Behind The Scenes Of Netflix's The Great Hack - David Carroll

1. 0:00 – 15:00

   A weird company has…

   1. DCDavid Carroll0:00

      A weird company has been working in elections around the world for a long time and allegedly worked on the Brexit campaign and the Trump presidential campaigns, as well as others. For people who are hoping for a movie that gives you the proof of whether or not this stuff worked, those people will be disappointed. This is not a movie about whether it worked. This is a movie about whether we can live in a democracy where this stuff is going on. We really can't know whether any of this was the defining factor in any of these elections. There's no control group in elections. You cannot determine whether or not this affected that. It's all of the above. When people think about, "Why did people vote for Brexit?" and "Why did people vote for Trump?" there's no single reason. There is a perfect storm of reasons. I think one of the most alarming things about this company and this movie is that fundamental idea that Americans are working on British politics and Brits are working on American politics. We should just be working on our own politics, and that's it. To be honest, the, the popularity of this movie will inspire more bad guys to do more bad things. So it shows us that we need to inoculate ourselves against this, and we need to make sure that our governments are ready to try and withstand these kinds of attempts to subvert and industrialize democracy itself.

   2. CWChris Williamson1:22

      I'm joined by Professor David Carroll. Professor, welcome to the show.

   3. DCDavid Carroll1:27

      Uh, it's great to be on here. Thanks for having me.

   4. CWChris Williamson1:29

      What is your life like at the moment? (laughs)

   5. DCDavid Carroll1:33

      (laughs) It's pretty overwhelming. Um, the response to the film, uh, i- is mind-blowing. Mostly because I get so many messages per minute, uh, from people around the world saying that their mind is blown. Um, so this sort of mutual mind-blowing is happening right now. And, uh, it's overwhelming. I, I, I, I n- I never expected it to go this big.

   6. CWChris Williamson1:58

      So, I mean, you were in the press the f- during the first iteration, like the, the real time, uh, unveiling of this particular storyline. And now there's this sort of recap of all of that that's got Netflix's power behind it. So yeah, it's, uh, it doesn't surprise me that you're feeling a little bit overwhelmed by that. The last couple of days ... It's only been out for, upon when we're recording now, like two days. I think 24th it came out on Netflix?

   7. DCDavid Carroll2:27

      Yeah.

   8. CWChris Williamson2:28

      And usually when people suggest something to me and different spheres of awareness say the same thing, I'm like, "Right, I need to, I need to take notice of this." And in the space of two days, I had like five people like, "Man, man, have you watched that, The Great Hack on Netflix? It's sick. You gotta go watch it."

   9. DCDavid Carroll2:42

      (laughs)

   10. CWChris Williamson2:42

       I'm like, "Okay, cool. Fair enough." Um, so yes, for the people who do not know why your life is chaos at the moment and, and what's been going on, could you give us a, a rundown of what we're talking about?

   11. DCDavid Carroll2:55

       Sure. Um, so A Weird Company, uh, has been working in elections around the world for a long time and, um, al- allegedly worked on the Brexit campaign and the Trump presidential campaigns, as well as others. And, um, the movie looks at, uh, the stories of three people who were involved in, uh, learning more and unraveling the scandal behind that. So it follows Carole Cadwalladr, who was the primary journalist for The Observer and The Guardian, who, um, really uncovered the story for the press and the world. It covers Brittany Kaiser, who was, um, really high up in the company and was with the company up until the very end, and she tries to come out and, uh, you know, s- spill the information that everybody is seeking. Uh, and then myself, who, um, learned that I could try to get my data from the company using British law, and it follows my legal struggle, uh, still to this day, trying to get my data back, uh, which under British law is required. And so it's been fascinating to see how the British government, be it in parliament and the Information Commissioner, have been the strongest force in the world to hold the company accountable, and even more accountable than the United States government and the United States regulators. So the movie is a story about how journalism and citizens and the law can hack back against these technological forces. Um, for people who are hoping for a movie that explains, gives you the proof of whether or not this stuff worked, those people will be disappointed. Uh, this is not a movie about whether it worked. This is a movie about whether we can live in a democracy where this stuff is going on.

   12. CWChris Williamson4:58

       Yeah. The big question that hangs over the top of all of it is did they do it, right? Like, if you watch the movie, at the end of it, there's still the natural slipperiness of large corporations like this and the specific evasive tactics that get used in hearings and stuff like that. There's no straight answer. There isn't a, "Yes, we did it. No, we didn't." And for every accusation ... So there's an accusation they worked with Leave.eu. This is Cambridge Analytica, it's the company that we're talking about. Um, there's an accusation they worked with Leave.eu and it ... there's some pretty damning evidence, like, um, emails going backwards and forwards. Brittany, who was one of the, uh, head execs there, sitting on the announcement for the Leave.eu thing, et cetera, et cetera. And yet, when asked, Andrew Nix, who is the head guy at Cambridge Analytica, says, "No, we didn't do it."

   13. DCDavid Carroll5:48

       (laughs)

   14. CWChris Williamson5:48

       Was it Andrew Nix?

   15. DCDavid Carroll5:50

       Alexander.

   16. CWChris Williamson5:50

       Alexander Nix, sorry. Um-

   17. DCDavid Carroll5:52

       Yeah. Yes.

   18. CWChris Williamson5:53

       Yes. And he says, "No, we didn't." So even that is like no straight answers. Does it feel a little bit like trying to play Whac-A-Mole with this?

   19. DCDavid Carroll6:01

       Well, it's really interesting. It's been a story about finding the truth and realizing the fragility of truth in this age, uh, and the reality that this story has intrinsic ambiguity, because we really can't know whether any of this was the defining factor in any of these elections. There's no control group in elections. You cannot determine whether or not this affected that. It's a, it's a, it's all of the above. When people think about why did people vote for Brexit and why did people vote for Trump, there's no single reason. There is a perfect storm of reasons. And so, you know, this is one of the reasons. But what it really shows us is who is determining truth now? And I really sought truth out of the only place I knew that it could be reliable in this age, and that is in the courts. Legal truth is now the only pure truth, because, uh, the machine, the media machine, uh, is a truth distortion device, and then social media is a tr- truth distortion device. So when we had people lying to pr- reporters, and we had people even lying to lawmakers, the best way then to find the truth would be in the courts and in forensic documents, and basically what is on the servers. Uh, and so luckily, um, the UK Information Commissioner seized the servers under criminal warrant, an important fact that the film depicts, an important fact that many people do not realize, and has been conducting an incredible forensic investigation on the servers. And so they say in the autumn, there will be a public report on what is on those servers. And to me, that will be the most reliable, most definitive, um, set of evidence to answer the question, who was Cambridge Analytica? What did they have? How did they use it? And could it have had an effect? Uh, we could- we shouldn't even, um, try to make those assessments until we have hard forensic evidence of what they had. If it t- turns out that their data was noth- noth- nothing special, let's look at the data and decide that. If it turns out that they really did have this extraordinary database, let's see what was in there and see what could happen. At the minimum, we know what's out there so that we can think about the future, the next elections that are coming up right away. This technology is only going to expand in its capabilities, and to be honest, the, the popularity of this movie will inspire more bad guys to do more bad things. So it shows us that we need to inoculate ourselves against this, and we need to make sure that our governments are ready to try and withstand these kinds of attempts to subvert and industrialize democracy itself.

   20. CWChris Williamson9:05

       Is that the scene where the, uh, police or the, uh, law enforcement go into the office building and then pull the blinds down and you can kind of see through? Yeah.

   21. DCDavid Carroll9:16

       That's correct.

   22. CWChris Williamson9:17

       So that... For anyone who's watching, that was... I wondered what the comeuppance of that was, right? Because Cambridge Analytica filed for, uh, bankruptcy, went into administration, um, quite early in the proceedings of when they realized that there was some shit incoming, for want of a better term. And, uh, I wondered how much of that stuff were they able to get rid of. I'm sure everyone will be thinking, "Well, what did they wipe?" Like if the, if law enforcement find X, then what didn't they find? What had already perhaps managed to be binned, et cetera, et cetera. Um, so could you just give the listeners a background to Cambridge Analytica, sort of where they'd been before the, the two main, um, uh, situations that we come up against, which is Brexit and Trump's campaign in 2016?

   23. DCDavid Carroll10:06

       Sure. So the parent company or the main company, which is called SCL, it stands for... It used to stand for Strategic Communications Laboratories. It's actually a company that's, um, I think about 20 years old. It's been around for a while, actually. Um, and when you dig into the history of the company, uh, they've been working in what they call, uh, election management and also defense co- contracting, uh, for q- quite some time now. Um, and ultimately, when I first got into this story, it actually was the military work that disturbed me and troubled me the most. Uh, this idea that a defense con- contractor was now getting into the business of elections and the boundary between the military industrial complex and free and fair elections had been breached by the fact that the company started a elections division called Cambridge Analytica, um, t- especially to get involved in, uh, elections in the United States and to provide services to the Republican P- Party. And in many ways, in response to the success of the Barack Obama campaign, the sort of arms race that political parties are en- engaged in, in one-upping each other, uh, to win elections, uh, using the latest technologies. So I think the film does a good job of acknowledging that reality, um, and that with each successive election, it gets more and more insane.

   24. CWChris Williamson11:42

       (laughs)

   25. DCDavid Carroll11:43

       Uh, so what are we gonna do to slow down the pace of escalation? There's sort of a mutually assured destruction undertone to this, that if we continue to allow military contractors to internationalize and industrialize democracy-

   26. CWChris Williamson12:01

       And commercialize.

   27. DCDavid Carroll12:03

       ...and commercialize it to the highest bidder, and that there really are British aristocrats...... thinking they can, like, reconstruct the British Empire through companies like this. Um, it's a kind of new colonialism and, um, as an American, um, one of the first sort of alarming things that I felt when I discovered who this, what this really was and found some forensic proof that confirmed my worst fears is, I really did have the feeling of, like, "Why is a British company interfering in my election?" It wasn't about the Russians. It was about the British. Um, any other country- (laughs)

   28. CWChris Williamson12:43

       250 years later, it's still the British.

   29. DCDavid Carroll12:47

       So it's like, there shouldn't be any election interference. Um, e- e- elections should be domestic affairs, and I think one of the most alarming things about this company and this movie is that fundamental idea that, um, Am- Am- Americans are working on British politics and Brits are working on American politics. We should just be working on our own politics, and that's it.

   30. CWChris Williamson13:12

       Yeah. There was some pretty harrowing examples of the stuff that SCL in their military form had managed to achieve prior to this, right? So, they'd done some stuff in Trinidad and Tobago where they'd come up with a campaign which essentially was targeted at young voters, but they knew that encouraging young voters not to vote was going to asymmetrically affect a particular demographic. That demographic was the one that they didn't want to vote, and it was the Indian and is it African on the other side?
2. 15:00 – 30:00

   Um, so I think…

   1. DCDavid Carroll15:00

      Um, so I think that is what is alarming. Now, there ... It's not in the movie, but, uh, there are, um, research and reports that somehow SCL got its hands on the data from the Trinidadian ISP, and so did use some data, uh, harvesting, um, to try to develop models of the electorate. Um, and so what's ex- interesting too is this movie just sort of gives you enough to understand and become alarmed, but there's so many threads that the viewer could take from the movie and then do their own investigations and dive deeper and find that the movie is just scratching the surface in a lot of ways.

   2. CWChris Williamson15:43

      Yeah. It is the, uh, hub in the center of a spoke of rabbit holes that you can tumble down on the internet, which is the reason why I only got about five hours of sleep last night after I finished watching it, so thanks for that, David.

   3. DCDavid Carroll15:56

      (laughs) Yep.

   4. CWChris Williamson15:57

      Um, so yeah. Coming back to the SCL thing, which I think is important for people that are listening, even the ones that have watched, uh, the documentary, to kind of frame what we're talking about here, the fact that they were able to enact social change without big data. So big data was allowing them to target more effectively, but their understanding of behavioral economics and behavior change generally allowed them to distribute a message, a social campaign across all of Trinidad and Tobago and downstream from that. Not even like the first or second order effect, like the fifth, sixth order effect was the one that they wanted, and it was going to discriminate and it caused enough of a swing in voter turnout to affect the election in the direction that allegedly their particular employer or, uh, the person that commissioned that work wanted. And then they've pushed this forward and then created the not- Well, I don't want to say non-militarized version, but like the commercial aspect of that, which is what became Cambridge Analytica. And you've got this really sort of shady Bond-type villain guy, uh, Alexander Nix, who's the guy that's behind it all, it would appear, and the whole, the whole company when you start to learn about Cambridge Analytica and particularly about Alexander himself just immediately makes me think about a Dan Brown novel. You know, like one of the, like-

   5. DCDavid Carroll17:23

      (laughs)

   6. CWChris Williamson17:23

      ... evil geniuses from a Dan Brown novel that's in that sort of place and it's really, it's very harrowing, like as you're watching it. Incredibly harrowing.

   7. DCDavid Carroll17:34

      Yeah, and um, there are characters, um, in the company which are, who are not in the film or are sort of secondary characters so, you know, Alexander Nix, um, seems to be the real salesman behind the operation but there are other figures in the company that are not in the movie. Um, a key character who's not been mentioned once is a person named Nigel Oakes, um, and he is reported to be more of the brains behind the operation, the expert in, um, behavioral dynamics he calls it, which is what you were describing, like ec- economic, um, psychology, ec- behavioral ec- economics. Um, and it really comes from the advertising world. He used to be at Saatchi & Saatchi and, um, really did, you know, pursue a path of taking the-... um, principles of how advertising and marketing works and applying those to political warfare, and has, uh, done work for governments, uh, in sort of winning hearts and minds, especially after 9/11. So after September 11th, the focus of especially the US military, but, um, all, many allies sort of started to work on, um, how you could counter violent extremism without escalating more violence, and so using these kinds of techniques were deployed. And Nigel Oakes is really the, um, hidden figure behind that work, and he's still in operation. Um, there is one company that did not go b- bankrupt or insolvent. It's called SCL Insights Limited, and it's the, the last surviving SCL company, and according to my lawsuit, I discovered that he acquired the assets of SCL Group and moved them into SCL Insights, and so that is a, a continuing concern. And I also was able to determine that, um, just days before the scandal exploded last spring, so it was sort of, um, the weekend of, uh, March 16th, 17, 18, when the whole thing exploded, that, that week, um, SCL Group, led by Nigel Oakes, uh, had given a presentation to the State Department in the United States about countering violent extremism with their techniques, uh, and that was from a contract that SCL Group, um, earned, um, during the Trump transition. And there's, uh, public documents that show that Mike Flynn, who i- was a, um, a character in the Mueller investigation and who was caught l- lying to the FBI and, uh, was fired from the Obama campaign and fired from the Tr- Trump campaign and, um, he had a pre- previously undisclosed consulting gig with SCL Group, and the timeline overlaps in a stunning way, where he had a consulting gig with SCL, uh, in November and December of 2016 during the transition, and then there are also p- public documents revealed where the company was given its contract to the State Department, and then right before the, um, whole thing explodes, we, we see that, that h- you know, they were actually delivering their work, uh, on countering violent extremism. And, uh, one of the interesting things when you sort of become well-known for this stuff is anonymous people start sending you things. So I was sent the presentation deck, uh, that Nigel Oakes presented to the State Department that day, and it was a fascinating look into what SCL's work for governments looks like.

   8. CWChris Williamson21:35

      Mm.

   9. DCDavid Carroll21:36

      Um, and how the same techniques, as they would claim, be used for good, and arguably, yes. Like, if you can convince young Muslims to not join ISIS, that is a good thing. N- no one can dispute that is what we want. Um, so an interesting, like, sort of d- data point that I found interesting from their presentation was SCL's me- methodology had shown that the primary motivator for, um, young men in the Islamic world is actually not religious ideology. It is economics, that most young, disaffected men join these kinds of terror groups because of the lack of economic opportunity. There's more opportunity to get paid, uh, if you become a terrorist, unfortunately, in many of these failed societies, and then the tactics that they're recommending are related to this ob- observation that, you know-

   10. CWChris Williamson22:44

       Where, where did they get that observation from? Do you know how they got that?

   11. DCDavid Carroll22:48

       That's really their on-the-ground survey research, their old-fashioned kind of m- market r- research, so not really the big data analytics.

   12. CWChris Williamson22:56

       Mm-hmm.

   13. DCDavid Carroll22:56

       What w- we were talking about before, the sort of good old-fashioned on-the-ground panel research interviews. They send out, like, crews to do interviews. They do surveys. Um, they do individual interviews, sort of good old-fashioned qualitative r- research.

   14. CWChris Williamson23:12

       Mm-hmm.

   15. DCDavid Carroll23:13

       And that actually i- uh, in- initially informs some of their tactics and methods, and then that tends to be sort of further augmented by big data ana- analytics to sort of further validate the initial assumptions that might be developed in a qualitative sense. But just, to me, it was so disturbing and so fascinating that essentially the same company that was telling the State Department that the reason there is ISIS is because of the failures of capitalism, and that same company was, you know, telling the President that the way that he could win the election was by fomenting the divisions in American society and fomenting Islamophobia and fomenting a fear of the other, um, in order to win. It was just so chilling to realize that the same company was s- advising both things.

   16. CWChris Williamson24:18

       Yeah.

   17. DCDavid Carroll24:18

       Um, and it's astonishing to comprehend that.

   18. CWChris Williamson24:22

       Yeah. It really is. I think one thing that comes to mind is as technology progresses, the same way as a wheel could have been made to make a cart which allows someone, a farmer in a field, to pull their, uh, hay around more easily-That same wheel can also be fitted to the bottom of a tank to make a war machine. As technology begins to develop and improve, and is easier for people to get hold of, these situations, the, the line between good and evil actually becomes more magnified, and the implications become greater. And that's why stuff like this, I think, is so chilling that people can see... A- a- also, another thing is that it's at the mercy of whims of humans, right? Like, these, Cambridge Analytica or SCL or whatever could, in some different iteration of the universe, have been totally righteous and super virtuous and been like, "Right, we're gonna help humanitarian causes, and we're gonna have enact change so that people donate the right amount, or so that people improve their recycling, so that people, you know, companies understand that climate change is a thing," et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And they have this power, and the direction in which they choose to swing it is totally down to them, until they're litigated into a box. And once it's out of a different box, once it's been opened, that door's been opened and this technology exists, it's not going back in.

   19. DCDavid Carroll25:49

       (sniffs) (door closes)

   20. CWChris Williamson25:51

       Like, it's not going anywhere. So one of the first things I think that a lot of people will be thinking, one of the biggest questions I've had so far, which I want to ask yourself is, what do we do about companies that hold this sort of power? You have them across nation states. You have them outside of the jurisdiction of one particular government. What's ... Have you got any idea about how we begin to tackle this problem?

   21. DCDavid Carroll26:16

       (smacks lips) Yes, I, I, I definitely would agree that, you know, that people say the genie's out of the bottle. We can't go back to the innocent world that we thought we had. Um, it's true. Uh, and like I said before, um, some critics of this movie could say that, you know, you've done a terrific advertising campaign for these kinds of bad actors. You've glorified them and their ma- magical abilities. Um, but I have felt that it was worth creating the awareness of what is underneath, um, these structures, and it was worth being able to tell the story of how individual action can, um, interface with government accountability. And so it's a real stress test for our institutions, which, um, are being tested to the limit in terms of can they ... A- as it's said in the movie, as it's, as the, the final, um, report from Parliament suggests that the, are our institutions and regulations fit for purpose? Uh, they were designed to do something, and this whole scandal is the ultimate stress test of all these institutions across different countries. We, we have, we've had a transnational investigation that has involved, uh, at, at, at times, um, the United States, the U- United Kingdom, and Canada. Um, the film, to keep it simple, uh, has actually not included some very important strands of the scandal, uh-

   22. CWChris Williamson28:01

       Oh, which of-

   23. DCDavid Carroll28:01

       Yeah, so there's a whole-

   24. CWChris Williamson28:02

       Are you able to tell us about some of those?

   25. DCDavid Carroll28:04

       Sure, sure. So, um, there's a whole, um, part of the scandal that involves a Canadian company called AggregateIQ, um, which the film does not mention. Uh, when you get deep into the rabbit hole, you realize it's a huge part of the story. Um, it's where Chris Wylie came from. Um, and AggregateIQ is central to a lot of the scandal related to B- Brexit, um, and the, um, illegal coordination and illegal spending p- part of the, um, B- Brexit scandal. And that side of the story is much, interestingly, much more connected to, um, Boris J- Johnson's w- sort of wing of the Conservative side, whereas The Great Hack focuses more on the Arron Banks, Nigel Farage side of, um, the, the British political, um, establishment. And so that whole part of the scandal got c- cut off and ch- chunked off 'cause it would get, a complicated story, even more unwieldy. But interestingly, I think the, um, the BBC/HBO fictionalization of B- Brexit, uh, that starred Benedict C- Cumberbatch, that actually is dramatizing that side of the scandal. So I actually think the filmmakers felt justified in, like, leaving that whole thing aside because it has been dramatized already.

   26. CWChris Williamson29:29

       Got you.

   27. DCDavid Carroll29:29

       There's no need to re- to do that. But for viewers trying to put the pieces together, if you've seen the B- Brexit movie, that's the side of the story that The Great Hack didn't bother touching.

   28. CWChris Williamson29:39

       Got it.

   29. DCDavid Carroll29:39

       Instead, it focused on the more Farage and Trump and Bannon side of the scandal. So, but back to the question of, like, what can we do about it or what's possible, um, clearly the need for international cooperation has been de- demonstrated,

3. 30:00 – 45:00

   It's a compliment sandwich,…

   1. DCDavid Carroll30:00

      um, that lawmakers have to collaborate as allies to hold bad actors and rogue operations accountable, as well as legitimate massive multinational corporations like Facebook and Google, that they're both, it's both the responsibility of sort of international cooperation, because no one government or state can h- handle it by themselves, that indeed it took the UK Digital, Media, Culture, and Sport Committee to take a really aggressive stance on getting to the answers, and those lawmakers-... did not take a deferential stance to anyone, not SCL Cambridge Analytica, not Facebook. Um, they were aggressive because they knew they had to be. Whereas, by comparison, US lawmakers and Congress and Senate exhibited tremendous deference to Facebook because it is a domestic company, there was a, a fear of hurting an American business. Um, uh, (laughs) when we, when you go back and, like, you know, listen to those testimonies, a l- a lot of times, the, the lawmakers would, especially on the Republican side, but even on the D- d- d- Democratic side, would just, like, start out with, "Facebook is the, uh, an Amer- is an amazing business. It's the greatest, you know, part of American innovation."

   2. CWChris Williamson31:34

      It's a compliment sandwich, isn't it? Yeah.

   3. DCDavid Carroll31:35

      Yeah, yes, yes. They start out flattering him, and then maybe sort of sneak a good question or a critique in.

   4. CWChris Williamson31:43

      Mm.

   5. DCDavid Carroll31:43

      Whereas the UK lawmakers just were a- aggressive. So that's why you need-

   6. CWChris Williamson31:50

      Say it how it is, David. They don't give a fuck. That's, that's, that's how it was.

   7. DCDavid Carroll31:53

      Oh, sure. No, no, no.

   8. CWChris Williamson31:54

      (laughs) They do not give a fuck.

   9. DCDavid Carroll31:55

      And we n- and, and we needed that. We, we, we, we, we needed, uh, la- la- lawmakers with power to be aggressive, and the, uh, the parliamentarians in A- in Ottawa were also really a- aggressive, were also, uh, took a firm s- stand. And so to me, it shows that... A- and then of course, there was also this grand committee that was formed which include 11 parliaments from around the world, uh, and Zuckerberg refused to appear before any of them. So, um, there was defiance by characters like Alexander Nix, who were willing to lie to these guys. The, um, the, the heads of Aggregate IQ were completely defiant to their g- government, so the, the guys who got caught in Canada. Uh, when you h- if you're... You can go back and ref- uh, watch those hearings, and just, like, it's insane to see these guys just stonewall their own government. And, um, and then the way that, you know, Mark Zuckerberg didn't even have the balls to appear before parliaments in the UK, in A- in C- Canada, and even this grand assembly. So because Facebook is a super state, it requires, um, international cooperation to stand up to, to them. No one country alone is gonna do it.

   10. CWChris Williamson33:24

       Question I've had on the tip of my tongue throughout all of this, how culpable is Facebook in this, and where does their culpability lie? Because they are not Cambridge Analytica, they are somehow the conduit/communications medium. How does Facebook fit into all of this sort of stuff?

   11. DCDavid Carroll33:45

       I wasn't able to attend the, um, the screening and the, um, panel in Washington DC this week. But, uh, Shoshana Zuboff was on a panel in the one that was, uh, screened on Ca- Capitol Hill. She's the author of The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, the sort of definitive tr- treatise on this larger issue. She was highly influential in the filmmakers', um, vision of this. Roger McNamee is, uh, um, a proponent of her as well. And she made the co- comment that basically, and I think this is, this is it, is Facebook was the host and Cambridge Analytica was the parasite.

   12. CWChris Williamson34:22

       (laughs)

   13. DCDavid Carroll34:22

       Um, that, that, that's, that, that's the story here, is that, that they're, that the Facebook is the... has tremendous culpability in, uh, creating this machine that had no, uh, mechanisms for security. That it was just used as it was meant to be used. It was used to sell, um, you know, it was built to sell skin cream and ski vacations, and was deliberately designed to also then sell candidates and allow candidates to find voters. And it was deliberately designed and sold to, um, to sell election outcomes. Uh, and campaigns were in full... Like, like the, the movie does a good job of reminding people that Facebook put its own employees directly embedded into the Trump campaign, and the movie does a good job of then hinting that, um, Facebook had to have been aware that they were working side by side with Cambridge Analytica embedded in the Trump campaign in 2016, despite the fact that th- the company had identified Cambridge Analytica as a rogue operator that had violated their policies, that had required them to certify the deletion of illicit data. And so that Facebook knew that Cambridge Analytica were, was a sketchy operation.

   14. CWChris Williamson35:58

       Why do you think they allowed them to continue? Is someone getting a backhander somewhere? Is there pressure from, um, litigation or someone that has some power? Wh- why are they allowing Cambridge Analytica to continue?

   15. DCDavid Carroll36:14

       That's the key question. Um-

   16. CWChris Williamson36:16

       What do you think?

   17. DCDavid Carroll36:18

       (sighs) (sniffs) I mean, there are so many parts of the story that look like a cover-up to us. Um, weird things that Facebook did, um, that make us lose trust in them.

   18. CWChris Williamson36:36

       What, like-

   19. DCDavid Carroll36:36

       Uh, when you dig, when you dig into the story. So when you realize that, um, the, the two academics from Cambridge University, uh-... that created the company, that actually did the data harvesting were, um, Aleksandr Kogan and this, and, and Aleksandr Kogan's, um, sort of, um, post-doc researcher, an American named Joseph Chancellor. And they formed the company together and, um, even though K- Kogan was the, uh, the lead, he had a partner. And when Facebook discovered that the, the data was being sold, which was ill- which was against their own policies, um, they strangely ended up hiring Joseph Chancellor right into Facebook. So, basically a guy who was caught selling data, basically like, so, so using a- academic research as a, as, as a way to obscure the commercialization of it to be used for pol- political purposes. Um, you know, that is a very, um, you know, that, that's like against Facebook's own policies. It's also illegal in the United Kingdom. And they hired him, and he worked there for a- a while, and it was only when people started asking Facebook, meaning US Senators on both sides of the aisle, "Who is Joseph Chancellor? Tell us about him. What is going on with him? Why..." and, and they're basically asking like, "Why did you hire this guy?" And they said they will conduct an internal investigation, they said they completed their investigation, and then he was dismissed without any explanation. And so he doesn't work for Facebook anymore. He's never been interviewed. He's never made a public statement. Nobody knows anything about him. And, um, it's just mysterious. Uh, there's too many, like, unexplained things for us to, um, just keep going on and, you know, ev- ev- every- everything is fine. The other thing, um-

   20. CWChris Williamson38:53

       Just pulling on, pulling on all of the different threads, yeah.

   21. DCDavid Carroll38:56

       Yeah. Um, the other important, um, pa- part of this that in, in, uh, sort of shows signs of a cover-up is the Attorney General in Washington, D.C., uh, Karl Rais- Raisin has filed a lawsuit against, uh, Facebook for Cambridge Analytica because it, it, um, violated consumer protection laws in the District of Columbia. And it's one of the most, um, it's one of the lawsuits in the US that I'm following the closest. Um, and he has re- he ha- after the release of the movie, he actually refiled, um, his, uh, demand to have internal emails unsealed. Um, and because he's in the discovery of that lawsuit, he's gotten, uh, e- emails that show Facebook employees in Washington, D.C. knew about Cambridge Analytica way earlier than has been publicly disclosed. And there are specific emails that are redacted that you can see, and it's like them talking about Cambridge Analytica, and Facebook is desperate not to have these emails unsealed because it will show what they knew about this company, when they knew about it, and who knew about it. And the who, what, when is still unanswered and Zuckerberg asserted to Congress under oath that he learned about Cambridge Analytica from the first Guardian article in December 2015-

   22. CWChris Williamson40:29

       (laughs)

   23. DCDavid Carroll40:29

       ... which is incredulous. And even if that's true, then it means that there is a management crisis at this company that you could find a military contractor harvesting data on your platform and you do not escalate it to the, uh, C-level suite. Like if, if that's-

   24. CWChris Williamson40:54

       (laughs)

   25. DCDavid Carroll40:54

       ... the internal story, then that is a damning story of mismanagement.

   26. CWChris Williamson40:58

       (laughs)

   27. DCDavid Carroll40:59

       Or, or Zuckerberg committed perjury. That's like, that's the only explanation that I can understand from, from knowing the details here. And that, I think, is why Facebook is desperate to keep those emails sealed. Because as soon as you get a verifiable email of, of basically what I, what I worry about is a Washington, D.C. employee said, "I, we, we did some G- Googling on this weird company. Yeah, they're a defense contractor, they're scraping data. What do we do about it?"

   28. CWChris Williamson41:33

       What do you reckon the low-level anxiety rating is in Facebook at the moment? Like it's just gonna be everyone's just gonna be walking around with terror hanging over their heads at the moment that something's going to come out 'cause I don't see how this ends well for them. As you've said, there's two, two options. One is that they are, um, malicious in their purposeful deception, and the second is that they're incompetent in their naivety.

   29. DCDavid Carroll42:02

       I think it's both.

   30. CWChris Williamson42:02

       (laughs)
4. 45:00 – 1:00:00

   Wow. …

   1. DCDavid Carroll45:00

      the Hillary d- digital operation. And they had a, um, AI brain essentially that they called Ava, named after, um, uh, Ava L- Lovelace, who is the, um, you know, really important, uh, female programmer in the history of programming. She basically invented the algorithm. And it was basically like Alexa or Siri for digital campaigning. They would li- literally, like, ask Ava, "Where should we run ads tomorrow?" and "Where should Hillary go campaigning tomorrow?" And Ava would-

   2. CWChris Williamson45:38

      Wow.

   3. DCDavid Carroll45:39

      ... c- c- c- crunch the numbers and give them the answers. And my hypothesis is that they were so enchanted with this f- this- this basically immature AI, the shiny object of asking Ava for the magic answers, and they believed this robot way too much. And by sort of my worst case scenario, um, uh, sort of imagination is that they asked, um, A- Ava, "Where should Hillary go?" And A- and Ava never said, "Go to Wisconsin." So they never went to Wisconsin. And H- Hillary needed to have campaigned really hard in Wisconsin-

   4. CWChris Williamson46:18

      So you think that's-

   5. DCDavid Carroll46:19

      ... and Pennsylvania.

   6. CWChris Williamson46:19

      ... a- an identifier for why there was some glaring omissions in her campaign tour?

   7. DCDavid Carroll46:24

      C- could be. We don't have enough information to know, but that's what I worry about. That- that-

   8. CWChris Williamson46:28

      Mm.

   9. DCDavid Carroll46:28

      ... that the- the sort of, um, unforced errors of the digital strategy were informed by something or someone.

   10. CWChris Williamson46:38

       Mm.

   11. DCDavid Carroll46:39

       Who, who made those sort of core strategic errors? Um, how is the data abused to make mistakes? Um, and, uh, how was the faith in technology overblown? Um, how was this, like, arms race to be better than the opponing s- opposing side, how did that bite the Democrats in the ass in the end? They were, like, using technology that was not ready for primetime, that was, that was, you know, version 0.1 instead of-

   12. CWChris Williamson47:13

       (laughs)

   13. DCDavid Carroll47:14

       ... you know?

   14. CWChris Williamson47:14

       ... the Cambridge Analytica version 4.0. Yeah, exactly.

   15. DCDavid Carroll47:18

       And that g- good old fashion direct marketing techniques actually won the day. And I think that that's Brad Parscale's, um, core competency, is just sort of old-fashioned direct marketing techniques on steroids. And when you give that guy a huge buh- dget, he gets Trump voters by getting donations and selling merchandise and getting people to go to rallies. It is just old-fashioned direct marketing. And, um, I don't think we should underestimate the power of people, you know, investing in a candidate with their own money, uh, buying mer- merchandise and branding themselves with the campaign, and going to these rallies which are the closest thing you're ever gonna see to fascist rallies in United States. And, you know, being a part of this highly charged, very terrifying on-the-ground movement.

   16. CWChris Williamson48:20

       There's a question hanging over everyone's heads, even those of us in the UK who watched with... kind of like watching a sitcom, a terrifying sitcom unfold when the Hillary and, uh, Trump election night went on. Um, interesting but not our problem kind of. Um, there's a question hanging over everyone's heads, I think still to this day, even when I hear people talk about it, how did this happen? Or now it's how did that happen, I suppose.

   17. DCDavid Carroll48:46

       Mm-hmm.

   18. CWChris Williamson48:47

       And this recent, uh, exposure that's coming out of, uh, The Great Hack adds another-... not excuse, but another reason, another layer to that, that there's all of these questions. There's the Mueller report, there's the, the Cambridge Analytica scandal, there's Facebook, there's all of these sort of different elements and people... Do you think people are starting to get a grasp of how did this happen? Because everyone's been post hoc rationalizing it was people wanted change, the Democrats tried, started to play the identity politics game and they let, they started to, uh, subsist to the left, too far left, et cetera, et cetera.

   19. DCDavid Carroll49:24

       Mm-hmm.

   20. CWChris Williamson49:25

       All that stuff's post hoc rationalization 'cause no one saw it. Except for, like, Scott Adams on Twitter, no one saw it in advance. (laughs) Um-

   21. DCDavid Carroll49:32

       Sure.

   22. CWChris Williamson49:33

       ... and now there's more elements of this coming out. Do you think people are starting to get more of a grasp, or is it just the first in a number of unveilings to come?

   23. DCDavid Carroll49:44

       I hope people, um, stop looking for single reasons for things and start to understand it's a, it's a complex network of factors that interconnect and interrelate and amplify each other. Um, so, uh, sort of as time has passed, we're able to actually have a more sophisticated understanding. I like the way the film also p-points the things that happened a long time ago that contributed toward this outcome, the sort of b- b- butterfly effect that things happen and then the resulting effects, l- uh, echo down the road. So, um, the way that the mortgage c- crisis in 2008, um, still reverberates to the day, this day, the Great Recession that w- wiped the wealth out of so many Americans. Um, what's not mentioned in the film, which I think is another significant, um, social issue in the United States is the opiates crisis and the greed of the pharmaceutical industry, and the kind of crazy reverse racism that, um, occurred there. So basically this hypothesis that, um, the pharmaceutical industry, like, over-marketed opiates and doctors over-prescribed to working white patients and actually would not prescribe to African American p- patients. And so, the white population of the United States is now, like, in this addiction plague, um, and we're just realizing it. It has destroyed families, destroyed communities, e- especially in these white working class states. So, you know, had, you had the Great Recession caused by the greed of Wall Street, you had this opiates crisis caused by the greed of ph- ph- pharmaceuticals. Now you have this, like, crisis in democracy caused, caused by the greed of Silicon Valley and the surveillance c- capitalists. So, it's, like, a reckoning of years, actually, in the making of sort of the self-destructive pensions of American culture. Um, growth at all costs, greed is good kind of way of being. Um, and then we haven't even mentioned Fox News, which traces back to Ronald Reagan when he got rid of the, what was called the Fairness Doctrine where the, um, FCC that re- regulated br- broadcast used to be a, a doctrine that you have to give both sides to the issue if you use the public airwaves. And R- Reagan got rid of that, and that created the opportunity to create partisan news outlets, um, (clears throat) and talk r- radio.

   24. CWChris Williamson52:33

       Is that still... Is that only in the States because the UK-

   25. DCDavid Carroll52:38

       Yes.

   26. CWChris Williamson52:38

       ... doesn't seem to have that same split?

   27. DCDavid Carroll52:42

       Uh, yeah. The, basically, it, it, up until the eight- the eight- eight- '80s, um, broadcast news, br- broadca- br- bra- broadcast news in the US was very balanced because of the Fairness Doctrine, this idea of the government owned the airwaves, the spectrum, um, news companies leased the airwaves from the government, a public good, and in, in order for them to do that, they had to have a fair use of the airwaves. Reagan got rid of that, let people do whatever they want with the p- public airwaves. It c- it cr- created the potential to then split news into p- political viewpoints. So this, like, um, dividing the, you know, sort of dividing the nation rather than keeping it unified through technology and government policy and media is something that started in the '80s.

   28. CWChris Williamson53:40

       Thirty years in the making.

   29. DCDavid Carroll53:41

       And then, yeah. And, and then it just built and built and built, and then in the early 2000s, the internet c- came and radically changed the whole media and business e- ecology of the world, but especially how news and media and advertising worked. So that contributed towards, um, the cont- acceleration of these tr- trends, um, not only into, like, hyper-partisan news outlets, but individualized hyper-partisan news feeds.

   30. CWChris Williamson54:16

       (laughs)
5. 1:00:00 – 1:10:56

   Mm-hmm. …

   1. DCDavid Carroll1:00:00

      in 2016, and at least now we are awake. Um, but we should expect the same actors to do the same things they did before, and even more sophisticated, so we just have to be even more vigilant, uh, and try to inoculate ourselves and then not give up on what we need to do, and to try to make this part of the campaign. Um, you know, it's an opportunity to pressure the politicians to confront this, because one of the paradoxes here is on both sides of the aisle, especially in the United States, they really don't want to kneecap Facebook too much, because they realize they need Facebook to stay in power. They need Facebook to motivate their voters and to target them. And so you're asking them to limit their own ability to stay in power. So, um, we need to confront the ch- the extra challenge of asking our lawmakers to give us rights and reduce their ability to manipulate us to keep them in power.Um, and that's huge and really difficult, so we need to, um, deal with that. Um, and it's a particularly interesting dynamic in the United States is, um, the idea that there are s- laws passed at the state level. So California passed the California Consumer Privacy Act. So it's important that it's in California because obviously this is the home base of most of the industry, and it moves United States more toward the GDPR. It's not as strong as the GDPR, but it moves the needle in that direction. So already now, if there's gonna be a national privacy l- act, it's gonna have to, um, supersede the state law, and, um, that's a fundamental sort of challenge to American politics that, you know, whenever you override the states, you have a particular political debate. And so-

   2. CWChris Williamson1:01:59

      Mm-hmm.

   3. DCDavid Carroll1:02:00

      ... um, so that's, that's basically the... The industry is terrified of all of the states passing their own privacy laws, so then they have to deal with a patchwork of reg- regulations.

   4. CWChris Williamson1:02:09

      Oh, yeah.

   5. DCDavid Carroll1:02:10

      The, the industry wants a national law badly, and so now they're basically gonna have to figure out how to negotiate the, the, the l- the industry law, lobbyists are gonna have to negotiate what concessions are they gonna give in order to supersede the state laws. And there are other states that have laws in the works. So New York has a really strong privacy bill, uh, on the floor, which is even stronger than California's. And so the minute you get, like, New York and California pa- passing laws, which have a huge economic power in the country, uh, California is the fifth-largest economy in the world, um, that, um, that's gonna be this muscular force that's gonna sort of run the debate in Washington, DC. And so I'm hopeful for that, and it's sort of where the kind of federalist dynamic of American politics will come into play is that state voters will be able to influence the debate by passing laws at the state house which then raises the bar for Washington, DC to override those laws because people are gonna be mad if Washington, DC makes a weaker law than their own state law.

   6. CWChris Williamson1:03:23

      Mm-hmm.

   7. DCDavid Carroll1:03:23

      So the, the advice that I would give to Americans listening is actually go to your state re- representatives first and engage with them, and push, push things along in your state house. And that's gonna have a stronger impact on what's going on in Washington, DC in the big picture.

   8. CWChris Williamson1:03:44

      That's interesting. I think the sad thing or the scary thing is that in 2020 if... I- it's unlikely that all of this is going to have been washed through by the time-

   9. DCDavid Carroll1:03:56

      Yep.

   10. CWChris Williamson1:03:56

       ... that we get there. Yes, someone may have lost a, a couple of bullets of ammunition from their weapon with regards to the fact that had Cambridge Analytica... I mean, let's think about. This is a different iteration of the world where the Cambridge Analytica scandal hadn't come out, and they've got another four years of voter data, and they've got another four years of understanding behavioral change. Like, oh my God, you're just totally at their mercy. Um, but as you say, it's likely that these tactics are going to be used again, and realistically because of the way that they're done, it was, uh, the, the presentation in the documentary, like, um, the reporter from The Guardian being targeted with what was actually a really funny, like, very degrading but very funny meme video. Um, all of these sort of tactics that really understand what gets people engaged and what gets people going, we are at the mercy of our biases. We're just, you know, hairless apes as, as we (laughs) often get called, and inoculating ourselves from this sort of information is going to be incredibly difficult, I guess. I mean, are there any... Uh, apart from not using social media, are there any tactics that people can use to help themselves with regards to that other than a critical eye?

   11. DCDavid Carroll1:05:13

       I, I actually wouldn't even say don't use social media because as I used... I used it in the film, um, Twitter was an important weapon in my battle. Um, so social media can be used for good, and it sh- should be. And so, um, I actually don't s- think that people should delete their ac- accounts. Um, it doesn't really solve the problem. Um, so, um, I think the key is to try to use these forces for good and for democracy and not for an- anti-democracy, um, as best you can, uh, especially until we figure out how to better protect ourselves. Um, so yeah, I think it's mostly aw- awareness and st- the right kind of skepticism and to better understand, like, how these machines are manipulating us. Um, like, one of the things I like about the movie is the way that it integrates the interface of social media into the movie.

   12. CWChris Williamson1:06:11

       Yeah. Yeah, it's cool.

   13. DCDavid Carroll1:06:11

       So that, so that you realize that the manipulation is right there in front of you, the sort of slot machine user interfaces are the first layer of manipulation.

   14. CWChris Williamson1:06:22

       Yeah.

   15. DCDavid Carroll1:06:22

       Um, and to think that, you know, it's these, like, you know, guys who are, um, hacking our m- minds with psy- psyops, even before you get there, it's just the slot machine of these buttons, um, and the way that it's affecting the neurotransmitters in our brains. Um, you know, we have to start there and think about, you know, how these machines are. And the fact that Instagram has removed likes, starting to test that out, is strong evidence that this realization that the manipulation happens right on the surface of these apps and interfaces, I think, is a really important moment to question not just, you know, the b- boogeyman of Cambridge Analytica, but-... the whole way we are spending most of our time.

   16. CWChris Williamson1:07:12

       The entire ecosystem, right?

   17. DCDavid Carroll1:07:13

       Scrolling. Yes, yes.

   18. CWChris Williamson1:07:15

       It, it's a ... I promise that I didn't give David my, um, my notes before that, but that was my finishing point. (laughs) The fact that, um, we've done, on this podcast 18 months ago, I did an episode called A Hacker In Your Pocket, which is after I heard the first Tristan Harris on Sam Harris podcast, which is what-

   19. DCDavid Carroll1:07:33

       Yep.

   20. CWChris Williamson1:07:34

       ... exposed me and a lot of the listeners to Time Well Spent and the Center for Humane Technology and all that sort of stuff. Tristan's also now released his own podcast, which is fantastic. Um, you're totally right. On the surface, I was thinking, like, "This is so terrible. My reptile brain's being manipulated with red buttons." And we've got, we've got entire posts that are a rundown of how to change your notification settings on iPhone, so that you don't get triggered as much. And, you know, we're playing, we're playing up here thinking that we're pulling weeds out, whereas we're on top of an atomic bomb that's below it, and we're actually just, like, making no difference at all. Like, forget the fact that your phone wants you to be on your phone a fair bit and your attention span's gone down. Like, your entire worldview is being manipulated. It's so vast.

   21. DCDavid Carroll1:08:28

       Yeah.

   22. CWChris Williamson1:08:30

       (laughs)

   23. DCDavid Carroll1:08:30

       Yeah, it is. It, it is. It is. And, you know, un- until you learn how the sausage is made-

   24. CWChris Williamson1:08:37

       (laughs)

   25. DCDavid Carroll1:08:37

       ... it's hard to appreciate it. You know?

   26. CWChris Williamson1:08:40

       Yeah, I agree. Um, so David, I, I really appreciate your time for coming on. If people want to find out more, first off, go watch The Great Hack on Netflix. Um, after that, any blogs that you would recommend or where can people get in touch with yourself or find out more?

   27. DCDavid Carroll1:08:58

       Sure. Um, so as it's, uh, depicted in the movie, I'm very active on Twitter and it's, um ... So you can follow me on Prof Carroll and, um, happy to engage with people there. Um, and, uh, I think that's a good starting point. I, um, tend to post a lot of what I'm looking at, um, and, uh ... So I think it's a good jumping off point. Um, you won't find me on Facebook anymore.

   28. CWChris Williamson1:09:26

       (laughs)

   29. DCDavid Carroll1:09:28

       Um, (laughs) but, uh, but, uh, if, if you want to re- reach out direct to me, uh, you know, drop ... You can slide into my DMs and I can, uh, give you my email address.

   30. CWChris Williamson1:09:39

       Fantastic. Uh, David, I, I really do wish you luck with the rest of this campaign. I'm gonna be watching with, uh, a lot of interest. Like I say, I'm sure that the listeners will be, will be super excited to go down the rabbit holes that your Twitter provides. Um, and yeah, we'll see, you know, maybe in, in a year's time or something like that, we'll be able to do a, a catch-up episode and we'll be able to see where the state of the, uh, of the 2020 year has taken us and stuff like that.

Episode duration: 1:10:52