On Wednesday, Cambridge Analytica whistleblower Christopher Wylie told the Senate that President Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign—more specifically, former chief strategist Steve Bannon—hired the firm with the intention of using data to “discourage or demobilize certain types of people from voting,” The Hill reports.
You read the above paragraph correctly. But let’s run it again for the people in the back. According to Wylie, former chief strategist for the potential president Steve Bannon used a company to figure out how to target black folks to suppress the black vote. From The Hill:
In an interview with CNN after his testimony, Wylie said that Bannon, who held a position on the firm’s board before joining the Trump campaign, directed the firm to research suppressing the vote among black Americans.
Other liberal demographic groups were also targeted, Wylie said.
“Mr. Bannon sees cultural warfare as the means to create enduring change in American politics. It was for this reason Mr. Bannon engaged SCL [Cambridge Analytica’s parent company], a foreign military contractor, to build an arsenal of informational weapons he could deploy on the American population,” Wylie told CNN.
Earlier this year, Wylie helped blow up Cambridge Analytica’s whole spot after he revealed that the company harvested 87 million people’s data without their consent.
Sen. Christopher Coons (D-Del.) asked Wylie during his Senate Intelligence Committee hearing whether Bannon’s goal “was to suppress voting or discourage certain individuals in the U.S. from voting.”
“That was my understanding, yes,” Wylie replied, The Hill reports.
There you have it, folks. Stay woke.