Who Runs the Fake News
As the news continues to trickle out on the Russian influence in the presidential election a side story has begun to unfold that sheds light on to the tools used. Clint Watts testified on March 31st to the Senate Intelligence Committee that gave some clarity on how the narrative was spun with fake news using a sophisticated network of twitter and other social media bots combined with real persons. These bots would spread misinformation while having profile pictures and following groups that would make them appear to be Midwestern swing-voter Republicans. Clint Watts stated the intention of this was to add credibility of the deception saying, “So that way whenever you’re trying to socially engineer them and convince them that the information is true, it’s much more simple because you see somebody and they look exactly like you, even down to the pictures.” For those who have been paying attention to the news before the hearings it was no surprise to know that the Russians used a sophisticated network of bots to spin a narrative and deliver fake news, but what has yet been really discussed is how and where the technology for those bots came from. One might be inclined to think it all exists within a secret underground lair in Russia, but it is more sinister than that. Companies and figures from Britain and the USA are at the helm here that seem to have Russian ties. To get a better understanding we must look in to the history of the financial backing of SCL (Strategic Communication Laboratories) Group, Cambridge Analytica and members of Trump’s team while looking in to the roles these groups played in the campaigns.
SCL Group has a convoluted corporate structure that hinders full clarity in to who owns and operates the company. However, what we do know is that up until 2015 the largest share holder in the SCL Group was, Vincent Tchenguiz, an Iranian-British businessman known mostly for his investments in Real Estate. Tchenguiz acquired 23 percent of the shares of SCL early in the companies history. Around that time Tchenguiz also invested in another privately held U.K. business whose largest shareholder was the Ukrainian oligarch Dmitry Firtash (an apparent close friend of Putin who is currently indicted and awaiting extradition on corruption and racketeering charges). Tchenguiz later divested in the company selling his shares for a fraction of what he paid after holding on to them for 10 years while the company turned little to no profits. It is unclear why a real Estate investor would invest in a marketing and targeting company, but it is clear that there exist at the very least a tenuous link between Tchenguiz and Firtash. As these are all privately held companies we can only gather information from public information from shares bought and sold, most of which is done through shell companies. Before selling his shares in SCL Group, in March 2011 Tchenguiz was arrested in raids as part of an investigation in to the 2008 collapse of the Icelandic bank Kaupthing. The SFO later settled with Tchenguiz after he sued due to mistakes made in the warrant request and the SFO has now dropped the case in to fraud concerning Kaupthing. However, it is notable that at the time of the bank’s collapse it had nearly half of its capital loaned out to Tchenguiz. These loans are effectively what killed the bank. The interesting connection between Kaupthing, Tchenguiz and the SCL Group here though is that Exista hf owned the greatest shares in Kaupthing. Exista financial services has a paper trail identifying Alfa-Bank of Russia as a major shareholder in Exista . There appears to be a trend appearing here between incredibly wealthy financiers and the Russian oligarchy. Perhaps this is how money was funneled through Tchenguiz to fund the early SCL Group. It is even more intriguing that Firtash had business ties with Tchenguiz as well as ties with Paul Manafort (the same Paul Manafort that was Trump’s campaign manager) in the recent Ukranian ‘black ledger’ that saw a pro-Russian party rise in the region — but I digress lest we get our heads in the weeds between the thousands of convoluted shell companies and the admittedly thin public connections we can make. We can hope that Mueller’s team has gotten deeper in to structure than we can.
This leads us in to Cambridge Analyitca, which is a smaller offshoot of parent company SCL Group that houses the talent and tools required for ‘Micro Targeting’ and lists several tools specializing in “changing audience behavior”. Cambridge Analytica has been accredited with the success of BREXIT as well as Trump’s campaign. The libertarian US billionaire Robert Mercer — a major Trump supporter who is close friends with Bozell and the former Ukip leader Nigel Farage — was reportedly very impressed with Cambridge Analytica and soon sought to become a major shareholder in the company. Additionally, Robert Mercer is who provided the $10 million in seed money for Steve Bannon to start Breitbart news. Curiously, Steve Bannon also at one point sat on Cambridge Analytica’s board. Mercer also introduced Farage to Cambridge Analytica, according to Andy Wigmore who is the communications director of Leave.EU, the Brexit campaign advocated by Farage. Recently it was reported by the Associated Press that Michael Flynn had previously not disclosed that he had accepted a consulting agreement with Cambridge Anaylitca’s parent company SCL Group. Flynn claims he terminated the agreement and did not receive any payments after Trump won the election . Even Ted Cruz sought the use of the company’s tools in his 2016 campaign and the site lists Ben Carson’s campaign as a customer as well. At the very least there seems to be a large connection between republican party and libertarian figure heads teaming up with curious Russian acquaintances.
To add another angle to this tangled mess concerning the “fake news” we have to look at various publications and how they interact with the same people involved with Cambridge Analytica. Steve Bannon, who we now know was on the board was bank rolled by Mercer to start Breitbart news. It’s not coincidence that the President and the Alt-Right feed in to a cyclical narrative of news based off articles published by Breitbart. You might have noticed the President has retweeted several Breitbart articles and Info Wars tends to use their source material on thier site frequently.
Not only is Breitbart part of the propaganda machine, but we now know that Trump has a lot of pull with the National Enquirer thanks to his outlandish tweets about Joe Scarborough and Mika. Additonally, the President has retweeted news from Sputnik and RT, both known to be Russian propaganda machines in their own right. Whenever one of these publications makes a statement, each other publication moves to regurgitate the same narrative attempting to add weight to the accusations. What’s more is that when Cambridge Analytica is involved, it becomes even easier to spread the fire.
If you want to follow the narrative that’s being created it has become very easy — all that you need to do is bookmark Clint Watt’s Securing Democracy page that tracks the posts and updates of the twitter bots presumably ran by Cambridge Analytica.
It is evident that there are multiple major players in this propaganda machine. It is chilling that these top players are all close to the President and hold huge power structures of their own in and outside of government. I trust that you find the information above showcases accurately that who writes the fake news are the very same people who coined the phrase “Fake News”. They all also seem to have some very strange ties with Russia along the way. I think Marshall McLuhan’s quote is most poignant given the climate we live in today, “World War III is a guerrilla information war with no division between military and civilian participation.” Chilling.
Update 3/19/2018:
Channel 4 News went under cover to show case more of the story behind the scenes months after this was originally posted.
Sources
- http://www.npr.org/2017/03/31/522151915/sorting-out-the-congressional-russia-investigations
- Jenny Davey ‘Tchenguiz turns focus to green projects’ The Times (London), 31 January 2006, Tuesday Pg. 45
- http://www.reuters.com/article/russia-capitalism-gas-special-report-pix-idUSL3N0TF4QD20141126http://www.newsru.com/finance/21oct2008/iceland.html
- https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-campaign-chief-paul-manafort-named-in-ukraine-anti-corruption-probe/2016/08/15/fa180f20-6327-11e6-be4e-23fc4d4d12b4_story.html?utm_term=.3a6eba419245
- https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/feb/26/robert-mercer-breitbart-war-on-media-steve-bannon-donald-trump-nigel-farage
- http://www.businessinsider.com/michael-flynn-details-tie-to-data-firm-transition-pay-2017-8
- https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/dec/11/senator-ted-cruz-president-campaign-facebook-user-data
- http://www.businessinsider.com/president-donald-trump-relationship-national-inquirer-mika-brzezinski-2017-6
- http://www.npr.org/2016/10/11/497520017/trump-apparently-quotes-russian-propaganda-to-slam-clinton-on-benghazi
