 Hello and welcome to NewsClick. The Cambridge Analytica scandal is continuing to unfold with more and more people and political parties being exposed. But while we look at what Cambridge Analytica has been doing, we also need to look at what the parent company of CA, that is the Strategic Communications Laboratory, has done and how it started and what got us here. So to discuss this, we have with us today Prabir Purkayasta, who is the Editor-in-Chief of NewsClick. Welcome, Prabir. So the first question is that how did SCL start? And what was the sort of work it started with? There are two aspects of the SCL start. One is that it is who's who of British aristocracy or what would we call the British establishment. So as we know, England or the United Kingdom is a very narrow upper stratum. Whole land, go to Eaton and various public schools and then go to what I call public schools, really private schools, and then go to Oxford and Cambridge and then finally grace the top positions, whether it's in the bureaucracy, in the parliament or in the private sector. In this, it starts by SCL being headed by essentially Lord Mountbatten, one of the Mountbatten, of course, part of the Mountbatten clan. We know India's viceroy at one point, first governor general, and so on. It's also part of the British royal family, essentially. That's what it really is. So this is one part of Cambridge Analytica or SCL that it really starts with combining various sections of the UK's top echelons. The second part of it, and I think this is the more important part currently, it's also a company which is involved in essentially what I would call subverting of democracies in different parts of the world. So when you look at SCL, what it was doing, it was helping the larger policies of the West. And West, in the initial years post Second World War, was involved in regime change operations in different parts of the world, particularly when we had governments that emerged, which were what could be called nationalist governments. They were interested in taking back their natural resources from the hands of the colonial powers. So you had, for instance, Mossadeq in Iran. You had regime change operations in Congo. And in different parts of the world, the CIA planned in the 50s to also have a regime which would be favorable to the West in Iraq. That's one of the earliest regime change operations that CIA was carrying out. So essentially, we see now in the 80s and 90s, private sector entering into this space, which was originally the preserve of the intelligence agencies. And that's one of the earliest companies which claim a similar kind of expertise to what the intelligence agencies were doing externally in any case. So what was the involvement? And how were they doing? They were also in blame for military propaganda and how privatization of war basically led to them doing that. So what was that about? You see in the late 80s and 90s, as you get what is called the neoliberal economic framework come into existence or become stronger, you have various elements of the state being privatized from water and power or education, which are the most obvious things, including health. You start looking also at privatizing intelligence operations. You start looking at privatizing even war. So if you see particularly the last 20, 25 years, you will see the rise of mercenary armies, which take on the task what were earlier done by the armed forces, even if they're deployed internationally or externally. So you see a lot of the tasks of the American army being taken over by mercenary organizations, which also in Iraq, which you have this privatization of mercenary forces is something which has been talked about. There have been Eric Prince, who's founded a company which continuously changed its name, but essentially remains a primarily a mercenary army for the United States. So you have that kind of activities taking place. We already know Moose Hamilton, for instance, was carrying out a lot of the NSA's basic activities, in which Snowden was employed. And that's why he had access to all the data that the NSA had. So you see all of this is a privatization of the state that takes place. And along with mercenary armies, you have the appearance of things like SCL, in which you then talk about also privatizing external intelligence operations, which is what SCL was doing. So whether it's in Nigeria, whether it's in other places, they were really involved in Cloak and Dagger exercise. They were involved in subverting governments. And at the end of it, also, what are straightforward intelligence operations, trying to tweak electoral processes, finding people who are favorable to the government, in the government, to Western powers, and acting as a bridge between the Western interests, private, as well as government, and then also doing what would have been earlier dirty tricks by the intelligence organizations. And so now Cambridge Analytica has been the two biggest camps it's been involved in, the two biggest what we can call propagandas and campaigns they've been involved in, have been the Trump campaign and then the Brexit campaign. So what is this link between these two campaigns and the sort of military propaganda that SCL has done? Well, SCL and Cambridge Analytica, once you're in the business of doing external, shall we say, regime change, why would the powers that we think it do not come back and also do it domestically? So essentially what happens is Cambridge Analytica, SCL, and I'm not going to pretend they're two different companies, really the same company. And this is multiplicity of, shall we say, fronts that you have. What you see here is that what was being done in Nigeria, what was being done in Kenya, what could conceivably be done in India, is okay as far as the West is concerned, but it comes to now doing it inside the United States or the United Kingdom is now considered to be big no-no. But the bigger issue really is that the methods they had perfected outside for intervention and regime change, that's what is currently being deployed by whom? Being deployed by big, moneyed, shall we say, houses in the United States behind Trump, you had Mercer who's a billionaire. Now it also transpires that Peter Thiele's Palantir was closely tied up with the initial breach of Facebook, creating the app and so on. Palantir is Peter Thiele, as you know, is again another billionaire supporting Trump. So you have this billionaire lobby from Koch brothers to Peter Thiele to Mercer, all of them getting involved in elections, and therefore looking for instruments which can then change the popular mandate to the people that they want. So essentially after, shall we say, external coups, external regime changes, we are now seeing this militarization, shall we say, or privatization of military exercises, what we are now seeing is internal practices by which the really the oligarchies of United Kingdom or the United States would like to directly control the democracies. And what you now see as what is unfolding is really that, that we now have the ability with the kind of data analytical tools, what's called big data. The psychographic profile of the people that's possible to intervene in elections, particularly with elections are close. And therefore these, shall we say, the oligarchies of these countries today are intervening against the popular will as well. And then trying to massage it in the way that it leads to outcomes which are favorable to their candidates. And so can you give us some examples of some of the lobbies which are particularly benefited from all of this, all these operations? Well, you know, let's put it this way. Direct benefits are of course very well known, Koch brothers, they are in oil and coal, they are fought against climate change and Trump of course is the key climate change denier who is in government today. Of course they have supported the Republican Party for precisely that reason because Republican Party has consistently been a party of climate change denial. But leaving all that out, the question that is really there is that the interest of big capital can also change depending on what section of the capital it represents. So you have also the narrower interests of capital. There could be other people who, not like Koch brothers who might have interest in other industries, other kinds of industries. So what we have to see is that once you have that amount of money and that is allowed a free play in the elections and in this case, United States, it's allowed because the so-called campaign finance laws have been tweaked by the Supreme Court of the United States in a way that it helps big money, it moneyed interest to decide what the politics of the country will be. In the United Kingdom, there were more laws. So therefore it is possible that the Brexit campaign, the leave campaign came against certain laws of the United Kingdom. So that would be what is really the Parliamentary Committee and what other investigations will take place. So I think in both these cases, you have really big capital interested in a certain change of policy and therefore intervening in elections for policies which will then be hopefully favorable to itself. So now that we know our media is largely being controlled by these external entities and propaganda machine is quite strong. Their game is quite strong. How do we combat this? How do we get people to look past this and how do we get other alternative sources of information out there? Well, that's one issue, but I think the bigger issue for me is that how do we control those companies which today control what is called big data? And if, for instance, the platforms like Facebook, like Google, that's why the Facebook issue has been so important. If these play such an important role in what you call the dissemination of information, information reaching people, irrespective of who controls the content, the platforms really control its distribution. So if that is true, then I think the real issue arises. How do you control the monopolies, the particular platform monopolies which have risen? And particularly like Facebook and Google and how do you control them becomes a central issue of today's age. The second issue that comes up is, apart from the issue of regulation, which is what we're discussing, is that could certain kinds of methods in election be banned? That should we have laws which say that you cannot psychographic, psychometric methods should not be used, private data of a certain kind should not be used, and so on. So should we make, for instance, bars of what can or cannot be done in elections? This micro targeting of people based on the psychometric profile, is that something which should be continued in elections? Self, I think is a question. But honestly speaking, there is no easy answer to this question because with the new technology, with the new problems that is arisen, easy answers how to control them, how to ensure or protect the democratic will of the people in things like election I think is still in uncharted territory. Also because our ruling governments, it's not really in their interest to control it anyway. That's one part, but also let's put it this way. We really don't know how to protect ourselves against this. One is regulation, which is what we have talked about. Others has to be the really the legal checks and balances we create to see that these instruments cannot be used in certain ways. And the third I think we need to also see that the people have to be far more aware of how these methods work because at one level, the protection that people could have is their knowledge of how they're being manipulated. Maybe that will immunize us from some of these issues. So all of these are open questions, how to do it. And I'm not going to give easy answers to this because I don't think we have any. So thank you for joining us in this discussion. Thank you for watching this clip.