Cambridge Analytica whistleblower appears before Senate – as it happened

Senator John Cornyn: Did CA serve all comers?

Wylie: That was the impression I got at first, but after Mercer put in money, the only restriction was not to work for Democrats.

Referring back to Black Cube, this is the Israeli company that was reportedly involved in efforts to prevent victims of Harvey Weinstein from speaking publicly, as well as investigations into Obama administration officials who were involved in negotiations with Iran.

Whitehouse asks about connection to Palantir.

Wylie says Palantir staff were involved but in a private capacity.

Whitehouse: Has SCL worked with Black Cube?

Wylie: There wasn’t a contract with Black Cube, but says there were dealings with former Israeli security services.

Next up is Sheldon Whitehouse, Democratic senator from Rhode Island.

Whitehouse is asking about Aggregate IQ and Ripon, the software they created. Wylie describes AIQ as a “franchise” of SCL, though the Canadian firm has contested claims that it is closely related to SCL.

Lee: Is the use of social media to market different than what we’ve seen in the past?

Hersh: Just because a campaign spends a lot of money on a kind of ad, doesn’t mean it works. Robocalls don’t work but people still use it. Probably nobody in this room changed their mind because of any ad that was run in the 2016 election. Given that there’s been whistleblowing, there has been no evidence provided of the advertisements actually working. In a presidential election with so much going on, the effect of any one ad is usually zero.

Lee asks about Kogan’s connection to the Russian team researching the “dark triad” of personality traits. Wylie said that he learned of this directly from Kogan, and then through the Guardian and Observer’s reporting.

Lee: How did you learn about CA’s black ops?

Wylie: Alexander Nix told me?

Lee: Who was involved in them?

Wylie: My understanding was that in various projects, misappropriated information was used as kompromat against opposition candidates.

Michael Lee, Republican senator from Utah: You took that same data with you upon leaving the company.

Wylie: Most people were contractors or had companies. I received a copy of that data.

Lee: After leaving the company you had a series of meetings with a major campaign to discuss micro-targeting.

Wylie: That’s not true.

Lee: You were going to use that data for something.

Wylie: The data was never used on any commercial project. I didn’t take any data from Cambridge Analytica.

Lee: You didn’t take it because it was already with you?

Wylie: Yes. After I left CA, I continued working on independent projects, but I didn’t use that data on any commercial contract.

Lee: Couldn’t that data have proven useful to you?

Wylie: I could have, but I didn’t use it.

Leahy: How does traditional online marketing compare to what CA did?

Wylie: Traditional marketing doesn’t misappropriate tens of millions of people’s data, and it is not or should not be targeted at people’s mental state like neuroticism and paranoia, or racial biases.

Leahy: Why did the investors think this would work?

Wylie: Steve Bannon believes that politics is downstream from culture. They were seeking out companies to build an arsenal of weapons to fight a culture war.