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Cambridge Analytica Whistleblower Wanted to Build ‘NSA’s Wet Dream’

Christopher Wylie, a co-founder of Cambridge Analytica, wanted to sell “psychographic” profiles.

Cambridge Analytica whistleblower Christopher Wylie reportedly wanted to build a startup that was the “NSA’s wet dream,” according to BuzzFeed News. In documents obtained by the site, Wylie expressed his desire to produce “psychographic” profiles and sell them to marketers so they could use them to “identify our personalities and, possibly, influence our behavior.” At the time he was working for SCL Group—a company that does “military and political campaign work.” When writing about his startup in 2013, Wylie said that the “goal is first to make it an extremely profitable company...Then we will cleanse our souls with other projects, like using the data for good rather than evil. But evil pays more.” Wylie also wrote that he had ambitions to “change the world in a positive way” by creating “one of the world's largest population datasets that could massively revolutionize all kinds of scientific research.” One source told BuzzFeed that Wylie’s failed startup was a “precursor to Cambridge Analytica,” although Wylie’s lawyer said that they were “completely separate entities.”