ALIEN INVASION

Cambridge Analytica ‘Sent Foreigners’ to Steer GOP Campaigns

Company insiders were worried about U.S. law.

You would think there’s only so much controversy one company could cause—but the allegations about Cambridge Analytica, accused of harvesting the data of 50 million people to help elect Donald Trump, just keep coming. Former Cambridge Analytica research director turned self-proclaimed whistleblower Christopher Wylie told The Washington Post the company assigned dozens of non-U.S. citizens to provide strategy and messaging advice to Republican candidates in 2014, in a potential breach of U.S. laws limiting foreign involvement in elections. Wylie said the company tried to present itself as “an American brand” and used a program across several U.S. states to help Republican campaigns reach voters with specially tailored messages. Federal election law says foreign nationals must not “directly or indirectly participate in the decision-making process” of a campaign, but can play lesser roles. Two other former Cambridge Analytica workers, who weren’t named, said concerns about the legality of Cambridge Analytica’s work in the U.S. was regularly discussed at the company. “It’s [a] dirty little secret that there was no one American involved in it, that it was a de facto foreign agent, working on an American election,” Wylie said.