Oral evidence: Fake News, HC 363

Oral evidence, 27 March 2018.

Witnesses

Paul-Olivier Dehaye and Christopher Wylie.

Chair

Welcome to this further evidence session of the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee, as part of our inquiry into disinformation and fake news. I welcome Christopher Wylie and Paul-Olivier Dehaye to the Committee to give evidence this morning. Before we start the Committee session, I would like to give an update on the invitation of the Select Committee to Mark Zuckerberg to give evidence before us. We believe, given the serious nature of the allegations that have been made about the access and use of Facebook user data, that it is appropriate that Mark Zuckerberg should give evidence to the Committee. He has suggested that Chris Cox, the chief product officer at Facebook, could come to London to give evidence to the Committee in the first week after the Easter recess. We would be very happy to invite Mr Cox to give evidence. However, we would still like to hear from Mr Zuckerberg as well. We will seek to clarify with Facebook whether he is available to give evidence or not, because that was not clear from our correspondence. If he is available to give evidence we will be happy to do that, either in person or by videolink if that would be more convenient for him. I am happy to answer any further questions about that after the hearing but that is all we would like to say on that at this time. We turn now to the evidence session this morning, and I will ask Chris Wylie first. A lot of the Committee’s work over the last few weeks has been looking at the role of Cambridge Analytica in the data analytics business and their campaigns. We heard evidence from Alexander Nix a few weeks ago. Could you explain how you first became involved with Alexander Nix and Cambridge Analytica?

Christopher Wylie

I first joined SCL Group, which is the parent company of Cambridge Analytica, before Cambridge Analytica existed, in June 2013. I was introduced to him through a mutual contact that I had worked with previously in UK politics. SCL had an opening for a research director in part because the past research director died in his hotel room in Kenya when he was working for Uhuru Kenyatta. I did not know that at the time. Part of the reason why I was chosen to become research director is because the firm was looking to expand its digital capacity and keep up with the developments that were happening, particularly on the military side, looking at how information spreads online and developing new IP that they could then pass on to clients, whether that is political or military. Does that answer your question?

Chair

Yes. Can you explain how long you worked at and with Cambridge Analytica and what caused you to leave the company?

Christopher Wylie

When I started in June 2013, Cambridge Analytica did not exist yet. It is important for people to understand that Cambridge Analytica is more of a concept or a brand than anything else because it does not have employees. It is all SCL, it is just the front-facing company for the United States. I started at SCL Group in June 2013. In July 2014, I told Alexander Nix that I did not want to continue working at—then at the time—Cambridge Analytica, although I scaled down my work until the 2014 midterms; a year and a half. To be clear, Cambridge Analytica was set up in large part because of the research I was doing at SCL Group. The IP that we were creating was acquired by Robert Mercer and Cambridge Analytica became the vehicle to acquire the IP.

Chair

You said that Cambridge Analytica does not have any employees, that effectively they were all employed by SCL.

Christopher Wylie

Yes.

Chair

How would you characterise the relationship between these different companies? Is it one organisation that exists behind different facades?

Christopher Wylie

Cambridge Analytica was set up in part because, first, there was— the way it works is Cambridge Analytica was set up and SCL Elections, which is part of SCL Group, the group company, became a minority shareholder and then Robert Mercer became the majority shareholder of Cambridge Analytica. SCL assigned its intellectual property to Cambridge Analytica and Cambridge Analytica licensed back the IP to SCL Elections, and also granted SCL Elections an exclusivity contract whereby all projects from Cambridge Analytica would be given to SCL to work on, although the actual contracting on the client-facing side would be with Cambridge Analytica. Partly that was because in the United States there are particular rules against foreign actors in elections, so having an American company was beneficial for that purpose. Also Robert Mercer’s lawyers were concerned about two things. The first was the optics of acquiring a UK military contractor to work in American elections; optically that would not necessarily play well. Secondly, they were concerned about some of the history of the shareholders in the company, as well as some of the past projects they had worked on.

Chair

The company being SCL?

Christopher Wylie

SCL.

Chair

Cambridge Analytica was a company set up with the purpose of doing political work in America?

Christopher Wylie

In the United States with a new brand that was untainted by any history or legacy of past projects or shareholders.

Chair

A lot of people will ask—and I will ask—that given you are someone who worked very closely with these people for a period of time and understand this world very well, through your career working in it, why have you decided to speak out against it and give evidence against people who used to be your colleagues?

Christopher Wylie

As a citizen, one is expected and has a duty to report unlawful activity. If you are asking about my journey to this moment, a lot of people have asked me, “Why has it taken you so long?” What they do not see is that I have been working on this with The Guardian, and then later The New York Times and Channel 4, for a year. What you are seeing is the climax of that. This is a year-long coming-out process. Before going public I started working with the ICO and UK authorities to start their investigation. Also, very shortly after I left Cambridge Analytica I was threatened with legal action and had a very aggressive team of lawyers coming after me, so I signed an undertaking of confidentiality, which meant that if I broke that, I could be sued into oblivion by Robert Mercer. Frankly, that is intimidating. When I was working at Cambridge Analytica and setting it up, you do not appreciate the future impact of what your work is until it starts to happen. In 2016, I started looking at what this company was doing in the United States and coming to appreciate that the projects that I was working on may have had a much wider impact than I initially anticipated they would. Very shortly after Donald Trump was inaugurated is when I started working with Carole Cadwalladr at The Guardian on reporting some of the things that the company is doing. In the spring I was one of her key sources anonymously until we could figure out a legal position that would then allow me to come forward.

Chair

Would it be fair to say that, for you, Donald Trump’s election crossed a line? You felt the techniques that you were aware had been used should not have been used in the way they were during the campaign and you felt you had to speak out about it. Would that be a way of characterising it?

Christopher Wylie

I would not say it is just because of Donald Trump, but Donald Trump makes it click in your head that this has a much wider impact. I do not think that military-style information operations is conducive for any democratic process, whether it is the US presidential or a local council race.

Chair

When Cambridge Analytica was founded, was the algorithm, the database, inherited from SCL or was that something that you developed or was it developed by other people?

Christopher Wylie

This is partly why I was brought on as research director, because SCL was falling behind in its technical capacity, in its quantitative skillset. Before I joined, SCL did not have any data assets, so that was in large part why I was hired. It was the Ripon projects that acquired data and scaled it. It was at that moment that they started becoming more focused on data science.

Chair

I have seen a report that the idea of the name Cambridge Analytica was Steve Bannon’s. Is that correct?

Christopher Wylie

Yes, it is a bizarre story. Alexander Nix has his standard pitch, and it often relies heavily on, “We have offices in Mayfair,” and, “I went to Eton,” presenting a very posh veneer of the company. A lot of their clients are developing countries in the Commonwealth and that sort of image plays well with certain types of clients he had worked with in the past. The problem was that Steve Bannon did not care about that. He was much more interested in going and speaking at student events at Cambridge than sitting in a posh office in Mayfair. Alexander realised that, and he decided to set up a fake office in Cambridge so that whenever Steve Bannon— this is before Steve Bannon came on board to set up a project, which eventually became CA. Whenever Bannon came, we set up this fake office to present a more academic side of the company. It was from that that Steve Bannon decided we should call it Cambridge Analytica, because of how closely associated it was with the university. In his head it was a very academic company.

Chair

Other than that geographical proximity, did the company have any particular relationship with Cambridge University?

Christopher Wylie

It did not have a formal relationship, but we did work with a lot of professors at the University of Cambridge, in particular the psychology department and the psychometric centre.

Chair

They would deal with such projects and assist with developing techniques and ideas?

Christopher Wylie

Yes. Cambridge has an amazing psychology department. It is one of the top—if not the top—in the world for psychology, so it was a real resource to have that very close to us. We did work with several professors at the psychology department on developing psychometric inventories and also looking more broadly at the research that was coming out of the university in psychological profiling using online data exhausts. A lot of the papers that eventually became the foundation of the methods that were used on the Ripon project came out of research that was being done at the University of Cambridge, some of which was funded in part by DARPA, which is the US military’s research agency.

Chair

Did you approach academics on an ad hoc basis or was there any engagement with university authorities or any of the departments?

Christopher Wylie

We definitely talked to some of the more senior professors, but there was nothing formalised with the university itself. It was all done professor to professor to professor, but it sat in a grey area. When Ripon was happening we were engaging with a lot of people at Cambridge who played a pivotal role in getting that project going.

Paul Farrelly

Essentially your central motivation has been that you are rather aghast that techniques in the social media world that have been used for military PSYOPs purposes are being used in the political domain?

Christopher Wylie

That is a part of it. Also, more broadly, when you look at how Cambridge Analytica operates or how SCL operates, they do not care whether or not what they do is legal, as long as it gets the job done. There has been a lot of focus on the data side of things and there has been a lot of focus on targeting, but this is a company that goes around the world and undermines the big institutions of countries that are struggling to develop those institutions. There are a lot of reasons why I find the company problematic. It is not just the data. It is also more broadly that they are an example of what modern-day colonialism looks like. You have a wealthy company from a developed nation going into an economy or a democracy that is still struggling to get its feet on the ground and taking advantage of that to profit from that. There are several reasons why I find the company problematic.

Paul Farrelly

Do they like to have an aura of being the SMERSH of the modern digital age?

Christopher Wylie

The “smash”?

Chair

SMERSH. It is from James Bond, the evil organisation that manipulates things here, there and everywhere across the world.

Christopher Wylie

If you watch the Channel 4 undercover, you can see for yourself that they know that is the brand that it presents and they cultivate that. I think they find it amusing.

Paul Farrelly

I sort of get it. I did not quite know what to make of Mr Nix when he came to us, apart from he was a corporate financier who sought a higher calling, as he almost said it to us. I remember on Channel 4 one of the most hilarious bits was a chap called Mark Turnbull who had a big plaster on this nose saying that he was a master of disguise.

Christopher Wylie

He does not always have the plaster on his nose.

Paul Farrelly

We want to get on to some of the things that happened in different parts of the world, but just before we do, I wanted to probe into your predecessor who died in Kenya. I have not heard of that. He was working for the Kenyatta campaign.

Christopher Wylie

Yes.

Paul Farrelly

Were there any suspicious circumstances?

Christopher Wylie

I have heard several different stories as to what happened, so I do not know which story is accurate. But when you work in Kenyan politics, or politics in a lot of African countries, if a deal goes wrong, you can pay for it.

Paul Farrelly

Is this a matter of public record or is this new now?

Christopher Wylie

Dan was my predecessor and his death did cause some news coverage in Romania because he was the son of a Cabinet Minister in Romania, who is now in jail for corruption charges, I think. He came from a political family in Romania and the fact that he died was news. I have heard different stories of the circumstances of his death, so I am not sure which is—

Paul Farrelly

His name was Dan?

Christopher Wylie

His surname starts with a M.

Paul-Olivier Dehaye

Muresan. He was working simultaneously in India, I think, and there is also some—

Paul Farrelly

Simultaneously in India?

Paul-Olivier Dehaye

Yes.

Paul Farrelly

When you look at Facebook’s biggest market—I mentioned this in the States as well—India is the top in numbers of users and that is a country that is rife with political discord and opportunities for destabilisation.

Christopher Wylie

They have worked extensively in India. They have an office in India.

Paul Farrelly

This might be something we want to pursue later. When you were told that there was a vacancy because your predecessor died in Kenya, what explanation did the company give to you of that death?

Christopher Wylie

When I was hired I was not told that my predecessor had died in Kenya in his hotel room. That was several months, after when I asked about who I was replacing, because I was looking for some old files that I could not find. I did realise, but I did not know the name of the person who I replaced, so I asked about—looking through old files. That is where it came out that he died.

Paul Farrelly

Same question two months on: what explanation were you given of the— how old was he, do you know?

Christopher Wylie

He was in his 30s.

Paul Farrelly

Did they give you an explanation?

Christopher Wylie

They did. If I explain it, if you understand that it is pure speculation, so I am not stating this as a matter of fact. I am repeating what I heard. What I heard was that he was working on a deal of some sort. I am not sure exactly what kind of deal it was, but when you work for senior politicians in a lot of these countries, you do not make money in the electoral work, you make money in the influence brokering after the fact. A deal went sour and—again this is what I have been told, so I am not saying this is a matter of fact—and people suspected that he was poisoned in his hotel room. I also heard that the police were bribed to not enter the hotel room for 24 hours. But that is what I was told. I was not there, so I cannot speak to the veracity of that account, but that is what I was told.

Paul Farrelly

We will leave that there for the moment, because there are plenty of journalists who might want to follow some of those interesting leads. One of the things Mr Nix was at pains to stress when he was in front of us was that there were different companies, different entities—data could go one way but not another way, because of government contracting. But there was one name that came up as the data controller that was common between Cambridge Analytica and SCL, almost demonstrating that there were common personnel, notwithstanding the denials, which was a lady called Jordanna Zetter. Do you know her?

Christopher Wylie

I do not

Paul Farrelly

She is just a name?

Christopher Wylie

It is just a name, but they do put lots of random names on all kinds of things.

Paul Farrelly

I do not know if you have seen this pictogram of the SCL structure. It has been done by an independent journalist. It is just from filings at Companies House, so it is fairly standard. It is fairly complicated for a relatively small company.

Christopher Wylie

I’d wager that there are probably more companies than even what is on that piece of paper.

Paul Farrelly

There are some interesting names that crop up. Mr Nix we know about—the Etonian salesman I think you almost described him as.

Christopher Wylie

My understanding is that the reason why Alexander Nix was involved in SCL was because his father had shares in the company and his father died. He inherited shares or there was some deal that was done, because he has no background in psychology, tech, politics, any of the things that they operate in. He is a salesman; he likes to sell stuff.

Paul Farrelly

While I was cooking Sunday lunch this weekend I listened to a BBC profile of Nigel Oakes. Did you come across him?

Christopher Wylie

Yes, although not day to day. When we were setting up Cambridge Analytica, one of the reasons why SCL Elections rather than either the group company or another entity was the minority shareholder was because Alexander Nix wanted to keep more control for himself. He was quite paranoid about some of the other shareholders and directors in the group company, so he made a concerted effort to keep this project away from the others as long as possible. I did come across him several times, but it was not day to day. I did not work with him day to day.

Paul Farrelly

From his profile, Mr Oakes came across as the founding éminence grise behind the whole project.

Christopher Wylie

No, not for Cambridge Analytica. For SCL, yes, but not for Cambridge Analytica. Cambridge Analytica was Steve Bannon, Robert Mercer and Alexander Nix. Most of those negotiations happened in America. They kept it pretty separate from the legacy shareholders and directors of SCL. He played a pivotal role in setting up SCL Group.

Paul Farrelly

Can I just throw the role of a couple of other people: the role of the chairman, Julian Wheatland, and Victor Tchenguiz?

Christopher Wylie

They got rid of Tchenguiz when they were finalising the Cambridge Analytica deal. The Mercer lawyers did not like Tchenguiz’s involvement because apparently he had fairly sketchy business dealings that they did not want to be associated with.

Paul Farrelly

What was Julian Wheatland’s role?

Christopher Wylie

I believe he was the chairman, so he did not do much. He was like the Queen of the company—not to say the Queen does not do a lot. Sorry, do not interpret that as a slight on the Queen.

Paul Farrelly

I am putting these other names up because there is a danger that one focus is just on Mr Nix, who has a very sinister surname.

Christopher Wylie

For a lot of these guys, their role is not to do work, it is to do deals. They do not do anything day to day. They are the ones who, because of their family or because of their businesses or what-have-you, have a very wide network of people—not just here in the UK but, in particular, in Africa and various developing countries—that enables the company to go and get working contracts. Their roles were usually like as the introducer, as the dealmaker, not managing the day-to-day operations of the company.

Paul Farrelly

Would you characterise them as people who wanted to make a fortune out of this, or people who are genuinely curious about the ability, through social media in the digital age, for them to be able to manipulate outcomes in politics?

Christopher Wylie

You have to remember that a lot of these people are very wealthy already, so it is not Alexander Nix in particular. There is one time where he had to go and we were running late because he had to pick up a £200,000 chandelier. These are people who do not need to make a lot of money, but the thing that I learned is that for certain wealthy people they need something to keep them occupied and they need projects. Going into the developing world and running a country is something that appeals to them. I did not mean that in a flippant way, if that came across as flippant.

Paul Farrelly

This charter has no mention of Aggregate IQ or SCL Canada, as it styled itself. What is the relationship between that Canadian company and the rest of this group?

Christopher Wylie

Very shortly after I became research director at SCL, I was given the directive or the mandate to expand the company’s software capacity and technological infrastructure and we obviously needed people to do that. I reached out to people I had worked with on previous projects who I respected. One of those people was Jeff Silvester, who is now the CTO of Aggregate IQ. In the first email that I sent, which I have also passed on to the Committee—I passed on several folders of documents—where I tell Jeff that I have just become a research director, “This is what we do”, his immediate reaction is, “You need a Canadian office”. He replied, “You need a Canadian office”. When I went to Alexander Nix and I said, “There are a couple of Canadians that I want to hire,” he said, “Fine, but they have to come here and work in London.” When I talked with Jeff and several other people, who later became AIQ, they had new families, had just got a house, and it is not easy to just get up and move to a different country when you have young kids. I went back to Alexander and said, “Look, they’re not mobile, but I think they would be helpful because they’re good at what they do.” The compromise was that a Canadian company would be set up. That would enable the Canadians who wanted to work on the projects— and keep in mind at the time this is SCL, this is before Cambridge Analytica was set up, so primarily we were focused on projects in the developing world. But the deal was that they would sign an intellectual property licence whereby all of the work that they were doing for the company would be assigned to SCL Group and they would trade as SCL Canada, but they set up a Canadian entity, and the legal name was Aggregate IQ. That was also in part because when you work in a lot of countries, sometimes it is beneficial to have different billing names on invoices. If you are working in a country that has declarable expenses and all that, you can—particularly if you are trying to get around co-ordination rules, like in the United States, which has very strict non-co-ordination rules. If you can bill as several different companies but it is the same team working on it, the paperwork looks compliant even if the project is not.

Paul Farrelly

It is a Canadian-based shell company, effectively?

Christopher Wylie

Yes. I would call it like a franchise. On internal staff documents, for example this internal staff list—which I have also passed on to the Committee—AIQ staff are listed under SCL Canada. The internal documents of the company refer to this entity, AIQ, as SCL Canada, as I have been saying for months, but has now been validated yesterday by Gizmodo, which is a website that has found the code base that AIQ built that shows that AIQ built the Ripon platform for Cambridge Analytica. There is now tangible proof in the public domain that AIQ built Ripon, which is the software that utilised the algorithms from the Facebook data. I could talk more about some of the other projects that AIQ has worked on. In the Nigerian project in 2015, which Carole Cadwalladr at The Guardian has touched on in her reporting, the company utilises services of an Israeli private intelligence firm, and that firm is Black Cube. That has not been reported, although Channel 4 has undercover footage, that they have not been able to put into the public domain, of Alexander Nix talking about the relationship with Black Cube. On the Nigeria project, Black Cube was engaged to hack the now President of Nigeria, Buhari, to get access to his medical records and private emails. AIQ worked on that project. AIQ was handed material in Nigeria from Cambridge Analytica to distribute online. That is distribution of kompromat, and that is also distribution of incredibly threatening and violent video content, which I have also passed on to the Committee. The videos that AIQ distributed in Nigeria with the sole intent of intimidating voters included content where people were being dismembered, were having their throats cut and bleeding to death in a ditch, being burned alive. There are incredibly anti-Islamic and threatening messages portraying Muslims as violent. You have Aggregate IQ, which received 40% of Vote Leave’s funding, also working on projects that involved hacked material and kompromat and distributing violent videos of people being bled to death to intimidate voters. This is the company that played an incredibly pivotal role in politics here. Something that I would strongly recommend to the Committee is that they not only push the authorities here, but give them the support that they need in order to investigate this company and what they were doing in Brexit.

Paul Farrelly

Most of the reporting here has been focused on the Cambridge Analytica link, or lack of link, with Leave.EU, rather than iterate entities, links with Vote Leave, both from a Vote Leave campaign, and also the money that has been diverted off to BeLeave. The other focus of the recording has been the amount of Facebook data that has been collected through Aleksandr Kogan’s activities, which mostly seems to relate to the States. Clearly, the question underlying all this is that if you are going to spend such a lot of money trying to influence the UK referendum, to be able to do that you have to have a set of data on lots of UK individuals to make it worth people’s while spending the money with you. I hope the extent of the UK data that are held by Cambridge Analytica and its affiliates and associates might come out in this session.

Christopher Wylie

One of the things I have also passed on to the Committee is some of the contractual documentation and emails from some of AIQ’s past projects. One of them was at the time the Minister of national security of Trinidad. In the contractual documents, and then also email chains of AIQ, part of the project was to go out and find a way of accessing raw internet service provider data for the entire country, to monitor what people were browsing in that country. As I understand it, that is not legal in Trinidad. It certainly would not be legal here. But the thing that I would say is that Aggregate IQ, in part because it was set up and works within the auspices of Cambridge Analytica, inherited a lot of the company culture of total disregard for the law. I would again try to encourage looking at this question of where did they get the data. When I met with Dom Cummings in November 2015, one of the things that was apparent is that Vote Leave at the time did not have any data. That is November 2015. Dom Cummings in part wanted to meet with me because he was interested in Cambridge Analytica. He also said that he wanted to have the “Palantir for politics”, but it became apparent that if you do not even have the electoral register, let alone a social database, you cannot do this, or you cannot do this legally. Very shortly after that meeting they then engaged AIQ, I think in part—although this bit is me speculating—because it would look odd if Leave.EU is working with Cambridge Analytica and Vote Leave was working with Cambridge Analytica. But you could get the next best thing, which is a company that can do virtually everything that CA can do but with a different billing name for your invoices. But my question is: where did you get the data? How do you create a massive targeting operation in a country that AIQ had not previously worked in in two months? It baffles me as to how that could happen in such a short amount of time. That is a good question. It is unfortunate that AIQ hides behind jurisdictional barriers and does not come here and answer those questions. But it is something that hopefully can be looked at as to how did it actually work. This is a company that has worked with hacked material. This is a company that will send out videos of people being murdered to intimidate voters. This is a company that goes out and tries to illicitly acquire live internet browsing data of everyone in an entire country. A lot of questions should be asked about the role of Aggregate IQ in this election, and whether they were compliant with the law here, beyond just spending infractions.

Chair

Thank you. We have quite a few colleagues who want to come in on this particular point. If I could say for the record and people following the proceedings that Chris Wylie has given the Committee access to a large number of documents that he has. We received those this morning and we will be looking to go through those and discuss those with him, with a view to publishing some of those documents probably tomorrow, but certainly as soon as we can practically go through them and look through them. The allegation you make about AIQ and Nigeria is very serious. Do the documents in the folders you have given us provide evidence to support that allegation?

Christopher Wylie

You have one of the videos that I am referring to and I would recommend following Carole Cadwalladr’s reporting on the matter because she has done a ton of work on researching it. She has published some articles on the Nigeria hacking scheme also. But AIQ was involved in the Nigeria project, both as the company and then several people also individually who also frequently work at AIQ.

Ian C. Lucas

I want to put to Mr Wylie a statement that was made by Aggregate IQ on their website on Saturday, 24 March 2018. They said, “Aggregate IQ is a digital advertising web and software development company based in Canada. It is and has always been 100% Canadian owned and operated. Aggregate IQ has never been and is not a part of Cambridge Analytica or SCL”. What is your reaction to that statement?

Christopher Wylie

They are using weasel words. That is all technically true but let me be super clear. They are based in Canada; that is true. They are a Canadian company; that is true. They are not owned but they have licensed their intellectual property. Secondly, the basis of the software of Cambridge Analytica— for example, they built the Ripon project. They operate as an internal entity. They are kept at arm’s length, in part because that was useful, particularly for American projects, where you need different entities to work on campaigns and pacts and various other entities where you cannot necessarily co-ordinate. But if you have different companies, the paperwork looks appropriate and the paperwork looks compliant, even if behind the scenes you are talking back and forth and using the same underlying technology. They built Ripon. Ripon was the software that these algorithms went into that then deployed the data to target—the actual advertising deployment was on them. That is what they did. It is fine and dandy for them to say, “We are a Canadian company.” That is true, but if you unmask what they do and look at how they operate and the projects they have worked on, the overwhelming majority of those projects and the overwhelming majority of their income comes from, and came from, Cambridge Analytica and SCL.

Ian C. Lucas

Are you in a position to say definitively today that Cambridge Analytica shared its data with AIQ?

Christopher Wylie

It depends on what you mean by “its data”.

Ian C. Lucas

Shared any data.

Christopher Wylie

Yes, absolutely. You cannot create software that deploys adverts or targets people online or has a front-end interface for you to query data without accessing the data itself. You cannot have targeting software that does not access the database. CA would have a database and AIQ would be able to access that, because otherwise the software does not work, if you see what I am saying.

Ian C. Lucas

Yes, I see what you are saying. We have evidence now that Facebook data was used by Cambridge Analytica and it is accepted, even by Facebook, that that information was unlawfully transferred to Cambridge Analytica. Can you say that AIQ had access to that data?

Christopher Wylie

Yes, because the Ripon software and the Ripon project was the modelling of that Facebook data, among other datasets, and then the deployment of that data in online targeting and various other political projects. It was AIQ that provided documents in terms of the contract. What I provided to the Committee is the contractual documents and the IP licensing for that. Yesterday, the website Gizmodo found a lot of the actual underlying code with the software development comments between AIQ and SCL developers. Not only do you have access to the contractual documents, which are provided to the Committee, but also if you look at what Gizmodo is reporting you can see the code.

Rebecca Pow

I was interested in you saying early where did they get the data from and I just wanted to get this on the record. We had Alexander Nix here and I asked him about whether they had used Facebook data. He categorically said, “We do not work with Facebook. We do not have Facebook data but we do use it as a platform to advertise. We do gather data from Facebook and we do surveys”.

Christopher Wylie

We do not have Facebook data but we gather Facebook data.

Rebecca Pow

Exactly. What would you say to that? Do you think that was absolutely a lie that they did have Facebook data—they were gathering it, they were using it? On the back of that, if we have this link between Cambridge Analytica and Aggregate IQ, a company that Robert Mercer owns, surely they must be using the data.

Christopher Wylie

To address your first point, it is categorically untrue that Cambridge Analytica has never used Facebook data. Facebook data and the acquisition, using Aleksandr Kogan’s app, was the foundational dataset of the company. That is how the algorithms were developed. They spent $1 million at least on that acquisition project. What I have provided to the Committee is the signed contracts with Aleksandr Kogan’s signature and Alexander Nix’s signature on a contract that references using an app that harvests Facebook data and friend network data also.

Rebecca Pow

They have led us up the garden path for a long time and now we are getting to the bottom of it.

Christopher Wylie

Alexander Nix’s comments to your Committee were exceptionally misleading. I would say not only misleading but I think they were dishonest.

Paul-Olivier Dehaye

There has also been on YouTube on the public record for a long time two videos from 2015 where you see interns— at least in one of the videos you see an intern who was working at Cambridge Analytica describing his work in a public forum, his work using Facebook likes to model psychographics and he is describing his work at Cambridge Analytica. When The Guardian contacted Cambridge Analytica the video was removed, even though it was controlled by a different entity called ASI Data Science. I had managed to download that video so I have it and I put it on the record.

Christopher Wylie

ASI Data Science also worked for Vote Leave. ASI was one of the subcontractors to Cambridge Analytica and they provided a lot of the data scientists that Cambridge Analytica used to do their modelling work. Vote Leave used Aggregate IQ and they also used ASI. Their chief technology officer, Tom Borwick, also worked on projects for SCL Group in Trinidad and Antigua. More broadly a question that should be asked is: why is it that all these entities were being used? Given that Dom Cummings was very interested in Cambridge Analytica, and not only Cambridge Analytica but more broadly Robert Mercer’s work in Renaissance Technologies—which is his hedge fund—what did Dom Cummings know and why is it that he was using Aggregate IQ and ASI Data Science? Why is it that their CTO was also somebody who ran projects for SCL Group around the world? To her credit, Carole Cadwalladr at The Guardian has been raising these questions for a year now. It would be appropriate for your Committee and other Committees to start raising those questions also. What was happening inside of Vote Leave and why were these companies chosen?

Julie Elliott

This is fascinating. Quite a lot of the things that I was wanting to ask have come out in evidence. It sounds to me as if all of these different names of things are to just try to confuse what on earth is going on here—not by you but by the companies in the way they have been set up. If AIQ were being paid for work for the Vote Leave campaign and others, do you think they were working to a common plan for paid work to get a common result or do you think they have all been working separately?

Christopher Wylie

Which common plan are you referring to?

Julie Elliott

For the various leave campaigns, which was to get a leave vote in the referendum.

Christopher Wylie

I supported leave, despite having pink hair and a nose ring. I am one of the rare breeds of progressive eurosceptics. I do not believe in the current Brexit plan, but I do speak as somebody who— for me, this is not about remain or leave. This is about the integrity of the democratic process, which is more important than anything else. I just want to preface what I say. I am absolutely convinced that there was a common plan and common purpose with Vote Leave, BeLeave, the DUP, and Veterans for Britain. All of these companies somehow, for some reason, decided to use Aggregate IQ as their primary service provider when Aggregate IQ did not have any public presence, no media, no website. The only way you could find them on the internet is if you went to SCL’s website and called them SCL Canada. The first question I have is: why is it that all of a sudden this company that has never worked on anything but Cambridge Analytica projects, that had no public presence, somehow became the primary service provider to all of these supposedly independent and different campaign groups? Secondly, what I have provided to the Electoral Commission is three binders of evidence—about this high—of emails, documents, invoices, chat logs, activity logs, system logs, screen caps, of conversations that were happening inside of Vote Leave, in particular with reference to the BeLeave project, which was the single largest expenditure of Vote Leave went to BeLeave. When you look at the accumulation of evidence, I think it would be completely unreasonable to come to any other conclusion that this must be co-ordination; this must be a common-purpose plan. After BuzzFeed released their first article on, “Isn’t it bizarre that a fashion student who is 22 receives £625,000 in the last two weeks of the referendum? Isn’t it weird that this Canadian company that no one has ever heard of received 40% of Leave’s spending?”, having introduced Darren and Shamir to Vote Leave and having set up this company, I was genuinely concerned that something unlawful happened. It does not pass the smell test. When I went and spoke to Aggregate IQ, they were very pleased with themselves as to how that project went—understandably, they won. But I asked them, “Can you show me what it is you are doing? What was your secret? How did you win? What did you do?” They conceded to me, and this is a verbatim quote—and I stand by; I remember Jeff Silvester telling me this—it was “totally illegal”. But they found it amusing, because you have to remember that this is a company that has gone around the world and undermined democratic institutions in all kinds of countries. They could not care less as to whether or not their work is compliant because they like to win. I asked them, “Okay, show me some of the work that you have done.” I asked them, “Did you silo the data? Did you silo your advertising?” If you are doing problematic advertising, if you do not silo your programmes into different campaigns, the results of one campaign will influence the results of the other campaign. They said absolutely not, it was all just one common ad programme, which means that Aggregate IQ was just used as a proxy money-laundering vehicle. What Dom Cummings did is he went around and found places that he could just launder money through to give it to AIQ so that they could overspend. That is my genuinely held belief. It makes me so angry because a lot of people supported leave because they believe in the application of British law and British sovereignty, and to irrevocably alter the constitutional settlement of this country on fraud is a mutilation of the constitutional settlement of this country. You cannot call yourself a leaver, you cannot call yourself somebody who believes in British law and win by breaking British law in order to achieve that goal.

Julie Elliott

Is it your belief as well that the law was broken?

Christopher Wylie

Absolutely. I am so angry that two people that I introduced in good faith— it is hard for a lot of young people to get involved in politics, and I introduced these two young people to volunteer on a campaign to Stephen Parkinson in good faith that they would not be manipulated and they would not be used to break the law. What is so egregious about this is that Darren was made to be personally liable for a criminal conspiracy, in my view. It is absolutely outrageous that the amount of emotional trauma that Darren has been put through, watching his mental health deteriorate, watching—Dom Cummings and Matthew Elliott encouraged him and eventually convinced him to quit university so that he could stay at BrexitCentral. I talked to Darren and said, “You should get out of this because you are losing your perspective as to what is happening,” and I told him I thought he was being manipulated, particularly after all of this stuff came out. He said, “Well, I have already quit university because they told me to quit university, and what am I going to do? I have no options. Everyone hates me.” He told me that he felt trapped. Part of the reason why I am speaking out, and part of the reason why Shamir is speaking out, is in large part, irrespective of what you think about Darren’s political stance on things, he was a young person who was manipulated and continues to be manipulated. What is so outrageous is that he is the one who is legally liable. He is the one being investigated. It is not Dom Cummings being investigated. It is not Stephen Parkinson being investigated. It is not Cleo Watson, also at Downing Street, being investigated. She was head of Outreach and was in charge of this programme. It is not Victoria Woodcock, who, two weeks after being notified that she was under investigation, goes on to the shared drive where they were putting all of their advertising, putting all of their materials, and attempts to delete Dom Cummings, herself and Henry de Zoete, the head of Digital Vote Leave, after they were notified that they were under investigation. It is not them that is being investigated. It is Darren, the 22 year-old intern who had no control over that spending and was just told, “Sign here, sign here”.

Julie Elliott

Do you think these people that you have mentioned—not Darren; the other people that you have mentioned there—knew that what they were doing was in breach of the law?

Christopher Wylie

Vote Leave’s lawyers, William Norton, wrote the constitution for BeLeave. The entire process was managed by Vote Leave’s lawyers, so BeLeave was set up by Vote Leave’s lawyers and the entire process was managed by Vote Leave’s lawyers. As Shahmir has commented on before, that created a veneer or a sense that what BeLeave was doing or what these two young people were doing felt legal because they kept talking to the lawyers, who kept telling them to do this and that. They just assumed that, “If the Vote Leave lawyers are telling us to do this, this must be the proper way to do it.” This was their first campaign. They were volunteers. Although Darren is technically legally liable for what happened, morally I don’t fault him.

Julie Elliott

If we put Darren to one side, do you think that Dominic Cummings and all of these other people that you are talking about knew that what was being done was not on the right side of the law?

Christopher Wylie

Why did Victoria Woodcock, two weeks after being notified that they were under investigation, go on to a shared drive that Vote Leave set up and try to delete herself, Dom Cummings and Henry de Zoete? Why did that happen after being notified that they were under investigation?

Chair

We can speculate on that now. Ultimately, this is a matter for the Electoral Commission, and if an offence has been committed, they will recommend action is taken against the individuals concerned.

Simon Hart

It is almost irrelevant to what you were just saying, but let’s assume for a minute that the assertions you make are right. Have you or anybody else made any assessment of whether any of this made much difference to the final outcome of the EU referendum?

Christopher Wylie

Okay, two points on that. The first point is when you are caught in the Olympics doping, there is not a debate about how much illegal drug you took or, “Well, he probably would have come in first anyway,” or, “He only took half of the amount.” It does not matter. If you are caught cheating, you lose your medal, because if we allow cheating in our democratic process and we allow this amount, what about next time? What about the time after that? This is a breach of the law. This is cheating. The thing that is important to understand here is that this is not some council race or a by-election; this is an irreversible change to the constitutional settlement of this country. First of all, that is why it matters. If you cheat on an exam, you get a fail. If you cheat on the Olympics, you lose your medal. You should not win by cheating, first point. The second point, to the actual substance of your question, Dom Cummings himself says that this is what won Brexit for them. He says, “AIQ. They could not have won without AIQ,” and it speaks volumes to the fact that they spent 40% of their budget on AIQ. Having seen the effectiveness of the conversion rates on the online ads that AIQ puts out, they are incredibly effective. They are incredibly effective. When you look at online adverts, you can get programmes with a conversion rate of 1% or 2%. A conversion, just so that people are aware, is not just somebody seeing an ad and not only just seeing an ad and then clicking on the ad; it is clicking on the ad and then performing an action. That is what the definition of a conversion is: filling out a form; giving an email.

Simon Hart

Are you going as far as saying that had these institutions not cheated, in your words, the outcome of the referendum might have been different? Is that what you are saying, or is that what Dom Cummings was saying?

Christopher Wylie

I think it is completely reasonable to say that there could have been a different outcome in the referendum had there not been, in my view, cheating.

Chair

I want to clarify a few things we have been discussing in this section. You have used the term “franchise operation”. It seems like a kind of mafia-style franchise operation of these different entities—we have focused on three; there could be many more—that are technically independent of each other but they are totally reliant on each other as well; their businesses are reliant on each other. If there is one entity, do you think there is one person who is responsible for that entity?

Christopher Wylie

As in who is responsible for the whole web of things?

Chair

Yes. If it is a franchise, ultimately there is a co-ordinator of that franchise. There is someone whose IP that franchise is.

Christopher Wylie

When I was there that was Alexander Nix and Steve Bannon, but that is a question you should be asking AIQ.

Chair

In regards to AIQ and the data in GSR, the Aleksandr Kogan data, do you believe that all the companies would have had access to that data that was gathered as well? Would that have been accessible to AIQ, to Cambridge Analytica, to anyone who was working as part of this franchise?

Christopher Wylie

Yes, absolutely. It is farcical to say that AIQ did not have access to the Facebook data when they were building the software that deployed it. You can’t do online targeting if you do not have access to the database. You can’t.

Brendan O’Hara

One question, looking back slightly, you talked about the AIQ conversion rates: what were those conversion rates? You said they were significant or more than significant. What were they? Can you quantify them?

Christopher Wylie

Obviously it depends on the programme and the advert, so there is not one hard and fast rule. I have seen conversion rates at 5%, 7%, which does not sounds like a lot, but in online advertising that is a very effective programme because, again, the conversion is not just somebody seeing the ad or even clicking on it. It is them going and performing an action and signing up, donating, performing a substantive action or coming and attending an event—so, performing a substantive action. On online ads, a lot of programmes that I have seen will get conversions of 1% or 2%. I saw one programme that they had, which had 10%—that was insane—but they had substantially higher conversion rates, at least on the American projects that I worked on. I have not seen the work intimately that they did on Brexit, but they focused their effort. AIQ did not just advertise to everybody in the country. They focused their effort on 5 million to 7 million people who were the core universe that, if you could turn out these people, then you can win. What they told me is that they did not advertise to everyone in the country. They took a very specific sliver of the country in a very calculated way that they needed in order to win and they just blasted them with ads. You could find out because Facebook would have that information, Google would have that information.

Brendan O’Hara

You say that 5%, 7%, up to 10% is absolutely unprecedented in terms of—

Christopher Wylie

Again, for substantive actions like giving £20, signing up and going to an event, becoming a member, whatever that substantive action is, that is a really good conversion rate for people that you have never spoken to before. I am not talking about retargeting. I am talking about fresh people that you have never spoken to before but if you target it in an effective way— if you think about it, if you get a 5% to 7% conversion rate and you target several hundred thousand people and each of those people gives £10, if you count that as the substantive action, or joins and becomes a member or attends an event, that action, when you scale it, becomes quite impactful.

Brendan O’Hara

Can I ask you about the relationship between Cambridge Analytica and Global Science Research? What was that relationship, as you understand it? What did they do?

Christopher Wylie

GSR is Kogan’s company. There were several iterations of the Facebook harvesting project. It first started as a very small pilot, firstly to see, most simply, is this data matchable to an electoral register? One of the concerns was if you just collect somebody named John Smith, that could be anybody, so can you match that to this John Smith, on this street, in this city. We then scaled out slightly to make sure that he could acquire data in the speed that he said that he could. The first real pilot of it was a sample of 10,000 people who joined the app. That was in late May 2014. That project went really well, and that is when we signed a much larger contract with GSR in the first week of June—I cannot remember the specific date but the first week of June 2014—where the app went out and collected surveys and people joining apps throughout the summer of 2014. That ended up leading to the 50—the 50 million number is what the media has felt safest to report, because of the documentation that they can rely on, but my recollection is that it is substantially higher than that. My own view is that it was much more than 50 million, but in terms of the relationship, there was a contractual relationship between the companies. Is that the—

Brendan O’Hara

Yes. I just wanted to follow on. Now that we have established that there was this contractual relationship, from Cambridge Analytica’s perspective, was that a useful relationship with GSR?

Christopher Wylie

From Cambridge Analytica’s perspective?

Brendan O’Hara

Yes.

Christopher Wylie

Incredibly. This is what built the company. This was the foundational dataset that then was modelled to create the algorithms. That was a very important relationship.

Brendan O’Hara

The reason I ask that is because on 27 February, when Alexander Nix was here, he was asked, “Does any of your data come from Global Science Research?” to which he replied, “We had a relationship with GSR. They did some research for us back in 2014. That research proved to be fruitless so the answer is no”. The Chair then said, “They have not supplied you with any data or information?” Mr Nix replied, “No”. The Chair said, “Your datasets are not based with information you have received from them?” He said, “No, not at all”.

Christopher Wylie

Million-dollar contracts. All I would say to that is, “Well, why did you spend the better part of $1 million on GSR? Why are there copious amounts of emails?” I have passed on to the Committee the contractual documents, the invoicing, the match rates of that data, emails about that data. That is just not true. It is just not true. Sorry, it is not true.

Brendan O’Hara

You described or you have been quoted as saying that Cambridge Analytica, “We exploited Facebook to harvest millions of people’s profiles and built models to exploit what we knew about them and target their inner demons”. Could you explain a little bit further what that means and even give a practical example of what that would have meant?

Christopher Wylie

When you are looking at psychological disposition—no one is a perfectly rational agent. What in part makes us human is our irrationality, otherwise we would all be just robots. Different people have different dispositional attributes—so, different personality traits, different degrees of mental heuristics or biases. For example, if you are able to create profiling algorithms that can predict certain traits—let’s say a high degree of openness and a high degree of neuroticism—and when you look at that profile, it is the profile of a person who is more prone to conspiratorial thinking, for example. They are open enough to connect to things that may not seem reasonable to your average person and they are anxious enough or impulsive enough to start clicking and reading and looking at things. If you can create a psychological profile of a type of person who is more prone to adopting certain forms of ideas, conspiracies for example, and you can identify what that person looks like in data terms, you can then go out and predict how likely somebody is going to be to adopt more conspiratorial messaging and then advertise or target them with blogs or websites or what everyone now calls fake news, so that they start seeing all of these ideas or all of these stories around them in their digital environment. They do not see it when they watch CNN or NBC or BBC, and they start to go, “Well, why is it that everyone is talking about this online? Why is it that I’m seeing everything here but the mainstream media isn’t talking about how Obama has moved a battalion into Texas because he’s planning on staying for a third term? I keep seeing that everywhere, but why isn’t the mainstream media talking about that?” Not everyone is going to adopt that, so the advantage of using profiling is that you can find the specific group of people who are more prone to adopting that idea as your early adopters. If you think about it in terms of trends, all trends start with a group of people who adopt something early. If you can find those people in your datasets, because you know what they look like in terms of data, you can catalyse a trend over time, but you first need to find what those people look like. Does that—

Brendan O’Hara

Yes. Was that tactic routinely used by SCL or Cambridge Analytica? Was that one of the tools in the armoury that was routinely used?

Christopher Wylie

Yes. The basis of a lot of our research was: how far can we go with certain types of people, and who is it that we would need to target with what types of messaging?

Brendan O’Hara

In accessing that data or getting your hands on that data, did Cambridge Analytica or SCL approach GSR or was it the other way round? Were they approached by GSR?

Christopher Wylie

Yes. I have had this question quite a bit. It is sort of a bit of both, because we were already working with several professors at Cambridge. The first point that I would say is that GSR became a company simply to service Cambridge Analytica. GSR did not pre-exist. We were already working with a lot of professors—just ad hoc consulting and that sort of thing—at Cambridge, which is how we got introduced to Kogan. It was not as direct as, “I sought out Kogan,” or, “CA sought out Kogan,” and it was not that Kogan sought out us. It was just the fact that we were engaging a lot of the same people and it was just through that interaction that we started talking. The first profs that we started working with were David Stillwell and Michal Kosinski, but the reason we stopped working with them was because Michal Kosinski at the time was the deputy director of the psychometric centre, and once he found out how much money we had, he asked for $500,000 and 50% royalties, which he sent in an email. I have also provided that to the Committee. It was not feasible on an experimental project to make that kind of commitment. It was Kogan who then came and said, “Well, I could do it. As long as you pay for the data and pay for costs, we can do it and figure out some kind of commercial deal after so let’s just see if this works.” That is why Kogan ultimately was selected to be the person to provide those services, because Dr Kosinski wanted $500,000 and 50% royalties.

Brendan O’Hara

Do you know how much Cambridge Analytica paid GSR for the data?

Christopher Wylie

It depends on what you mean by “paid for”. The way the project ran for the most part was SCL—because remember all the accounts are SCL, so when I say CA and SCL I am talking about is effectively the same thing. It was technically SCL accounts that were paying for it. SCL would pay for the invoicing to Qualtrics or MTurk, which were survey responder recruitment platforms. SCL would pay for that directly. Not that much money was passed through GSR. It was just paid directly to Qualtrics or Amazon MTurk and so on. GSR was paid money, because in order to make a valid contract you need consideration. They did receive £3.14 or pi pounds as the contract fee, but most of the money that was spent went directly to pay for costs rather than pay Kogan when I was there. I know that Kogan stayed around longer with SCL after I left, so I am not sure at that point if he made a commercial deal or not with SCL, but when I was there it was predominantly just a research project. The deal was that he could keep all the data and do research or whatever he wanted to do with it. For him it was appealing because you had a company that was the equivalent of— no academic grant could compete with the amount of money that we could spend on it, and also we did not have to go through all the compliance stuff that you have to do with academic grants and all the reporting and all of that, so we could literally just start next week and pay for whatever you want. My impression at the time was that for an academic that would have been quite appealing.

Brendan O’Hara

Much of the attention, quite rightly, is on Cambridge Analytica at the moment. Do you know if there are other data analytics companies out there who are operating in the same way?

Christopher Wylie

When I first joined SCL, one of the very first emails I got was asking me about a company called Palantir. I am not sure if people are familiar with Palantir, but it is a private contractor. Its largest client is the NSA. It also works for GCHQ. Alexander Nix was very interested in the work that Palantir did, in part because Sophie Schmidt, who is the daughter of Eric Schmidt, the chairman of Google, worked for Alexander Nix before I came on board and introduced him to Palantir. When I came on, one of the very first questions was, “Can we do something with Palantir? Can we do something with Palantir? What do you think about Palantir?” We had several meetings with Palantir while I was there, and some of the documentation I have also provided to the Committee— and there is more documentation that I still need to provide you on this. There were senior Palantir employees who were also working on the Facebook data. Can I clarify one point? That was not an official contract between Palantir and Cambridge Analytica, but there were Palantir staff who would come into the office and work on the data, and we would go and meet with Palantir staff at Palantir. Just to clarify, Palantir did not officially contract with Cambridge Analytica, but there were Palantir staff who helped build the models that we were working on.

Rebecca Pow

It was something you mentioned earlier, Christopher, and I wondered if it is related to some of the things my colleague has just referred to. You mentioned that in the elections around the world that these various companies, AIQ in particular, had been involved with, one of the main influences and the main way they made money was through “influence brokering”. Could you explain what that is? I am asking whether there is a more sinister side to this. This is not just about influence in affecting elections and the kick of the academic side. Is there a more sinister moneymaking side linked to all of this that we have not yet uncovered?

Christopher Wylie

Yes. You don’t make a ton of money working on politics, particularly in a small island nation, for example, but that island nation may have oil reserves or minerals or lax labour laws that can be exploited by companies, or could have lax labour laws if those laws were passed. Part of the business model of SCL is to capture a Government—so, win an election. You get paid for that, but you do not make a ton of money; where you make money is then going to the Minister and introducing the Minister to a company and then making deals. There were different companies that were interested in building new ports or things like that, and in order to get a competitive advantage, if some money goes here and some money goes here and you can introduce the Minister and if the minister then approves the project, you get a cut of that deal. When I was there, it was not just selling influence from a company to a Government. Often they would use fake Government projects to also help support the political aims of the Minister. For example, Alexander Nix met with the Minister for health of Ghana and offered essentially to provide her with a large degree of political and campaign services, but they would bill it through the Ministry of Health as a health research programme, and so they approved that. I have also sent documentation to the Committee on this.

Rebecca Pow

Can I just stop you? Earlier you referred to some of these very wealthy people involved in these companies. Do you think this is what their driving force is—that they can be big power players on the world stage?

Christopher Wylie

Yes. You can be like a colonial master in a country. Sorry, not to sound flippant about it, but it felt very much like a privatised colonising operation. You would go into a country that has underdeveloped civic institutions, exploit that and make money off it. They make a lot of their money through exploiting relationships and, because there is not a lot of oversight and Government accountability in a lot of these countries, it is very easy to make money off that. The key thing is you have to have your guy in power first.

Giles Watling

You have told us some pretty horrendous stories, particularly about the political situation in Nigeria, working on things there, and you have told us that Cambridge Analytica does not have staff, yet you worked for Cambridge Analytica. Were you employed by SCL?

Christopher Wylie

I was paid for by SCL. Yes, I worked for Cambridge Analytica, as does everybody. Everybody works for Cambridge Analytica but they are paid for by SOCIAL, and I started before Cambridge Analytica even existed.

Giles Watling

Cambridge Analytica came along and that relationship, which you have so eloquently described, started and, in effect, you were working for Cambridge Analytica. You have talked about all those malevolent influences that have been exposed in Nigeria and so on, and you are working for these people. You signed, as you said, a non-disclosure agreement with Cambridge Analytica; is that right?

Christopher Wylie

With SCL.

Giles Watling

With SCL. Now you have decided to go whistleblower on all this, are you under any threats? Is anything happening? What is happening in your world?

Christopher Wylie

Do you know what is interesting? The most legal pushback that I got was not from Cambridge Analytica; it was from Facebook. It is Facebook who is most upset about this story.

Giles Watling

How does that materialise? Are they threatening legal action or—

Christopher Wylie

They have sent some fairly intimidating legal correspondence. They have not taken action on that, I think. I am not sure exactly what they are planning. They just have gone silent. They will not talk to me anymore.

Giles Watling

You are just left out in the cold now, is it?

Christopher Wylie

Yes. But I do anticipate at some point some robust pushback from Cambridge Analytica, because this is an existential crisis for them. I think that I have a fairly robust public interest defence to breaking that NDA and that undertaking of confidentiality.

Giles Watling

You say that the Donald Trump thing was not the actual crossing of the line, but it was the final straw on the camel’s back when you decided to turn whistleblower?

Christopher Wylie

It made it the most salient in my mind, as in, it was no longer this niche shady firm. It was a firm that was making a massive impact on the world, so it made it much more salient in my mind.

Giles Watling

Was your move dictated by morality, questions of morality, or illegality?

Christopher Wylie

It is a process of coming to terms with what you have created and the impact that that has had. I am incredibly remorseful for my role in setting it up, and I am the first person to say that I should have known better, but what is done is done.

Giles Watling

It was not a road to Damascus thing. It was a gradual realisation that, “What I am doing here is amoral.” Is that how you felt?

Christopher Wylie

Yes. It was not a sudden “Aha!” moment. I knew that I was growing really uncomfortable with working at the firm for a whole slew of reasons, but I did not report the firm because they kept threatening to sue me and I had signed not just an NDA, but there was the additional undertaking of confidence. It is very intimidating to go up against an American billionaire who is threatening to sue you into oblivion. When you look at, for example, Carole Cadwalladr’s reporting in The Guardian, there has been a lot of attention on me because I have become the face of it, because I am the one who has come forward and put my name to it, but she has 12 or 15 other sources that she has talked to. Even now, with CA being exposed and the future of the company is in question as to whether it will still be a company in a couple of months, people do not want to come forward because that is how intimidating Alexander Nix is. That is how intimidating Steve Bannon is. That is how intimidating Robert Mercer is. Also, when you look at—

Giles Watling

You find yourself in the vanguard of it. I put it to you: do you want to bring these companies down? Is that how you feel about it? You are angry; I have seen your emotion.

Christopher Wylie

Frankly, yes, because nothing good has come from Cambridge Analytica. It is not a legitimate business. SCL is not a legitimate business. Yes, I don’t think that they should remain in business.

Giles Watling

That clears up your motivation. Can I move on to Cambridge Analytica? Do you know when Facebook first knew that its data had been passed to Cambridge Analytica? Do you have any idea when that happened?

Christopher Wylie

I know it sounds like a simple question, but it is a hard one to answer because I have heard different things from different people and all of them are plausible. I remember when—and I think this was around July 2014—Kogan was delayed for a couple of days because Facebook had throttled the app, so that it could not pull as much data. There was some problem with pulling as much data at the same speed as before. He told me that he had a conversation with some engineers at Facebook. I was not in those conversations. This is what he told me at the time. Facebook would have known from that moment about the project, because he had a conversation with Facebook’s engineers, or at least that is what he told me. I do not know if that is entirely true or not, but that is what he told me. Facebook’s account of it is that they had no idea until The Guardian first reported it at the end of 2015 and then they sent letters to me in August 2016 asking, “Do you know where this data might be or was it deleted?” The date of the letter is the same month that Cambridge Analytica officially joined the Trump campaign, so I am not sure if Facebook was genuinely concerned about the data or just the optics of, “Okay, now this firm is not just some random firm in Britain. It is now working for a presidential campaign.”

Giles Watling

You said an interesting thing there. You said, “where this data might be”. Data is not stuff that you pick up and move. It spreads but it remains in its source position.

Christopher Wylie

Yes. It is completely fungible in the sense that you can copy it a million times, it can go anywhere and—

Giles Watling

It is how far it has spread.

Christopher Wylie

It is often impossible to ascertain where did the data go or where is it or how much of it is—

Giles Watling

Do you know if Facebook ever made any efforts to retrieve data, to delete data?

Christopher Wylie

No, they did not. That is my knowledge. They certainly didn’t with me until after I went public and then they made me suspect number one, despite the fact that the ICO wrote to me and to Facebook saying that I have given over everything to the authorities. I suspect that when Facebook looked at what happened in 2016, they went, “Well, if we make a big deal of this, this might be optically not the best thing to make a big fuss about.”

Giles Watling

A PR thing.

Christopher Wylie

Yes. If you saw what happened last week, it was a big deal. I do not think they pushed it in part because if you want to investigate a large data breach, that is going to get out and that might cause problems. My impression is they have sort of wanted to push it under the rug.

Giles Watling

To put it in a nutshell, it was not in Facebook’s interest to pursue the large data breach?

Christopher Wylie

No, because when you look at what this firm was also doing, you had Professor Kogan, who was managing the acquisition of this data, going back and forth to Russia, working on Russian-funded projects—which, by the way, CA pitched to other clients. They knew what he was doing in Russia.

Giles Watling

Was that you pitching?

Christopher Wylie

No, it was not me pitching it. I have sent you copies of emails where other people at the company are deciding to put it into a pitch for other clients. You had all kinds of people having access to the data. Staff at Palantir had access to the data; all kinds of people had access to the data.

Giles Watling

It was not locked down. It was everywhere.

Christopher Wylie

It was everywhere, yes.

Paul-Olivier Dehaye

If I may add something, when Harry Davies, the journalist at The Guardian, published an article in December 2015, that is the moment where the story became a public story or started becoming a public story. That is also my entry point into this. He has just published an article in The Guardian, yesterday or the day, before explaining the genesis of that article for him. Apparently he knew of improprieties around data flows outside of Facebook a few months after it happened—something like, I am guessing, around October 2014, let’s say. He started investigating, but he did not know where the data was going—he did not know what the use was and so on. It was only later, because he got a tip that Cruz was working with Cambridge Analytica, that he connected the dots and later published his article in December 2015, much later. My point is that at the time—you will have to ask him, but somewhere between October 2014 and a few months later maybe—he started talking to Facebook and asking Facebook questions about this data. At that time, essentially Facebook was the only entity that could trace the data because of contractual—

Giles Watling

As far as you are aware, they made no effort to do so?

Paul-Olivier Dehaye

You will have to ask him, but that is much earlier than I thought for a long time. It is only a couple of days ago that I changed my mind on this question.

Giles Watling

That is interesting. Thank you.

Chair

Just so I can be clear on the use of the data that came from Aleksandr Kogan, from what you said, Chris Wylie, the data was used to build the algorithms that ran Cambridge Analytica. Once you have used the core data, once you have extracted the value you need from it, you have your own systems then. Cambridge Analytica say, “When we were asked by Facebook to give that data back we did,” but even if they did do that, they have already used the data to build other systems.

Christopher Wylie

Yes. It created what is called a derivative product. The easiest way to think about it is, let’s say you have a book and it is written in French and then you translate it into English, it is the same information being conveyed; it just looks very different or it could look completely different. It could be translated into Chinese, for example. It looks completely different, different semantic structure, grammatical structure, tenses and so on, but the same information is conveyed. The data itself may look different but the underlying information is what matters.

Chair

In this case, even if Cambridge Analytica are correct in what they are saying in response, what you said today, “Well, we gave this data back,” they may well have done, but the value they extracted from that data they have kept, because they created something new with it.

Christopher Wylie

The information.

Chair

Information.

Christopher Wylie

Yes, because the data is like— whether it is expressed in English or French, the information is what it is conveying.

Chair

Have you been able to benefit from that dataset in other projects you have done outside of Cambridge Analytica, or does that data and the value that is extracted from it remain within that company?

Christopher Wylie

Sorry, as in did I personally benefit from the data?

Chair

You were working on that data at the time when you were there and whatever was done with that. When you left Cambridge Analytica, were you able to benefit from the acquisition of that original data on things you have done outside of Cambridge Analytica or did that stay very much as tools developed in that company?

Christopher Wylie

I did not do any contracts or any work with that data.

Chair

After you left?

Christopher Wylie

No. I have not worked with any clients that that data was used for. As I recall, that data got deleted, I believe, in 2015, on my end.

Jo Stevens

Going back to 2013, when you said you started out and you were introduced by a mutual political contact to SCL Group— I was interested in the initial article that Carole Cadwalladr wrote in The Observer on 18 March, when you said, “I wanted to know why the Lib Dems sucked at winning elections,” and that is how you got into it and started looking at the issue. The introduction, through a mutual friend, in June 2013 to SCL Group, was that by a Lib Dem politician?

Christopher Wylie

It was not a politician, no.

Jo Stevens

Okay. You do not want to say to the Committee who the introductory contact was?

Christopher Wylie

I do not think it is relevant. Any time I bring up somebody’s name, the whole world comes down on them and there are conspiracies about all kinds of people, so I do not think it is fair on that person, because it was genuinely just an innocent introduction.

Jo Stevens

Okay, fine. Then I want to go back to what you were saying about the Vote Leave campaign and AIQ. We know, because it is in the public domain, that Vote Leave spent 40% of its declared expense through AIQ or on AIQ, £2.7 million. In your evidence you said—and I wanted to clarify whether you were talking about the referendum campaign or a different campaign—that 5 million to 7 million people were targeted by AIQ, a sliver of the population.

Christopher Wylie

Yes, that is what they told me. You have different targeting universes. To clarify that slightly, they probably had a wider peripheral universe and a core universe. You often have, most fundamentally, a persuasion universe and then a turnout universe. My understanding from those conversations was that they were targeting a very specific cohort of people. They posited, “If x% of these people turn out, then you can win.”

Jo Stevens

Yes. You also said that the conversion rate for AIQ was around 5% to 7%, for some projects.

Christopher Wylie

For some projects. Every project will have different conversion rates. There are some candidates who are just not sellable. It is not magic. If your candidate makes a habit of eating puppies in some sadomasochistic ritual, it is hard to sell that, even with really good targeting.

Jo Stevens

We have not had one of those yet. I am just trying to work through in my mind: we have the targeted group of people, we have a conversion rate, which you say for AIQ they did quite well on on contracts.

Christopher Wylie

Yes. Also remember that a conversion rate does not necessarily mean there is not a turnout; that is people who are performing a substantive action for your campaign itself.

Jo Stevens

Yes. We know that the Vote Leave online adverts received nearly 1 billion impressions, because Dominic Cummings has told us that in his blog.

Christopher Wylie

Yes. That is how many views the drive—

Jo Stevens

In the end, the referendum result comes down to just 600,000 people, or just over 1% of registered voters. He says, “A small enough margin, a few specific events and decisions made all the difference”. Going back to what you said in response to my colleague Simon Hart about this spend and targeting and the outcome of the referendum, do you think that it is perfectly reasonable to say that this could have made a difference or did make a difference?

Christopher Wylie

It is incredibly reasonable to say that AIQ played a very significant role in leave winning, yes.

Jo Stevens

That is the Vote Leave expenditure. What about Leave.EU, which is Nigel Farage and Arron Banks’s campaign group? Did Cambridge Analytica work with them?

Christopher Wylie

Just to be clear, I did not work at CA when that happened but I have seen documents. Some of the documents may have been passed to the Committee. There are also tape-recordings of Andy Wigmore, for example, talking about how they used Cambridge Analytica. Gerry Gunster is also on tape saying that they played a role early on in the campaign. One of the things that you have to remember about CA is that they are very good at using these weasel words. I have also seen invoices that said UKIP on them, not necessarily Leave.EU. They might go, “We started working for Leave.EU and then we didn’t. All of that, we were over-exaggerating,” but then they may have also been working for other entities. One of the other things that I have seen—which I believe Emma Briant, the academic, may have passed on—are documents from Eldon Insurance, which is Andy Wigmore’s insurance company. Those are Eldon Insurance documents, so they say “Eldon Insurance” on the letterheads, or their presentation says “Eldon” at the top, but then it is all about the response rates that Leave.EU messaging was getting online. One of the other questions that you should be asking to Eldon Insurance is, “Did you use your insurance data, or your customer data, to the benefit of Leave.EU?” Following that, “Was that data processed, or did Cambridge Analytica also have access to that data?” What we do know is that Cambridge Analytica absolutely had a relationship with Leave.EU. Some of the things that I have seen—which I believe have been passed on to the Committee, although you would have to check with Emma Briant about that—are documents that also have Eldon Insurance, which would have a huge amount of data, because it is an insurance company, talking about the performance and conversion rates of Leave.EU advertising. I am much less familiar with what happened there than I am with Vote Leave, but some questions I would encourage you to ask are, “Why is it that Eldon Insurance knew about and was reporting on the conversion and response rates of Leave.EU messaging? Did Eldon Insurance use customer data in any way for Leave.EU? Did Cambridge Analytica have access to that data?”

Jo Stevens

As well as the Eldon Insurance documents, are there any other documents or evidence that you have seen that links Leave.EU to Cambridge Analytica activity during the referendum campaign?

Christopher Wylie

From something else I have seen, again UKIP invoices. I also know that Bannon was really interested generally in UKIP. He saw it as really important for America because if you are fighting a culture war, Britain plays a key role in that, if you look at the way Americans imagine Britain as still Downton Abbey, everyone is very posh, educated, refined. If you can instil a populist movement in Britain, in the American psyche it is validating—“If Britain is doing it, if Britain is Brexiting, then we can elect Trump”. For example, Matthew Richardson, who I believe is on the board of UKIP—do not quote me on that; he is involved in UKIP—is also Robert Mercer’s lawyer. There are significant links, but I would ask Andy Wigmore, “Did you meet with Robert Mercer? Did you meet with Steve Bannon?”

Jo Stevens

Thank you. You have also said this morning you believe that there was unlawful activity during the referendum by Vote Leave, when asked by my colleague. We are seeing the ICO’s investigation unfold here quite slowly.

Christopher Wylie

Just a point on this. I have provided them with as much information as I can, but the ICO does not have a lot of powers. The other thing is they do not have that many people. One of the things that I witnessed is how many people and how much money can be spent at Cambridge Analytica or at Facebook and then looking at the small team and the very limited resources and powers that the ICO has. It is not the ICO’s fault that it has been slow.

Jo Stevens

No. I was not phrasing that question as a criticism at all, and I am glad you have said what you have said, because what I was going to go on to say—

Christopher Wylie

It has been very difficult for them because they struggled to get evidence and to deal with giving them the evidence. They do not have that many resources.

Jo Stevens

No. If you think about what they are there to enforce compared to, say, a police force somewhere in the UK, their funding and resources are tiny. With the referendum, if somebody breaks the law, if the allegations that we have heard about are proven, it is £20,000 to fix a referendum. That is not a disincentive to behave unlawfully. Would you agree with that?

Christopher Wylie

Also, because these investigations take so long, even if it is found out, Brexit will already have happened.

Jo Stevens

Brexit has happened, the companies that ran the campaigns have been dissolved, people have disappeared.

Christopher Wylie

Yes. What a shame it would be if that were found out—that there was pervasive cheating in the referendum and Brexit has already happened and we cannot go back.

Jo Stevens

Absolutely.

Christopher Wylie

That is why some of these regulators, in my view, really do need to be properly resourced—not just the ICO, but the Electoral Commission also.

Jo Stevens

Can I turn to something completely different now? You have talked about different countries where AIQ have played a part, and I wanted to ask you about the Czech Republic. In the Channel 4 undercover investigation, executives said on screen that Cambridge Analytica and SCL had worked in more than 200 elections across the world, including in the Czech Republic. I am quoting from Mark Turnbull, the man with the plaster on his nose: “We have just used a different organisation to run a very, very successful project in an eastern European country where no one even knew they were there”. Did you know anything about the work in the Czech Republic?

Christopher Wylie

I have heard about the work in the Czech Republic, but I do not have any direct experience on it. This is what I am saying about the role of AIQ, and other companies like it: that if you want a company to fly under the radar or not be noticed until after an election, after you have gone out of the country, it is very beneficial to have this web of companies that are registered in different countries. They have seemingly independent operations that you can then use to operate under the radar.

Jo Stevens

You also mentioned in your evidence about Russian companies working with Alexander Nix. In the evidence that you have made public you talked about Alexander Nix doing a presentation to Lukoil; is that correct?

Christopher Wylie

Lukoil. I have passed this on to the Committee.

Jo Stevens

You said, “It does not make any sense to me. If this was a presentation about a commercial deal, why were Lukoil so interested in our political targeting?” There is a connection between Lukoil and the Czech Republic, because one of the former Lukoil executives advises the new President of the Czech Republic.

Christopher Wylie

Yes, because they paid for all the legal fees.

Jo Stevens

Did the companies that were pitched in Russia have access to data? What were they able to see and get hold of?

Christopher Wylie

What I am a direct witness to is meetings, presentations, discussions and conference calls with Lukoil, so I cannot say one way or the other whether data ended up going to Lukoil. The conversations with Lukoil surrounded two things. First, Alexander sent them white papers that I had written, or project write-ups that I had written about the Ripon project—what kind of data were we collecting, what was our internal capacity like and how effective was it, a paper that explains, “We are profiling the American electorate. We can target them online. This is how we influence them”. Secondly, presentations from Alexander Nix, which I have also provided to the Committee. The very first slide is rumour campaigns, disinformation, attitudinal inoculation and undermining confidence in civic institutions in Nigeria. Those were the first couple of slides that he gave to Lukoil, this Russian oil company. The thing that I found bizarre at the time, and my feeling at the time was suspicion but not in a concerning way, just in, “What are you doing, Alexander?” something naughty, not nefarious, because to me it did not make sense. He would refuse to tell me what this actual project was. It did not make sense to me that this Russian oil company wants to know about all of this data that we are collecting, despite the fact that we do not operate anywhere where it has an interest. It is a Russian oil company; why do you need a massive profiling project in America? That did not make sense to me, neither did the fact that Alexander made such a concerted effort to show this company its experience with disinformation and rumour campaigns. At the time I just thought, “Okay, well, there is something else up here,” but I did not think it was some kind of grand conspiracy. I just thought maybe Alexander is cutting some deal, or some money thing. It was in the 2016 cycle, this narrative and evidence about Russian interference—particularly using Facebook as a vehicle for propaganda—where I started to think, “Right, well.” We were talking to a company that works hand in hand with the FSB. Alexander had put in the email that he was sending my white paper and documents to the CEO of the company. It was not some random person; it was the person at the very top of this company. We also made it known that the lead professor who had access to the harvesting applications was going back and forth to Russia and working on the project partly out of Russia, and also working on other psychological profiling projects in Russia. For me, that was concerning. What I am not saying—and I will be super-clear—is that Alexander Nix or Aleksandr Kogan, or anybody involved in that, knowingly colluded with Russia to undermine America in an American election. What I am saying is that there was a very significant risk that was created in notifying this company not only of the existence of this data but the fact that, in telling them that the person in charge of this data is operating, in part, out of Russia, that would make it incredibly easy for them to get access to that data. For me, that is concerning, and should be looked into. My own view is that Alexander was being really stupid; they should have known better. You have to remember SCL Group runs projects in the Baltics and eastern Europe for various NATO countries on counter-Russian propaganda, and they also work on the NATO StratCom training centre in Latvia. Alexander would have known, given how closely we work on the border of Russia on projects that were funded by NATO members—in large part for counter-propaganda and the StratCom centre and all that kind of work in Latvia—that the company would have logically been an intelligence target for Russia. If you are meeting with Lukoil—which very openly has a relationship with the FSB and operates in Europe where the FSB cannot—and you are already likely an intelligence target because of the military and defence project work that you are doing in eastern Europe and the Baltics, and then you tell them, “By the way, you do not even need to hack into our data systems; just put a key logger on Kogan’s computer in Russia and you have everything,” it is as simple as that.

Jo Stevens

You mentioned a professor in relation to that evidence you just gave. Who was the professor?

Christopher Wylie

Kogan.

Jo Stevens

That was Kogan, right.

Christopher Wylie

Although Kosinski did not work on this project, he was also going to Russia. He posted that he was going to do a presentation to the Russian Prime Minister.

Jo Stevens

My very last point is just to go back to that Eldon Insurance issue that we discussed. Eldon Insurance deals with substantial numbers of personal injury cases, and the data that they hold would be classed as sensitive data under UK law.

Christopher Wylie

Absolutely.

Jo Stevens

Are you saying that you think there would have been a breach of that sensitive data in the relationship between Cambridge Analytica and Eldon Insurance?

Christopher Wylie

I will be super clear: I do not know one way or the other what the relationship between Eldon Insurance and Cambridge Analytica is, but what I have seen—and I think has been passed to the Committee—

Jo Stevens

Is the UKIP/Eldon Insurance—

Christopher Wylie

Is Eldon Insurance-branded documents talking about the response rates and performance figures of Leave.EU messaging and online advertising. The thing that I find bizarre about that is, first of all, why is Eldon Insurance making this report and, secondly, why do they have access to that data? We know that Cambridge Analytica has had a relationship with Leave.EU; they dispute the details, but what is not in dispute is that they had a relationship with Leave.EU. I am not saying one way or the other that Cambridge Analytica had access to that data, but it is something that is worth asking Eldon and Cambridge Analytica about, or Andy Wigmore: “Why was your insurance company making performance reports on Leave.EU messaging?” That was not declared, first of all, and, secondly, “Were you using your insurance company’s data to target people in Brexit?” I think that is a fair question to ask.

Jo Stevens

So do I. Fine. Thank you very much, Mr Wylie.

Chair

While we are on Russia, did Cambridge Analytica or SCL use any Yandex tools or cookies as part of their analytics work?

Christopher Wylie

I am not sure. I cannot say one way or the other.

Chair

This was a blog report saying that a Yandex verification meta tag was found on the Breitbart website. Given that, was that something you have come across?

Christopher Wylie

I know that CA has had a fairly close relationship with Breitbart, and I believe Breitbart was a client of theirs. I do not know if it is a current client, but I believe it was a client. To the specifics of that, I do not have an answer for you.

Paul Farrelly

Covering the foreign countries, you have mentioned Nigeria. Can you say a few words about what work you were aware that the company did in Trinidad and Tobago?

Christopher Wylie

The Trinidadian project was for several politicians. It was mostly a data harvest. We used it as a precursor to the Ripon project, to see how much data could be pulled and if we could profile different attributes in people.

Paul Farrelly

Pulling it from where?

Christopher Wylie

Online data sources, the contractual documents with AIQ whose role it was to go and find data. The contracting is pulling ISP data, and there are also emails that I have passed on to the Committee, where Aggregate IQ is working with SCL to find a way to pull, and then de-anonymise ISP data—so, raw browsing data. One of the other things that was pitched to the Minister of National Security there was related to some of Kogan’s Russian research—which I have also provided emails on—about whether you could create a dispositional profile, and then quantify that in data, of people who are more likely to commit crime. I did not continue working on that project because I got switched over mostly to the United States. I have provided documentation on Trinidad to the Committee, in particular with reference to Aggregate IQ trying to acquire raw de-anonymised ISP data.

Paul Farrelly

You have mentioned Latvia, but I defy anyone to go to Riga and visit the National Museum of Liberation there and not come out in tears with a broken heart about what that country, like other Baltic republics, has been through, particularly with the legacy of the break-up of the Soviet Union. That country, like the other Baltic countries, does not need any more tensions inflamed. Could you explain a little bit more about what analytical work was done in Latvia?

Christopher Wylie

Just to be clear, that is not Cambridge Analytica; that is SCL Defense, or some iteration of SCL, that was doing that.

Paul Farrelly

It is not political work.

Christopher Wylie

It is not political work. I believe the Department of Defence in Canada is the main funder of that.

Paul Farrelly

This is the military side. Can you—

Christopher Wylie

It is focused on information operations training and capacity building, but also my understanding was that they were doing counter-propaganda work in the Baltics, at least from my impression of it, nothing nefarious.

Paul Farrelly

There should be no suggestion that, as far as you are aware, they have piggybacked on the back of that to do political work?

Christopher Wylie

No, not necessarily, because I believe they used some of their connections to do some political work in Lithuania. My recollection on that is fuzzy, but I believe they have done some political work in addition in Latvia. I think I passed to you a document that references that.

Paul Farrelly

Perhaps Latvian journalists can follow that up with their Government. Going back to Facebook’s biggest user markets, if you make a speciality out of using Facebook and surveys—I do not know how many Aleksandr Kogans there are who have worked with Cambridge Analytica—you focus on the world’s biggest democracy with lots of elections all the time, India, as being a prime source of business. You mentioned that they have done quite a bit of work in India. Could you describe what you are aware of?

Christopher Wylie

I believe their client was Congress, but I know that they have done all kinds of projects. I do not remember a national project, but I know regionally. India is—

Paul Farrelly

Different states.

Christopher Wylie

Yes. India is so big that one state can be as big as Britain. They do have offices and staff there. I believe I have some documentation on India, which I can also provide to the Committee if that is something that is of interest.

Paul Farrelly

That would be very welcome. Yes, great. Another country that does not need any tensions being inflamed.

Paul-Olivier Dehaye

My understanding, relating back to the Romanian—your predecessor, Dan Muresan—is there are stories that are starting to come out, one in India, of his involvement when he died in Kenya. He was working for Congress, according to reports from India, but he was really paid for by an Indian billionaire who wanted Congress to lose. He was pretending to work for one party but was really paid underhand by someone else. Those seem to be the reports that are coming out now from India. Definitely on all of this there needs to be some collaboration between Romanian, Kenyan and Indian journalists to piece out what happened.

Simon Hart

I am very conscious that you have covered a huge amount of ground in the last few hours, so I am going to ask you to confirm one or two things, by way of a recap, to make sure that I have understood you correctly, particularly around the area of the EU referendum. I think I am right in saying that you have argued this morning, and submitted by way of written evidence, that you are convinced that AIQ played a significant role, not only with Vote Leave but also other protagonists of the leave campaign and—I hope I am not putting words in your mouth—that you felt those groups were somehow loosely or informally linked with one another. Would that be a correct analysis of what you have said so far?

Christopher Wylie

Yes. What I have submitted to the Electoral Commission is evidence that shows that there was a clear reporting structure. BeLeave was based inside of Vote Leave’s headquarters and they reported to Vote Leave staff. That is included in the evidence. Yes, not just a loose or informal relationship. It was not formal in terms of documentation or, “This is the reporting structure of BeLeave,” but the fact that they asked permission and were working out of Vote Leave’s offices leads me to conclude that there was co-ordination that was not declared.

Simon Hart

You went on to say that Facebook became aware that data may have been used by Cambridge Analytica for electoral purposes. Would it necessarily be the case that Facebook knew that AIQ may have also been benefiting from that same data, or would that be stretching the connections a bit too far?

Christopher Wylie

I do not know; you would have to ask Facebook that. I do not know exactly what Facebook has and has not done in terms of their investigation.

Simon Hart

I think you said that they were aware—clearly they were aware, we know they were—that there was a data breach involved with Cambridge Analytica, which has led, arguably, to us having this conversation today. I am asking you whether you felt that Facebook was aware of that close connection between Cambridge Analytica and AIQ or whether that is purely coincidental.

Christopher Wylie

I do not know if Facebook is aware of the relationships between AIQ and Cambridge Analytica. Again, part of the intent of having a lot of companies around the world with different names is that it does make it confusing and opaque as to who does what. It may also be that, when Facebook went and asked questions to CA, they simply were not told, “A lot of the software development happens at AIQ, not here,” which is entirely possible.

Simon Hart

We will have further opportunity to question Facebook, so we will be doing that. The third point is, right at the beginning of your evidence you made it perfectly clear you felt that CA and SCL, and I would add—but I am asking a question about that—that includes AIQ, were involved in straightforward illegal activity, which you have submitted by way of evidence to the Electoral Commission. Would it be right to include AIQ in that?

Christopher Wylie

AIQ played an absolutely pivotal role in the overspending scheme that was set up at Vote Leave.

Simon Hart

Does that not make the role of Mr Mercer—who you have described as quite intimidating—doubly serious? You have what you are submitting are very clear breaches of electoral legislation by some fairly substantial players and, coupled with that, intimidation by the guy whose name appears on this complicated graph in various significant places. Do you think that Mr Mercer should be subject to investigation himself with regard to intimidation?

Christopher Wylie

Absolutely. It is not just legal intimidation. This company uses firms like Black Cube, and I would encourage you to talk to Channel 4 to watch the footage of Alexander Nix talking about Black Cube because they were not, unfortunately, able to air it. If you work with Black Cube—that is an intimidating firm.

Simon Hart

My final question is about the undercover film taken of Alexander Nix, in which he was referring to the various different means of coercion that may take place, including Ukrainian sex workers—subsequently denied. How much significance should we attach, as a Committee, to the denial?

Christopher Wylie

To the denial?

Simon Hart

His denial that they were quite happy to use coercion in attempting to achieve their electoral results on behalf of their clients.

Christopher Wylie

My understanding is that that was common practice. There is a bunch of projects that they have worked on. It is not just Nigeria; as Carole Cadwalladr in The Guardian has also reported, there was a hacking scheme in St Kitts, for example. Someone else that you should be calling to the Committee is Brittany Kaiser, because she played a pivotal role in that relationship between Cambridge Analytica and Black Cube. She has touched on it in one of her interviews with The Guardian, but I would encourage you to talk to her about some of that work also. Something to say about the Nigeria project is that I got incredibly panicked phone calls from people, because the relationship with one of the funders turned sour, several people were threatened with their lives and they had to immediately leave the country. My predecessor was found dead; one of my other co-workers had a massive head injury and is missing part of his skull. People do get hurt at this firm. Given that they work with Israeli private intelligence firms, who are willing to do whatever it is you want them to do if you pay them, this is why so many people—about whom, for example, Carole has talked to you—are genuinely afraid to come forward to talk about the firm, because it is that intimidating.

Simon Hart

Thank you very much. I sadly have to go now. It is not a reflection of the evidence you have just given, but I have to be somewhere else.

Chair

From what you have said about Brittany Kaiser, she was the Cambridge Analytica liaison with Leave.EU.

Christopher Wylie

Yes. You have Brittany Kaiser, who sat at the launch event of Leave.EU, who worked on a project that involved hacking the now President of Nigeria, creating kompromat, distributing videos of people being murdered. It would be a fair thing for your Committee to do to call her and ask, “What were you doing in Nigeria? Who were you working for? Why is it that you engaged the use of hackers to hack the now President of Nigeria?” Something that I know Carole Cadwalladr will be reporting on shortly is that some of these people who worked on this project also work in the British Government now. That causes me grave concern as to the relationship between this country and Nigeria. I have notified the authorities about this. Unfortunately, because the ICO—and also the police, in fairness—have such constraints on their resources, they have not been able to fully investigate it. I would strongly encourage you to ask Brittany Kaiser about that programme, because you have somebody who worked on Leave.EU and worked on this Nigeria project. You have AIQ who worked on this Nigeria project. This shows what these people and these companies are willing to do in order to win. They all played an absolutely pivotal role in Brexit; that is really important for people to understand.

Christian Matheson

As far as you know, what is the work that Cambridge Analytica is currently undertaking on behalf of the UK Government, or one of the associated companies?

Christopher Wylie

I know the SCL Group, or SCL Defense, has done work for the Ministry of Defence and also, I believe, for DSTL, which is the defence research agency for the UK.

Christian Matheson

The UK version of DARPA.

Christopher Wylie

Yes. The work that they have done for the UK Government centred around research on mostly middle eastern countries, to understand attitudes and behaviours of groups that could pose a risk to British society.

Christian Matheson

Has any data been collected on British citizens?

Christopher Wylie

The company has data on British citizens, but it is not necessarily that the Ministry of Defence is paying for data on UK citizens. Sorry, are you—

Christian Matheson

In terms of the work that Cambridge Analytica/SCL group of companies are undertaking for the British Government, does that include data being collected on British citizens?

Christopher Wylie

Not from what I have seen, but I do know, for example, that in one of the documents that I have passed to the Committee there is a quote from somebody who, until very recently, ran the Prevent programme. That does not mean that they worked on Prevent, but I know that people who have worked on Prevent also have worked with SCL on projects. It is a question to perhaps ask the Home Office.

Christian Matheson

Is any of this what we would consider sensitive data?

Christopher Wylie

By “sensitive data”, are you referring to the Government classification of “sensitive” or are you referring to the DPA’s definition of “sensitive”?

Christian Matheson

The DPA.

Christopher Wylie

Yes. It would all be sensitive data.

Christian Matheson

I have some more, but I will come back later, then. Thank you.

Brendan O’Hara

Do you know, or are you aware of any involvement of Cambridge Analytica or SCL or any of the associated companies in the Scottish referendum of 2014?

Christopher Wylie

I know that Alexander pitched work in relation to the Scottish referendum, but I am very fuzzy on the details of which side that was for and what the actual pitch was. I was not immediately involved in that. I was there when the referendum was had; I do not recall the company—just to be clear—working on the Scottish referendum.

Brendan O’Hara

Was there any work undertaken for either side by Cambridge Analytica or one of the SCL offshoots in 2014, do you know?

Christopher Wylie

I know that meetings took place, but I do not think anything came from that.

Brendan O’Hara

Thank you. Can I just ask Mr Dehaye about Facebook? Could you give us a bit of background on your involvement with Facebook? I think you sought to try to get your personal data released. Why have you decided to approach Facebook for your personal data and, to describe it, the challenges and the process that you had to go through in order to get it?

Paul-Olivier Dehaye

The easiest way to explain it was the question of Simon Hart earlier. If you know your data has been obtained from one company and you are trying to trace where it might be used again, then it would be a very effective tool if you could go to Facebook and ask, “Who has my data? Who has told you they had my consent to be targeted on Facebook?” Facebook might help you; it might snitch on all this nexus of companies that are exchanging data around. It turns out that the law gives you that right. You can go to Facebook and ask for right of access for all your information held by Facebook. That was my thinking at the time, and that is what I have tried to do. I approached Facebook, I asked them for all my data precisely, for instance custom audiences data and Facebook pixel data, which tracks which pages I have seen. It was a very long process indeed. I am simplifying, but I tried to go through a privacy shield, which is the agreement that governs transatlantic flows of data, because that data would have flown sometimes from Facebook Ireland to Facebook US. I also asked the Data Protection Commissioner in Ireland for assistance with all this. It is a very painful process that took over a year to get all the recourse mechanisms through and so on. The situation now is that I have a response. Facebook partially agreed to some release of information, and the result was that the data export tool was changed for everyone on Facebook. Now you can download the list of advertisers that have uploaded your contact information, which of course could be advertisers coming from anywhere. I do not think that release is sufficient, because Facebook still holds that data, and I would like to be able to go back in time to trace— throughout 2017, I have worked with journalists in five to 10 countries where there were elections, there were lots of elections in 2017, telling them, “Register to this mailing list because your data, if you register in this way, is likely to be reused elsewhere and you might be able to use partial disclosures by Facebook to get more information.” For instance, to be concrete on the communication between insurance companies and Leave.EU, the line of questioning was often, “Did insurance data go to the Leave.EU campaign?” I know that the converse is true. When you get Leave.EU mailings, at the bottom there is an insurance ad for one of Arron Banks’ companies. They are definitely using the dataset for other purposes. If you make it a method of inquiry, you can register to some specific mailing list and see how that information travels around. Journalists would love to use those techniques, but in practice it is really hard because no one seems to see the interest of it at this stage.