SCL – a Very British Coup

Liam O Hare on the deep connections between Cambridge Analytica’s parent company Strategic Communication Laboratories (SCL Group)  and the Conservative Party and military establishment, ‘Board members include an array of Lords, Tory donors, ex-British army officers and defense contractors. This is scandal that cuts to the heart of the British establishment.’

The scandal around mass data harvesting by Cambridge Analytica took a new twist on Monday.

A Channel 4 news undercover investigation revealed that the company’s Eton-educated CEO Alexander Nix offered to use dirty tricks – including the use of bribery and sex workers – to entrap politicians and subvert elections.

Much of the media spotlight is now on Cambridge Analytica and their shadowy antics in elections worldwide, including that of Donald Trump.

However, Cambridge Analytica is a mere offshoot of Strategic Communication Laboratories (SCL Group) – an organisation with its roots deeply embedded within the British political, military and royal establishment.

Indeed, as the Observer article which broke the scandal said “For all intents and purposes, SCL/Cambridge Analytica are one and the same.”

Like Cambridge Analytica, SCL group is behavioral research and strategic communication company.

In 2005, SCL went public with a glitzy exhibit at the DSEI conference, the UK’s largest showcase for military technology.

It’s ‘hard sell’ was a demonstration of how the UK government could use a sophisticated media campaign of mass deception to fool the British people into the thinking an accident at a chemical plant had occurred and threatened central London. Genuinely.

Board members include an array of Lords, Tory donors, ex-British army officers and defense contractors. This is scandal that cuts to the heart of the British establishment.

SCL Group says on its website that it provides “data, analytics and strategy to governments and military organizations worldwide.”

The organisation boasts that it has conducted “behavioral change programs” in over 60 countries and its clients have included the British Ministry of Defence, the US State Department and NATO.

A freedom of information request from August 2016, shows that the MOD has twice bought services from Strategic Communication Laboratories in recent years.

In 2010/11, the MOD paid £40,000 to SCL for the “provision of external training”. Meanwhile, in 2014/2015, it paid SCL £150,000 for the “procurement of target audience analysis”.

In addition, SCL also carries a secret clearance as a ‘list X’ contractor for the MOD. A List X site is a commercial site on British soil that is approved to hold UK government information marked as ‘confidential’ and above. Essentially, SCL got the green light to hold British government secrets on its premises.

Meanwhile, the US State Department has a contract for $500,000 with SLC. According to an official, this was to provide  “research and analytical support in connection with our mission to counter terrorist propaganda and disinformation overseas.” This was not the only work that SCL has been contracted for with the US government, the source added.

In May 2015, SCL Defense, another subsidiary of the umbrella organisation, received $1 million (CAD) to support NATO operations in Eastern Europe targeting Russia.

The company delivered a three-month course in Riga which taught “advanced counter-propaganda techniques designed to help member states assess and counter Russia’s propaganda in Eastern Europe”.

The NATO website said the “revolutionary” training would “help Ukrainians better defend themselves against the Russian threat”.

What is clear is that all of SCL’s activities were inextricably linked to its Cambridge Analytica arm.

As recently as July 2017, the website for Cambridge Analytica said its methods has been approved by the “UK Ministry of Defence, the US State Department, Sandia and NATO” and carried their logos on its website.

Mark Turnbull, who joined Alexander Nix at the secretly filmed meetings, heads up SCL Elections as well as Cambridge Analytica Political Global.

His profile at the University of Exeter Strategy and Security Institute boasts of his record in achieving “campaign success via measurable behavioural change” in “over 100 campaigns in Europe, North and South America, Asia, Africa and the Caribbean”.

Turnbull previously spent 18 years at Bell Pottinger, heading up the Pentagon funded PR drive in occupied Iraq which included the production of fake al-Qaeda videos.

Turnbull’s involvement is just one sign of the sweeping links the company has with powerful Anglo-American political and military interests.

The firm is headed up by Nigel Oakes, another old Etonian, who, according to the website PowerBase has links to the British royals and was once rumoured to be an Mi5 spy.

In 1992, Oakes described his work in a trade journal as using the “same techniques as Aristotle and Hitler. … We appeal to people on an emotional level to get them to agree on a functional level.”

The President of SCL is Sir Geoffrey Pattie, a former Conservative MP and the Defence Minister in Margaret Thatcher’s government. Pattie also co-founded Terrington Management which lists BAE Systems and Lockheed Martin among its clients.

One of the company’s directors’ is wine millionaire and former British special forces officer in Borneo and Kenya, Roger Gabb, who in 2006 donated £500,000 to the Conservative party.

Gabb was also fined by the Electoral Commission for failing to include his name on an advert in a number of local newspapers arguing for a Leave vote in the Brexit referendum.

SCL’s links to the Conservative party continues through the company’s chairman and venture capitalist Julian Wheatland. He also happens to be chairman of Oxfordshire Conservatives Association.

The organisation has also been funded by Jonathan Marland who is the former Conservative Party Treasurer, a trade envoy under David Cameron, and a close friend of Tory election strategist Lynton Crosby.

Property tycoon and Conservative party donor Vincent Tchenguiz was also the single largest SCL shareholder for a decade.

Meanwhile, another director is Gavin McNicoll, founder of counter-terrorism Eden Intelligence firm who ran a G8 Plus meeting on Financial Intelligence Cooperation at the behest of the British government.

Previous board members include Sir James Allen Mitchell, the former Prime Minister of the previous British colony St. Vincent and the Grenadines. Mitchell has been a privy counselor on the Queen’s advisory board since 1985.

The British military and royal establishment links to SCL are further highlighted through another director Rear Admiral John Tolhurst, a former assistant director of naval warfare in the Ministry of Defence and aide de camp to the Queen.

The Queen’s third cousin, Lord Ivar Mountbatten, was also sitting on SCL’s advisory board but it’s unclear if he still holds that role.

The above examples barely scrape the surface of just how deep the ties go between the UK defence establishment and Strategic Communication Laboratories.

Indeed, it seems evident that the organisation is a product of murky alliances formed between venture capitalists and former British military and intelligence officers. Unsurprisingly, they also happen to be closely tied to the higher echelons of the Conservative party.

International deception and meddling is the name of the game for SCL. We finally have the most concrete evidence yet of shadowy actors using dirty tricks in order to rig elections. But these characters aren’t operating from Moscow intelligence bunkers.

Instead, they are British, Eton educated, headquartered in the city of London and have close ties to Her Majesty’s government.

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  1. Dougie Blackwood says:

    It is suggested that this company had significant influence in the election of Donald Trump. Has it been directly involved, albeit in the background, in UK elections, the Brexit referendum and the Scottish independence referendum? Given the membership at the top of its management I would be surprised if they did not play a significant role in all of these.

    1. Radio Jammor says:

      Dougie, it very much appears that SCL acted for Vote Leave, through payments to a Canadian company called AggregateIQ. and given that a CA staff member was at a Leave.EU press conference, they appear to have been doing work for that campaign too. This relationship which was initially talked up by both companies, was then later-on denied by Leave.EU, & Aaron Banks in particular, by saying CA essentially touted for work but they thought it was dodgy and illegal, so didn’t take them on.

      However, the work CA did for Leave.EU in appearing at a press conference, amongst other things, may not be viewed by the Electoral Commission as some kind of up-front Labour that can be written off as a pure cost to CA as part of their pitch making efforts. It may be regarded as unpaid labour that went towards the campaign, which is in effect a donation with a value (staff costs, pay, etc), that wasn’t declared.

      Of course these revelations about setting up intermediaries, contractors and disappearing emails means that what Banks says could be true or it could be that they both have plausible deniability – and therefore no accountability.

      This is a paragraph from a Guardian article last May:
      “It was with AggregateIQ that Vote Leave (the official Leave campaign) chose to spend £3.9m, more than half its official £7m campaign budget. As did three other affiliated Leave campaigns: BeLeave, Veterans for Britain and the Democratic Unionist party, spending a further £757,750. “Coordination” between campaigns is prohibited under UK electoral law, unless campaign expenditure is declared, jointly. It wasn’t. Vote Leave says the Electoral Commission “looked into this” and gave it “a clean bill of health”.”

      The article goes on to say, “AggregateIQ’s address and telephone number corresponded to a company listed on Cambridge Analytica’s website as its overseas office: “SCL Canada”. A day later, that online reference vanished.”

      The article goes on to indicate that AggregateIQ was linked to Chris Wylie, who initially refused to comment, but has since become the whistle-blower providing The Guardian, the NYT and Channel4 News the information for their latest articles & reports.

    2. brian gray says:

      To what end… this operation are NWO operatives to extend the British Empire… if they are hired to do such, well they’re not earning their fee. This bunch of scum were hired by Bannon and Ted Cruz when he was a functionary for the Cruz GOP leadership campaign… then Bannon brought them along with him to join the Trump team (fortunately somebody told Trump or maybe Trump himself run this guy off) all this shit is little more than the desperate British freaking out that Trump is going to fulfill his intentions to work with China and Russia… good by British Empire with their dumb giant the US on their leash.

    3. Becky Adams says:

      Not quite Dougie, HCL we’re involved in the dirty dossier used to try to take Trump down. Julian Asange exposes all of this today, that Steele wasn’t a lone character, it was the British govt conspiring to take down a US president opposed to the globalism the tories, labour greens and lib dems serve

      1. Marshall Van Fleet says:

        I agree with you Becky! Coming from Victoria British Columbia Canada needs a Leader Like Trump! Trudeau Has to Go!

  2. DelicateDave says:

    It’s increasingly annoying that the MSM are only concentrating on Facebook and Trump in this murky mess. Meanwhile it seems the body we expect to investigate are having problem getting a warrent to search for wrong doing at CA. It seem no judge wants to pick up a phone.

    1. Derrick says:

      Data was mined from facebook, but facebook is a threat to them as a social media platform over which they have only marginal control.

  3. Robert Smith says:

    “Domestic and international companies are being paid to identify American voters in real time, and expose them to highly tailored messages at specific times, specific places, and while certain friends, family, and emotional cues (e.g. television shows or breaking news) are present. These aren’t just any other sites-these are known purveyors of propaganda, lies, hoaxes, malware, and misinformation. Where do we even begin to draw the line?” Jonathan Albright (Who Hacked The Election)

    1. Becky Adams says:

      And Zuckerberg handed all the info of US Facebook users to the Obama campaign in 2012, yet the media isn’t talking about that fact

      1. Robert Smith says:

        October 5 2017 – “And over the past week, as names of some of the 470 Russian-bought pages and accounts have trickled out in news reports….Albright found the content had been “shared” 340 million times. That’s from a tiny sliver of the 470 accounts that have been made public. Even if those sites were unusually effective compared to the 464 others. Albrights findings still suggest a total reach well into the billions of shares on facebook.” Did Obama use Russian trolls and Bristish psychological warfare teams as well ?

        1. Robert Smith says:

          Trump/Brexit similarities: “even the pattern of removal and deletion” Albright.

  4. Robert Smith says:

    “Sure would be a shame if Verizon made us pay to see Google’s YouTube and it’s hilariously heartwarming holiday parodies handtailored to our specific microdemos,…” @textifire

  5. Tony says:

    Superb article that puts the British media to shame, great job Liam.

    Your mind has been controlled,
    It has been stuffed into my mould,
    And YOU will do as YOU are told
    Until the rights to you are sold

    The late great Frank Zappa
    “I am the slime on your TV set”

    1. brian gray says:

      I might be moving to Montana soon !

      1. Lonita Lee Dalton says:

        We are being told many will be moving to Montana from lots of places as the Rocky Mountain front is awesomely easy to get lost in. It is a harsh climate six months of the year and the economy super sucks. Otherwise, it is a good place to live. We have gov corruption here, too, like everywhere. Native Montanans number 500,000. However, in recent years we’ve had 500,000 out of staters moving in and many are retirees. Wilderness areas are plentiful, and the cities are small.

        1. Terence Agar says:

          Soon be time to start work on MR Trumps Face in the mountain.

      2. T says:

        “Video unavailable” …

    2. Alasdair Macdonald. says:

      I should like to endorse Tony’s compliments to Liam.

      Channel 4 has done well. Sadly, such investigative action is becoming increasingly rare in UK journalism. Increasingly the broadcast and print media are simply the channels for the release of press statements by parties, state organisations, or, more worryingly, by private corporations.

      So, for Liam to have produced this expose is highly commendable.

  6. nodrog says:

    This article should be leafleted and dropped into every Scottish home.

  7. Oliver Cromwell says:

    SCL >>>>>
    Vincent Tchenguiz aka Khadouri
    and
    Michael Friedman?

  8. Olive says:

    Thinker? This goes much deeper, and is a concerted and orchestrated attempt to control the rising consciousness of humanity via big data: http://olivefarmercrete.blogspot.ae/2018/03/cambridge-analytica-cambridge-analytica.html

  9. John Burrows says:

    Alexis de Tocqueville, in his seminal work “Democracy in America” imagined a dystopian society were association life was dead. When the likes of rotary clubs, reading societies, and even masonic lodges ceased to be places where citizens of like minds could congregate and mingle.

    It speaks to a place and time where the infrastructure of civil society, and the linkages that tie us to our communities, have broken down and been lost. A place very much akin to de-industrialised Britain today. His thoughts are as potent now as when they were written over two hundred years ago.

    This passage, for me, explains the very essence of Brexit. I quote:

    “I seek to trace the novel features under which despotism may appear in the world.”

    “The first thing that strikes the observation is an innumerable multitude of men all equal and alike, incessantly endeavoring to procure the petty and paltry pleasures with which they glut their lives. Each of them, living apart, is as a stranger to the fate of all the rest—his children and his private friends constitute to him the whole of mankind; as for the rest of his fellow-citizens, he is close to them, but he sees them not—he touches them, but he feels them not; he exists but in himself and for himself alone; and if his kindred still remain to him, he may be said at any rate to have lost his country.” A better description of the Twitter and Facebook age you will never find.

    “Above this race of men stands an immense and tutelary power, which takes upon itself alone to secure their gratifications, and to watch over their fate. That power is absolute, minute, regular, provident, and mild. It would be like the authority of a parent, if, like that authority, its object was to prepare men for manhood; but it seeks on the contrary to keep them in perpetual childhood: it is well content that the people should rejoice, provided they think of nothing but rejoicing.”

    “For their happiness such a government willingly labors, but it chooses to be the sole agent and the only arbiter of that happiness: it provides for their security, foresees and supplies their necessities, facilitates their pleasures, manages their principal concerns, directs their industry, regulates the descent of property, and subdivides their inheritances—what remains, but to spare them all the care of thinking and all the trouble of living?”

    “Thus it every day renders the exercise of the free agency of man less useful and less frequent; it circumscribes the will within a narrower range, and gradually robs a man of all the uses of himself. The principle of equality has prepared men for these things: it has predisposed men to endure them, and oftentimes to look on them as benefits.”

    In this context, the Yes movement is a civil revolt against the dystopian future laid out by de Tocqueville. For, in its essence, the movement is a spontaneous association of people motivated by a desire to restore the benefits of civil society in Scotland.

    The movement has occupied the void left over by the destruction of those ties that once bound us when this nation actually made things the world wanted (apart from whisky, shortcakes and some fish). Our future in Brexit UK will eventually reduce us to being little more than a tout for the shady financial dealings of a London Casino.

    The likes of CA, SCL, and still others yet unexposed, will do all in their power to undermine and destroy the Yes movement, and the cause of an independent Scotland. Of that you can be sure. You just have a listen to their factors in Holyrood today, to know in what contempt they hold us.

    God help Scotland, if the Yes movement fails to achieve its purpose. No one else will.

    1. Techno says:

      There is a more recent book called Bowling Alone, published in 2000, about the decline in civil participation in society.

  10. SleepingDog says:

    If human society is a superorganism then these clusters of actors appear to be a cancer-like pathogen. Psychological research and philosophical enquiry into ethics has looked at human reactions to bad actors, the auto-immune response if you will. Liars, thieves and other harmful individuals would tend to face censure for breaking the social contract. Conversely, the social auto-immune system can be attacked to reduce or redirect its protective effects, undermining the health of society; as when liars and thieves and the most harmful individuals are given the greatest protection and resources.

    It would be interesting to know how much of their black-hat playbook is derived from biology. I think one of the Cambridge Analytica chiefs talked about injecting disinformation into the “bloodstream of the Internet” like a poison.

    There are a number of threats to ethics in society identified by Simon Blackburn in Ethics: A Very Short Introduction; some of the more relevant ones here are:
    3) egoism
    4) evolutionary theory and 5) determinism and futility (we are bound by our million-year old programming)
    6) unreasonable demands (most of us are complicit in corporate wrongdoings of one sort or another if only as consumers, but it is not unreasonable to strive for better even with ‘dirty hands’)
    7) false consciousness

    I think we can see similar vectors here.

    Like a body fighting and recovering from a disease, human society can progress by steps and stages, in tiny skimirshes and larger confrontations, building up its health in many different ways, and fight off something which may more closely resemble an infection than a coup.

    1. Deep says:

      We, here in Romania, we shout about 15 years ago about the deep state (US ambassador, Eu ambassadors, and secret service and judicial chefs along with our president) that they have reduced our country to one big store, for anybody who wants a bite…

    2. Breandán says:

      How is “evolutionary theory” a threat? Do you think that the reality of evolution justifies only right-wing viewpoints?

      1. SleepingDog says:

        @Breandán, Simon Blackburn argues that there are three common confusions when evolutionary theory is applied to ethics.

        One is that evolution explains away ethical notions like altruism because some gene is claimed to code for it. I suppose he is saying that the emergent behaviours of complex systems cannot simply be explained by their components.

        A second confusion, he says, is to imply that some concern cannot exist without an evolutionary explanation for it.

        He goes on: “The third confusion to guard against is to read psychology into nature, and in particular into the gene, and then read it back into the person whose gene it is.”

        An absolute belief in evolutionary determinism would suggest that we cannot escape from our biological heritage to form a genuine system of ethics. But other interpretations of evolutionary theory would not overrule ethics, as perhaps I should have added in my original comment.

        To answer your second question, evolution contains various factors, one of which is explored by anarchist Peter Kropotkin in his book Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution, which I think demonstrates how collectivist, socialist and altruistic behaviours can influence natural selection (as do competitive, individualistic and selfish behaviours):
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual_Aid:_A_Factor_of_Evolution

  11. pmshah says:

    How is what they did much different from what they do during ALL electoral campaigns? Ok so their methods and selecting targets accessed information illegally / unethically. They did a better job than their opponents. The problems is more with the electorate of fickle minds that can be swayed so easily ! Honestly if you ask, how many of the voting crowds can discuss their preferences in an intelligent way?

    1. Lochside says:

      The English elite, aided and abetted by their caledonian bitches of all genders, have always manipulated, cheated, lied, and divided and ruled throughout the history of their Greater England (Britain/Uk) empire building project.

      Now they are utilising algorithms and technology to achieve the same base emotional reasoning by the plebs. Empty rhetoric of fear and threats for the cowed ‘jocks’ and appeals of patriotism, base racism and historical myths aimed at the resentful but still vaguely assertive but hierarchically hidebound English.
      ,
      Combine social atomisation with a weaponised media and its selective amnesia, and the result is that those with remaining political consciousness are left to grasp at facts that dissolve and crumple like the newspaper cuttings Winston Smith stared at before consigning to oblivion in his job at the Ministry of Truth.

      1. Stephen Verchinski says:

        Thank you Lochside. Will be in England soon. Facing Unpleasant Truths. Going to see the haunts of one Lady Oxford who did not know the other 99% existed.

  12. pebird says:

    We are confident that this sophisticated propaganda is of a type developed by the United Kingdom.

  13. Emily says:

    A very interesting comment posted by Peter on Moon of Alabama

    The photo of the Skripals which b used in a recent article appeared to be supplied to the media by a group called east2west news. The was no information on this group whatsoever, though it was clear they supplied a lot of original photos to the media for anti Russian pieces.
    Reading the Bella Caledonia article on Strategic Communication Laboratories/Cambrige Anyalytica and their activities, it seems likely this is the group that supplies the photos to mostly UK and Ukraine media as East2west News.

    Anyone with any further comment or information?

    1. Thanks Emily – will look into it

  14. Alan says:

    Bella getting Tweeted by New Yorker staff writers:
    https://twitter.com/JohnCassidy/status/976637407306113024

  15. John Ward says:

    A cracking piece, written with a degree of credibility rivalled only by Craig Murray.
    The problem however remains the denialism and low awareness (of how close we now are to full-on fascism) among pretty much the entirety of the electorate.

    There is no way the Corbynista Labour Party would stand a chance against the globalist axes…and anyway, Momentum et al suffer from the same naked intolerance exhibited by the MIC.

    However, State Pension embezzlement since 1995 stands a reasonable chance of waking people up to the endemic sociopathy of these gargoyles:
    https://hat4uk.wordpress.com/2018/03/22/waspi-explosive-cheated-pensioner-exposes-2004-leaflet-confirming-2020-as-year-when-female-spa-to-rise/

    The only way is to view oneself as a single piranha, and be ready when the 3% finally walk the plank.

  16. charle drake cbe obe gbh says:

    no no no
    i have just listened to the ian dale show on global zion groups london lbc he stated clearly that all this talk is just more paid russian meddling.
    why defame the great and the good of engerlund we are all in this together are you folks not with us in these regards.
    this is all just here here say.
    i have met many of thes chaps down the lodge and also during my time with the mayfair set.
    david sterling sas frank kidson gang counter gang and pseudogang is long ago.
    as for big brother bellpottinger,g4s serco and the big daddy tavistock well they are all busy building a new jerusalem in england and in oded yinon planned israel what what

  17. notheonly1 says:

    Even the most observant and astute member of the global community of human beings must cower in awe when looking at the degree of deceit and manipulation the lot is exposed to. As if the hallmarks of Fascism are not most prominently displayed by the actions and undertakings of the so called establishment class.
    This has been going on for a very long time and one is well advised to question any election outcome on the planet for at least two decades. The 21st century obviously is the Fascist century and its unfolding in the open adds insult to the injuries it is inflicting on human beings the world over.
    It remains then to be seen and experienced, when the majority of Western societies accept the fact that their Nations are drenched in Fascism and that the famous “Newspeak” is now wreaking havoc in the minds of its citizens. The greatest danger of any great danger is to be unaware of it. The Germans should be able to tell a story about that, albeit the above manipulation and programming has made that insight but a vague memory from a distant time. The millennials that finance FB/twitter & Co. are void of means to compare the spread of Fascism in the early 20th century with the raging digital conflagration Fascism is burning Nations faster than the most dire dystopian tale could have ever foreseen.
    Words are increasingly insufficient to describe this conflagration, in which the most egregious war crimes, crimes against humanity and financial piracy by corporations too big to jail, go either unmentioned, or without consequence in plain sight. Humanity has arrived at its evolutionary crossroads.
    It is ironic that as early as in the 18th century, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe had written a parable about man and his attempt to utilize powers he would be unable to contain. For the sorcerer’s apprentice, it was the broom bringing water, for mankind it was the electronic revolution – the computer and its use to enslave man.

    “Stop! Stand still!
    Heed my will!
    I’ve enough
    of the stuff!
    I’ve forgotten – woe is me!
    what the magic word may be.”

  18. SCL says:

    you missed one

  19. Robert Smith says:

    I have not seen or read anyone mentioning this: Part (1).Scot M Stedman, an indy jounalist has been digging through offshore funding of Russian oligarchy and there western connections re Trump/Brexit NRA ect. Alexander Torshin is a close confidante of Putin, and a NRA member, who helped set up a Russian version of NRA. He is being investigated by Mueller. They had lots of meetings across this Republican/Russia nexus,and Torshin is pictured in 2011 attending (as an official observer) a Tennessee vote. When Stedman asked the Tennesseee Republicans who invited Torshin to be observer, they told him it was a local attorney G. Kline Preston. Then I found on Youtbe, Preston being interviewed at the Russian Duma – again in 2011 – observing the Russian elections. Also attending, and interviewed was ex BNP leader Nick Griffin. Part (2) Prof Jonathan Albright is he guy who dicovered the methods used by RU and others in their online propaganda campaign. Albright has written extensively on on Troll/Bot TEN_GOP who had a massive digital footprint that gained millions of views. Somewhere in the region a mainstream news org would reach. There is also evidence surfacing that money has been coming from offshore entities and ending up in British based bank accounts. Suspicions are these maybe that on UK far-right groups.

  20. Robert Smith says:

    G.Kline Preston is a Russian born US citizen and a supporter of Putin, who is still tweeting.

  21. AnOldHand says:

    Thought I would copy and paste a comment I made on facebook when I shared this article.

    Paul, yes, I remember talking to you (or at you) about Cambridge Analytica a while back now. There are reasons why I knew what I did back then; inside contacts of a sort and having worked on this kind of thing at a PhD level over a decade ago.

    Back in my day Facebook was not around and so we would use webspiders like Google’s to follow links and download the webpages encountered. It took some nifty scripts to use a webspider to archive internet forums but we succeeded here none the less.

    On the analytical side we were a little more sophisticated in what we chose to look at and visualise: a war map if you will of the battle for hearts and minds, a proper visual social landscape over which minds were fought for.

    I remember one military/academic conference I attended and just how developed they were back then with respects to these matters. In hindsight my taking a job with an ex MI6 guy in his tabletop war gaming shop to fund my post grad work, and finding out he was a Mason and that his mate who joined us for gaming was a Professor (English sense hence a high level academic) at the same Uni as I designing AI to play GO (and was a fellow Mason), well, the writing was on the wall.

    Why is GO important here? It is a gaming model used for our modern times and it is an abstract version of the battle for hearts and minds and when I say we were designing ways to visualize Internet data to map out a dynamic game board to battle over, well, I am sure you can appreciate the work here what with being an avid chess player, Paul.

    I would very much appreciate a like and a share if you can manage that, Paul.

  22. Kryten42 says:

    A nice summation. One correction: Mark Turnbull’s profile at the University of Exeter Strategy and Security is gone. Exeter have revoked his Honorary Fellow status. Info & a copy of his previous profile is here:
    https://www.devonlive.com/news/devon-news/exeter-university-cuts-ties-man-1372587

  23. Susan O'Neill says:

    Thanks for this. I lost my original article(must have accidentally deleted it). Will post to my blog site and print off from here.

  24. Robert Jeffs says:

    I just sent the following letter to the Guardian with no expectation of its being published,

    The election of a man with a narcissistic personality disorder to be president of the United States; his term ending with an attempted coup.
    The exit of the United Kingdom from the European Economic Union. This to allow the Tories to get rid of the human rights legislation, which they are now beginning to do. Shortly after the referendum polls showed that the majority preferred to remain.
    The character assassination of Jeremy Corbyn from being the hero of the hour during Theresa May’s term in office. Now Keir Starmer is beginning to get the treatment.
    The election of Boris Johnson with an eighty-seat majority after years of destruction of the social fabric by the various Conservative governments.

    I don’t believe that these bizarre events were accidental. Does anyone remember Cambridge Analytica(CA) and its involvement in the presidential election and the EEC referendum? Does anyone know of its connections with the Conservative party the royal family and the military? Does anyone remember it closing its operations in 2018 following the discovery of its misuse of millions of personal records of Facebook customers? Where is the data now and where is the expertise? CA used individual psychological targeting which, despite serious efforts to play down its effectiveness, is plainly a powerful political tool. It is not surprising that other firms, with some of the same personnel, opened immediately on the demise of CA.

    You may believe that the above events, strange as they appear, are simply the will of the people, or you may believe that our system of government is being continually manipulated to ensure a right-wing outcome. One thing is reasonably certain, whatever ingenious policies the Labour party dreams up, it won’t win the next election!

  25. U Westphal says:

    A very British coup remains the lead article on which the German site referred to. Looking back over a period of 22 years, SC founded 1998 was not the American, but London based holding of public relations, gone burst only because enough damage was done. Contact me, will, ya!!

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