Top 100 Quotes & Sayings by Christopher Wylie
Explore popular quotes and sayings by a Canadian businessman Christopher Wylie.
Last updated on September 17, 2024.
I am a progressive Eurosceptic. I supported Leave.
The things that I was building on originally for the defense of our democracies had been completely inverted to really, in my view, attack our democracies.
Cambridge Analytica's tactics contributed to a world where people kind of hate each other, and don't want to talk to each other, don't want to hear each other, don't want to speak to each other.
I'm sorry Alex Jones, but the content that InfoWars has been putting out is just flat out lies. You are entitled to say whatever it is that you want, that is fine; you are not entitled to a megaphone if that information is false.
In politics, the money man is usually the dumbest person in the room.
Data is powerful and if it's put in the wrong hands, it becomes a weapon. And we have to understand that companies like Facebook, and platforms like Facebook or Twitter, are not just social networking sites. They're opportunities for information warfare.
It is extremely uncomfortable to consider that our democracy may have been corrupted. That potential crimes may have taken place - some of them on Facebook's servers - that seem to be beyond the reach of law.
In most Western democracies, you do have the freedom of speech. But freedom of speech is not an entitlement to reach. You are free to say what you want, within the confines of hate speech, libel law and so on. But you are not entitled to have your voice artificially amplified by technology.
Trends are just as important in politics as they are in fashion; just that rather than an aesthetic trend, it might be an ideological, behavioral or cultural trend - you need to keep track of all kinds of trends in politics because you need to know if you come out and say something, what the adoption of that will be six months down the road.
One of the reasons why I'm speaking out is because I think that it's really concerning that no one has really investigated Cambridge Analytica and its role in the 2016 election.
So you know, when you think about all of the things that you put online - so whether it's, you know, your - what TV shows you like or, you know, what movies you watch or what you listen to, these are all little discrete clues about sort of who you are as a person.
Fashion data was used to build AI models to help Steve Bannon build his insurgency and build the alt-right. We used weaponized algorithms. We used weaponized cultural narratives to undermine people and undermine the perception of reality. And fashion played a big part in that.
The alt-right didn't emerge from nowhere. There's a cultural foundation that existed beforehand that was almost like the petri dish and the growing medium for the alt-right.
When you're, like, writing a Python script, it doesn't feel like you're doing something to someone. You just don't think, 'How could this actually harm people?'
I've always been really interested in fashion, culture and visual arts in general: when I was growing up my parents half-expected me to go to art school, but I ended up working in Parliament, and then working in tech and data.
When I saw how Russia was involved and pushing for Trump, I contacted the FBI. But at the time, they were confident Clinton would get elected and the last thing they wanted to do is show some kind of bias, especially because there was already a controversy with Clinton's email.
When you look at history, every major movement, the first thing they do is create an aesthetic. Think about the Nazis. Or the Maoists in China. Any kind of revolution has an aesthetic, and that's because one of the fundamental human universals that everybody in every culture throughout time has done is wear clothes.
If you are looking to create an information weapon, the battle space you operate in is social media. That is where the fight happens.
We need to change our mindset and understand that the protection of our democracy is a national security issue. When any country interferes with your democracy, they are attacking you.
Fashion and politics are almost the same industry, in many regards, because it's about identity, and it's cyclical, and people get really emotive about it.
In Britain, we have strict spending limits for elections. It's what has kept Britain from following the path of American politics, where elections are the sport of billionaires and corporate interests.
Vote Leave broke the law. I can say that out loud now. Vote Leave broke the law. But nothing happened.
I got a call from the Lib Dems. They wanted to upgrade their databases and voter targeting. So, I combined working for them with studying for my degree.
If you've done something wrong, the first step is to try to own up and tell people about it.
We need new narratives in culture, and to do a better job of showing more diversity.
What's different with Cambridge Analytica and more broadly with social media is that you are the target. People want to harvest your information in as granular a way as possible in order to, like, create a picture, a complete picture of who you are, ultimately to either sell you things or make you believe things.
Facebook knew in December 2015 that data had been harvested on Cambridge Analytica's behalf. It denied this until I came forward and produced the contract that SCL Elections, CA's parent company, signed with GSR, Dr. Aleksandr Kogan's company, for the work.
If I were to produce a kitchen appliance, I have to do more safety testing and go through more compliance procedures to create a toaster than to create Facebook.
We have not effectively found a way to regulate, whether it's social media or the Internet, and really put safety measures in place. What happens if China becomes the next Cambridge Analytica? When it comes to this sort of new age of hostile foreign interference and the weaponization of information and propaganda online, there is no plan.
I've never seen a billion dollars. I don't think anybody has.
The thing I think about all the time is, what if I'd taken a job at Deloitte instead? They offered me one. I just think if I'd taken literally any other job, Cambridge Analytica wouldn't exist. You have no idea how much I brood on this.
I got recruited to join a research team at SCL group which, at the time, was a British military contractor based in London. Most of its clients were various ministries of defense in NATO countries. And what we were looking at is how to use data online to identify people who would be likely targets of different extremist groups.
I tell you, those old dudes who say, 'I don't care about fashion,' they're not going out in drag. Everyone cares about fashion.
The idea that we should trust the security of our digital spaces to private companies that have no accountability except to themselves is ridiculous.
You will be a far more effective whistleblower if you operate within a legal framework.
Facebook, Twitter and YouTube create algorithms that promote and highlight information. That is an active engineering decision.
You know Facebook has this sort of bizarre culture of like really shunning people who raise legitimate concerns about how, you know, their company is operating.
You have all kinds - you know, you have the rise of extremist groups in the United States. It's just you don't call them that, right? You've got, you know, some very cultish followings and belief systems.
Fashion is very complicated for machines to learn - something that is intuitive for a human is usually the hardest thing to teach a computer.
Steve Bannon, you know, discovered that there's nothing more powerful than a humiliated man.
With access to enough Facebook data, it would finally be possible to take the first stab at simulating society 'in silico.' The implications were astonishing: You could, in theory simulate a future society to create problems like ethnic tension or wealth disparity and watch how they play out.
What people forget is that no one pays you to go and be a champion for democracy. A girl's got to make rent. I didn't have a job for two years.
There are very tangible harms that come from manipulating people. In the United States, the public health response to Covid-19 has been inhibited by widespread disinformation about the existence of the virus or false claims about different kinds of treatment that do not work.
Liberalism is correlated with high openness and low conscientiousness, and when you think of Lib Dems they're absent-minded professors and hippies. They're the early adopters... they're highly open to new ideas.
I was asked by a journalist to sum up the story in a minute, and I was like, 'No.' It goes from Trump to Brexit to Russian espionage to military operations in Afghanistan to hacking the president of Nigeria. Where do you even begin?
We have a completely unregulated digital landscape. There is almost no oversight. We are placing blind trust in companies like Facebook to do the honorable and decent thing.
It's very hard to participate in society when you can't talk to people on the medium that they talk to other people on.
Cambridge Analytica will try to pick at whatever mental weakness or vulnerability that we think you have and try to warp your perception of what's real around you.
The thing with Crocs and the Chanel dress, one is quick, fast and regrettable, the other is enduring and iconic.
Amazon has a good track record for blowing up industries, and fashion needs to look at what has happened to music, publishing and media.
I don't think that military-style information operations is conducive for any democratic process.
You know, my concern is that even if Cambridge Analytica has dissolved as a company, its capabilities haven't.
People are willing to do really ugly things if lots of other people are also doing them.
Even though Cambridge Analytica has dissolved, the capabilities are still there, the platforms are still there, the people are still there. What happens when China becomes the next Cambridge Analytica? Like anything, the second, third, fourth time you do something, you start to refine and perfect it.
It's unfortunate that Facebook, as soon as I come and speak out, they ban me from their platforms.
Disinformation has always existed. It's not like all of a sudden we've just discovered this new thing called propaganda.
A lot of people are concerned about, for example, the ability of big government to inhibit our liberties and choice. Big data can engineer a situation that limits our choice and our freedom. And it's not a partisan issue.
One of the things that I learned about myself is that I can get involved in an idea and forget, in a really terrible way, what are the actual consequences of what I'm working on?
Different kinds of people have different motivations for filling out surveys. Sometimes you would have a group of people who just would fill it out because they're bored, and they don't have anything to do. Or they would just genuinely want to know what is their personality.
When you talk to people in fashion, it's like, people wear clothes because it's who they are and what they like. It's as simple as that. It's just about creating a way of measuring that.
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