Leave.eu by harvesting data from people's Facebook profiles to decide how to target them with individualised advertisements.
Brexit was of course seen as a big geopolitical strategic win for Putin and Russia.
Another interesting bit of info that is a bit tenuous but nonetheless intriguing - the largest shareholder of SCL Group was Vincent Tchenguiz.
In March 2011 the Tchenguiz brothers were arrested in dramatic predawn raids as part of an investigation into the 2008 collapse of the Icelandic bank Kaupthing. Just before its collapse, Kaupthing’s loans to the Tchenguiz brothers totaled 40 percent of its capital. It has been charged that Kaupthing—which had a far-from-transparent ownership structure—was effectively the Tchenguiz brothers’ bank and that they looted the bank, leading to its collapse.
Kaupthing’s largest shareholder, Meidur, now called Exista, which owned 25 percent of its shares, had ties to Alfa Bank, the largest Russian commercial bank; Alfa chairman was “deep state” figure Mikhail Fridman, chairman and co-founder of Alfa Group, the parent of Alfa Bank. Meanwhile, Trump adviser Richard Burt (who also was being paid by Russia to promote a Gazprom pipeline) is on the “senior advisory board” of Alfa Bank.
Was this how Russian intelligence bankrolled SCL in the early days? Perhaps Vincent Tchenguiz was the cutout man, and funds were channeled from Alfa Bank into Kaupthing and on to Vincent Tchenguiz. Russian Intelligence seems to work well with ambitious businessman who are happy to be corrupted if they can make some money. Trump also seemed to fit this bill.
Alfa Bank was the bank that a Trump Server was mysteriously communicating with and was likely the subject of an FBI surveillance warrant.