Information & Ethics Committee on May 29th, 2018

[Christopher Wylie]

The reason I said “weasel words” is because it is technically true that AggregateIQ was not part of SCL. It was a separately registered company in a separate country. However, the intellectual property licensing arrangements, the contractual arrangements, and the development work were all exclusive with SCL.

The reason I said that is because, whilst it is very technically true that AggregateIQ is a separate company, that doesn't mean that it owned the intellectual property that it was developing. SCL owned the intellectual property that it was developing.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Just to close this off, you also said that they were a proxy money-laundering operation in the Brexit, Vote Leave campaign. Did you not say that?

[Christopher Wylie]

When you look at the relationship that AggregateIQ had with many of the different campaign groups on the Leave side, and you see that all of those different campaign groups received donations—in some cases, very sizable donations—from Vote Leave, and that this money then all went to AggregateIQ, to me that looks like a proxy for breaking campaign spending law in the United Kingdom.

Facebook recently confirmed to The Electoral Commission and to the Parliament of the United Kingdom that in fact AggregateIQ had some of the same custom audiences and look-alike audiences that were based on their work for Vote Leave, for some of these other entities.

What has been established so far is that money went from Vote Leave to another campaign, and it then went to the same service provider for the same work that Vote Leave had. Facebook has now confirmed that some of the targeting and the target universes were exactly the same.

I don't know if calling it money laundering per se is the technically correct way of expressing that relationship, but in the general sense it does look like the relationship that it had with all of the Leave campaigns was to obfuscate electoral law in the U.K.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bob Zimmer]

Thank you, Mr. Angus.

Next up, for seven minutes, is Mr. Baylis.

[Frank Baylis, Liberal, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Wylie.

I'll just add a correction to what you said about the money moving from Vote Leave to one of the other ones. What we were told by AggregateIQ is that they didn't even bother passing it over. They just gave it directly to AIQ. In that sense—

[Christopher Wylie]

I'm sorry. You're correct. What I meant by passing the money around is that the invoices....

You are correct. They probably did, in many cases, provide the money directly to—

[Frank Baylis, Liberal, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

They didn't even trust them to give them the money. They just said, “Send the invoice to them and we'll pay it.”

[Christopher Wylie]

I'm Sorry. I stand corrected. The invoices were different, but the money did—

[Frank Baylis, Liberal, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

They didn't even bother sending the money. That's how coordinated they were.

Starting off right at the beginning of this issue, I'd like to talk to LUKOIL and the Russian government. LUKOIL, as we know, is run by a gentleman, Mr. Alekperov, who is a former minister of the government. We know that this company is under U.S. government sanctions because it's seen as an arm of the Russian government, so when I talk about LUKOIL or I talk about the Russian regime of Vladimir Putin, I'm going to be referring to them as one.

They start off by connecting with Mr. Kogan. Can you explain those connections between Mr. Kogan and the Russian government?

[Christopher Wylie]

At the time Dr. Kogan was engaged by SCL, he was also working on Russian-funded projects out of St. Petersburg on profiling social media users, with a particular focus on two things. One was online trolling, and trolling behaviour in all social media. The second was a focus on what you call “dark triad traits,” which are narcissism, psychopathy, and Machiavellianism.

SCL was aware of this work. It is documented in emails that the company wanted to pitch Aleksandr Kogan's work for the Russians to its other clients. They were giving talks, as I understand it, both about the work he was doing at St. Petersburg and also referencing some of he work he was doing for SCL in the United States.

Around the same time, LUKOIL then approached SCL/Cambridge Analytica with a particular interest in targeting. Discussions were had about Cambridge Analytica's experience in rumour campaigns and disinformation. That is documented. There were presentations, which I've handed out to the authorities, that reference back—

[Frank Baylis, Liberal, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

I want to hold that thought for a second. So LUKOIL, again, this theoretical oil company, shows up at SCL, and they want to talk about rumour campaigns, attitudinal inoculation, things that we could call “fake news”. Would that be a global catch-all?

[Christopher Wylie]

Sure. That's sort of a new way of calling it.

[Frank Baylis, Liberal, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

Yes.

[Christopher Wylie]

It's disinformation.

[Frank Baylis, Liberal, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

Let's call it fake news. That seems to be the term now.

[Christopher Wylie]

Sure.

[Frank Baylis, Liberal, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

Why would LUKOIL be interested in fake news or spreading fake news?

[Christopher Wylie]

I can't speak to what LUKOIL's intentions were in terms of those meetings. I do know that when SCL made presentations about disinformation or attitudinal inoculation, that did not dissuade the company from continuing that relationship. The company was interested. They then received white papers that my colleagues and I had composed on the data assets and capacity of the company in the United States.

[Frank Baylis, Liberal, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

If I could say at this time, at this stage, you've got LUKOIL—which I'm going to call the Russian government—trying to spread fake news and learning about.... I need a database so I'm working with Mr. Kogan to get a database and I'm financing him, the Russian government, LUKOIL. Then I'm also talking to SCL about how to spread that fake news now that I have this database. That's going on.

Then something interesting happens. Two people from the United States show up, Mr. Steve Bannon and Robert Mercer. The big players in the Internet are all American-based. This technology to target people...as you mentioned, Canadians can do it, Americans can do it. How did Steve Bannon and Robert Mercer know that this was going on, that there was this group working with the Russian government that was stealing data, and then looking at spreading fake news? How did those two gentlemen show up—Steve Bannon and Robert Mercer—to this little company in Cambridge?

[Christopher Wylie]

I wasn't present for the first couple of meetings. My understanding is that Steve Bannon was introduced to Alexander Nix by a mutual acquaintance. At the time he was the editor of Breitbart and was a follower of what's called the Breitbart doctrine, which is that politics flow downstream from culture, so if you want to change politics, start with culture. Breitbart, obviously, was not expanding into a mainstream media outlet as had been envisioned. He was looking for a way of expanding his arsenal of tools to engage in what he would call culture war. So the appeal of SCL Group, when he was introduced to the company, was that it worked on information operations for the U.S. military, for the U.K. military, and for other militaries.

[Frank Baylis, Liberal, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

Could we say another appeal might be that they happen to have something unique, something that wasn't available in this space? Could we say that one of the appeals was that they had a Russian who had stolen a lot of data that they could put to work? Could we say that that might have been a unique aspect that brought them there?

[Christopher Wylie]

I just want to make a small correction on the timelines. The Kogan project began after Steve Bannon took over the company, but it was authorized by Steve Bannon. So in terms of the timeline, the work that Aleksandr Kogan engaged in happened after Steve Bannon and Robert Mercer had acquired the IP in SCL, set up Cambridge Analytica and then deposited the funds to pay for it.

[Frank Baylis, Liberal, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

The work, the actual scraping of the data, is that what you mean?

[Christopher Wylie]

Yes, so that means—

[Frank Baylis, Liberal, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

That means that they knew that he was working with the Russians. They show up there and they know he has a special skill set to scrape data. Is it possible the Russians let them know about it? Did you ever see a link between Mr. Bannon, Mr. Mercer, and LUKOIL directly, or is there any hint of that?