SW That Elected Trump Based On SW That Elected Obama

Karl gmkarl at gmail.com
Wed Apr 14 08:04:32 PDT 2021


This is another excerpt from Christopher Wylie's autobiographical
account of developing political control systems during the 2010s.  He
was a hacker and politician who worked in machine learning, and moved
from politics, into private military contracts, and then back into
politics.

> The light went on: This was the first time Nix truly understood what we were doing. He could not have been less interested in things like “data” and “algorithms,” but seeing actual people onscreen, knowing everything about them, had seized his imagination.
>
> “Do we have their phone numbers?” Nix asked. I told him we did. And then, in one of those moments of weird brilliance he occasionally had, he reached for the speakerphone and asked for the number. As Jucikas relayed it to him, he punched in the number.
>
> After a couple of rings, someone picked up. We heard a woman say “Hello?” and Nix, in his most posh accent, said, “Hello, ma’am. I’m terribly sorry to bother you, but I’m calling from the University of Cambridge. We are conducting a survey. Might I speak with Ms. Jenny Smith, please?” The woman confirmed that she was Jenny, and Nix started asking her questions based on what we knew from her data.
>
> “Ms. Smith, I’d like to know, what is your opinion of the television show Game of Thrones ?” Jenny raved about it—just as she had on Facebook. “Did you vote for Mitt Romney in the last election?” Jenny confirmed that she had. Nix asked whether her kids went to such-and-such elementary school, and Jenny confirmed that, too. When I looked over at Bannon, he had a huge grin on his face.
>
> After Nix hung up with Jenny, Bannon said, “Let me do one!” We went around the room, all of us taking a turn. It was surreal to think that these people were

The book is called "Mindf*ck, Cambridge Analytica and the Plot to
Break America" and it's the first book I've read this much of in a
very long time!  It explains what happened in the USA with clarity and
detail.

The data described above was purportedly harvested using public API's
only, although the chapter is titled with regard to trojan horses ...

On 4/13/21, Karl <gmkarl at gmail.com> wrote:
> But when Trump was elected, the man who designed the software and the
> following excerpt was working for a military contractor to do so,
> rather than a political party.  I'm having trouble continuing to read
> his book ;p
>
>> Insurgencies, by nature, are asymmetric, in that a few people can cause
>> large effects. So catalyzing an insurgency within the belligerent’s
>> organization requires first concentrating resources on a few key target
>> groups. This is optimized by good profiling and identifying the types of
>> people who are both susceptible to new ways of thinking and connected
>> enough to inject our counternarrative into their social network.
>>
>> The most effective form of perspecticide is one that first mutates the
>> concept of self. In this light, the manipulator attempts to “steal” the
>> concept of self from his target, replacing it with his own. This usually
>> starts with attempting to smother the opponent’s narratives and then
>> dominating the informational environment around the target. Often this
>> involves gradually breaking down what are called psychological resilience
>> factors over several months. Programs are designed to create unrealistic
>> perceptions in the targets that result in confusion and damage
>> self-efficacy. Targets are encouraged to begin catastrophizing about minor
>> or imagined events, and counternarratives attempt to remove meaning,
>> creating an impression of confusing or senseless events. Counternarratives
>> also attempt to foster distrust in order to mitigate an existing hierarchy
>> or group when you begin to think that you are being used in some unfair
>> way, or when events seem senseless or purposeless. You become less willing
>> to accept setbacks, take risks, or comply with commands.
>>
>> But simply degrading morale is often not enough. The ultimate aim is to
>> trigger negative emotions and thought processes associated with impulsive,
>> erratic, or compulsive behavior. This moves a target from mild or passive
>> resistance (e.g., less productivity, taking fewer risks, rumors, etc.)
>> into a realm of more disruptive behaviors (e.g., arguing, insubordination,
>> mutiny, etc.). This approach has been taken in South America, for example,
>> to provoke disunity among members of narcotics operations, increasing the
>> likelihood of information leaks, defections, or internal conflicts that
>> erode a supply chain. The most susceptible targets are typically the ones
>> who exhibit neurotic or narcissistic traits, as they tend to be less
>> psychologically resilient to stressing narratives. This is because
>> neuroticism can make a person more prone to paranoid ideation, as they
>> tend to experience more anxiety and impulsiveness and place more reliance
>> on intuitive rather than deliberative thinking. People high on the
>> narcissism scale are susceptible because they are more prone to
>


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