Witness: I: Alexander Nix, Chief Executive, Cambridge Analytica
Oral evidence: Fake News, HC 363
Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee
Tuesday 27 February 2018
Ordered by the House of Commons to be published on 27 February 2018.
Members present: Damian Collins (Chair); Paul Farrelly; Simon Hart; Julian Knight; Ian C. Lucas; Christian Matheson; Rebecca Pow; Giles Watling.
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Questions 621-848
Witness
I: Alexander Nix, Chief Executive, Cambridge Analytica
Written evidence from witnesses:
– Cambridge Analytica
Examination of witnesses
Alexander Nix, Chief Executive, Cambridge Analytica
Q621 Chair: Good morning. Welcome to Alexander Nix to this further session of the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee and our inquiry on fake news and disinformation. During the course of our investigation so far, it has been clear to us that understanding of data analytics and behavioural patterns online is key to understanding the way that messaging works. That is why we were particularly keen to talk to Cambridge Analytica, which is one of the leading companies in the world—I think it would be fair to say—in understanding the way in which data analytics and behaviour activity works online.
We have a range of questions that we want to ask you, Mr Nix, about that. We are also this morning publishing the letter you sent to me on 23 February following the evidence session we had in Washington, in which you raised some concerns about things that were said about Cambridge Analytica at that hearing that you wanted to correct for the record. I am publishing that letter this morning, but I wanted to start by asking a couple of questions relating to that letter and to clear up a few things.
One of the issues you raised in the letter in response to Mr Matheson’s question was to state that Cambridge Analytica had never had any involvement in the EU referendum campaign. To quote for the record for people who may not have seen the letter, you say, “Cambridge Analytica had no involvement in the referendum, was not retained by any campaign, and did not provide any services (paid or unpaid) to any campaign.” That is what you said in your letter. We are publishing that today but I wanted to be clear. You will understand why this confusion has arisen about Cambridge Analytica’s role, because there have been public statements made by you that did associate you with the referendum campaign and with Leave.EU in particular. Why are those previous statements not correct but what you say now correct instead?
Alexander Nix: Let me start by saying thank you for the invitation to come and speak to this Committee. Fake news is a credible threat to the public and indeed to the industry that we work in, and we are pleased to try to help in any way that we can.
We have been very consistent for the last two years about our involvement, or lack of involvement, in the EU referendum. There was one statement only, which was put out erroneously, that indicated that we were involved in the campaign. It was drafted by a slightly overzealous PR consultant who worked for us, and referenced work that we hoped and intended to undertake for the campaign. Subsequently, work was never undertaken. The moment that that statement went out we were absolutely crystal clear to all the media outlets that we were not involved and that it had been released in error, and we tried to correct the press again and again and again. Unfortunately, and somewhat ironically, this was an example of fake news that was disseminated and spun out virally. By the time it had penetrated the internet it became a matter of fact even though there was no fact behind it.
Q622 Chair: So that I am clear, is this the statement? I will read from it. Tell me if this is the statement you are referring to: “Recently Cambridge Analytica has teamed up with Leave.EU—the UK’s largest group advocating for a British exit… from the European Union—to help them better understand and communicate with UK voters. We have already helped supercharge Leave.EU’s social media campaign by ensuring the right messages get to the right voters online”. Is that the statement you are referring to?
Alexander Nix: That is the statement, and this was a statement that was prepared in anticipation of working with that organisation and was released, unfortunately, ahead of any work starting. Again, it was an error. We were very vocal about that at the time and we addressed it head-on immediately when we realised that it had been put out.
Q623 Chair: I have seen that quotation in an article for Campaign magazine, which is in your name.
Alexander Nix: That is where it was put out.
Chair: Yes. It is an article in your name and it is still on their website today, so why have you not asked them to withdraw it if that statement was put out in error?
Alexander Nix: I cannot speak to that personally, but I am sure that we have asked them. I can double-check for you.
Q624 Chair: I think we all understand that sometimes an over-eager press officer might say the wrong thing. It is quite different when the leading figure in a company signs off an article that goes out in their name and the key fact in that argument is wrong. It does not just refer to an anticipated relationship. It says that you have already worked for them, “We have already helped supercharge Leave.EU’s social media” messaging and, in particular, references the growth in the Facebook page for the campaign. Presumably that refers to work that has been done not just things you hope to do.
Alexander Nix: While your point is valid—we have addressed it head-on again and again—the facts of the matter are that we did no work on that campaign or any campaigns. We were not involved in the referendum. While we could dwell on this, I think we should probably look at the facts of the matter, which are that we were not involved, period.
Q625 Chair: What you are saying is clear. Unfortunately, the question will still keep coming up because people will reference this and think it is odd that a statement was put out that was totally untrue, when it refers to not just work you hope to do but work that you have already done. This will not be news to you, but in the Newsnight programme that you were interviewed in, they had had footage of a Cambridge Analytica employee sitting in a press conference with Leave.EU. It was Brittany Kaiser, and she talked about the fact that she would be working on running large-scale research for Leave.EU. That was in 2015. Was that work undertaken? Did she do that as a Cambridge Analytica employee or was that done in a personal capacity?
Alexander Nix: It is not unusual, when you are exploring a working relationship with a client, to speak in public together about the work that you hope to undertake. That was simply an example of that.
Q626 Chair: She was talking about work that they hoped to do, but that work was not done.
Alexander Nix: Exactly right.
Q627 Chair: When we talk about you or your organisation, when you say that work was not done and there was never any work done, does that apply to not just Cambridge Analytica but all your affiliate companies and companies in your group as well?
Alexander Nix: That is absolutely right. No company that falls under any of the group vehicles in Cambridge Analytica or SCL or any other company that we are involved with has worked on the EU referendum.
Chair: Any associates or anyone?
Alexander Nix: Or any associates.
Q628 Chair: In April 2017, Andy Wigmore, the communications director at Leave.EU, put out a tweet in response to some news from the Conservative party about the people it had hired to advise it on the last general election for its digital campaign. He says, “You should use Cambridge Analytics—we did apparently can highly recommend them”. Why would he have said that?
Alexander Nix: You are going to have to speak to Andy about that. I cannot begin to second-guess why he would have said that. My understanding is that he subsequently changed that statement, but, again, you would have to speak to him.
Q629 Chair: He also put out another tweet saying, “Leave.EU campaign brings in US voter data and messaging firm Cambridge Analytica”. That was a separate tweet.
Alexander Nix: I do not know the date of that, but I can only assume that at the time he was vying to be the designated leave campaign and that by associating himself with a data analytics firm such as ours, which had quite a high profile for our work in the United States in the US presidential primaries, he was hoping that would give him additional credibility through association.
Q630 Chair: That was in November 2015 and that was presumably after the press conference that Brittany Kaiser took part in as well. Again, that would suggest that there was a working relationship between Cambridge Analytica and Leave.EU at that time.
Alexander Nix: I do not know how to explain this to you more clearly: we did not work with them. However you look at this or however it appears to you or whatever tweets other people have said about the situation, we did no paid or unpaid work. We had no formalised relationship with them. We did not work on the EU referendum with that organisation or any other organisation.
Q631 Chair: The reason I think it is important that we ask these questions is that we are publishing a written statement from you that seems to correct the record on this point. The reason the questions keep coming up is that what you have said today is clearly challenged by what you have said in the past, or statements that have gone out in your name in the past, and what people like Andy Wigmore have said and what other employees at Cambridge Analytica have said in the past as well. We are now being asked to believe that the version of reality that was portrayed at the end of 2015 and 2016 is false, and the current statement is that there was no work of any kind done by either Cambridge Analytica or any associates during the referendum. They are at such odds it is not unreasonable that these questions keep coming up.
Alexander Nix: You are looking at that in isolation. As I said before, that press release went out in error. After it went out, we were very quick to go to the press and to correct it and to say to them, “This was a mistake. For the record, we are not doing any work. We have not been retained or contracted by any of these organisations”. We consistently put this message out over a two-year period. One press release you are referring to was instantly corrected, and we have been consistent in our messaging ever since, so I do not think your line of inquiry is entirely fair.
Q632 Chair: It is an article, not a press release, in your name, and it is still on the website of the organisation that published it, in your name. It has not been taken down.
Alexander Nix: That is out of our control, clearly.
Chair: You could have made a request to them.
Alexander Nix: We have made several requests to leading newspaper publications to retract statements that we have been involved with this. We have told news outlets, and we have put out our own press releases, but unfortunately we are not always successful in these entreaties.
Q633 Chair: It is normal for companies, when they are pitching for work—and from what you said it sounded like you were in the process of pitching for work for Leave.EU even if it did not come about. Probably a fair interpretation of the article we have been discussing is that you anticipated that you were going to be hired to do some work for them and that did not happen. What sort of work was done in order to pitch? Normally you go out and see prospective clients and you pitch to them and show them what you can do and the value you could add if you were hired.
Alexander Nix: That is exactly right. We have a political division. It is not uncommon for us to go and speak to political parties. Indeed, in this country I think I have spoken with every political party—or at least been approached by Labour, Liberal Democrats, UKIP, SNP, Conservatives—on how we might be able to help them with their campaigns, various different campaigns, and to present our services, talk about our track record, our extensive 27-year history in managing election campaigns around the world, the technologies that we have developed to help campaigning and make it more efficient and then to talk about how our services might be most relevant to the clients that we are seeking to assist. I think that is pretty common practice.
Q634 Chair: I used to work in the advertising industry many years ago, part of the “Mad Men” style mass messaging industry that you say is now dead. What was normal there is that you would produce draft campaigns. You would say, “If you hired us, these are some of the advertisements that we would run for you.” Given that what you do is for many people, and probably for many of your clients, quite a new area of activity, do you create demonstrations, saying, “This is a sample of the sorts of work we would do for you based on our understanding of this issue and the understanding of your audience. Here are some examples of the work we would do if we were hired”?
Alexander Nix: Unlike the “Mad Men” days of advertising where it is creative-led, so you can draw on the imagination to come up with these sorts of examples, our communications are rooted in data and in science. As a result, in order to produce these things there is considerably more time and effort and work involved and we also need access to the appropriate datasets. It would be almost impossible for us to provide a client with a meaningful demonstration of what we might be able to do for them unless we have access to their data and have spent a lot of time modelling. More often—I would say that this is always is the case—we will simply show them work from other projects that we have worked on, to give them an understanding of the sort of work that we might be able to deliver to them.
Q635 Chair: In your discussions with Leave.EU, did they say that they had a dataset that they could make available to you in order to assist targeting in that campaign?
Alexander Nix: I am not sure that they did have a huge dataset or any dataset. I would have to revert to you on that. I think the idea was that we would help them go out and capture their data for them.
Q636 Ian C. Lucas: I have a quotation in front of me, dated 8 February 2017, from Bloomberg Businessweek: “We did undertake some work with Leave.eu, but it’s been significantly over-reported”. Are you saying that that is not correct, you never said that?
Alexander Nix: What I am saying is that the work we undertook was exploring a business relationship together.
Ian C. Lucas: You explored a business relationship but you did not begin a business relationship?
Alexander Nix: That is correct, sir.
Q637 Ian C. Lucas: Do you know who Arron Banks is?
Alexander Nix: I do know who Arron Banks is.
Q638 Ian C. Lucas: Have you read this book?
Alexander Nix: I know I have not.
Q639 Ian C. Lucas: It is called The Bad Boys of Brexit and it was sent to me by Arron Banks. Do you have a copy in your office?
Alexander Nix: That is correct. I was given a copy as well.
Q640 Ian C. Lucas: Can I suggest you read it, Mr Nix, because on 22 October 2015, according to this book, Mr Bank says, “We have hired Cambridge Analytica, an American company that uses ‘big data and advanced psychographics’ to influence people”. Are you saying that is incorrect?
Alexander Nix: I am saying that is incorrect.
Q641 Ian C. Lucas: Were you aware of that statement?
Alexander Nix: I saw the statement in the book.
Ian C. Lucas: You said you had not read it.
Alexander Nix: I have not read the book. I have seen the pages relevant to Cambridge Analytica.
Q642 Ian C. Lucas: You are aware of that statement.
Alexander Nix: Yes, I am aware of that statement.
Q643 Ian C. Lucas: Do you think that improves the business reputation of Cambridge Analytica?
Alexander Nix: Unfortunately, that is something that is out of our control. We have spoken to Mr Banks about this statement, and we spoke to Mr Wigmore about some of the statements that he made. We told them that we disagreed with them and that they were not true. I believe that they retracted some of their statements. The book came out, and it was already published by time I knew that that statement was going to be included in it. There was very little that I could do at the time to change that.
Q644 Ian C. Lucas: You could have sued, couldn’t you? You could have sued if it was damaging to the reputation of Cambridge Analytica.
Alexander Nix: I could have but I did not think that was adequate use of time and resources.
Q645 Ian C. Lucas: What he says is not true?
Alexander Nix: That is not true.
Q646 Ian C. Lucas: He is a liar.
Alexander Nix: It is not true.
Q647 Ian C. Lucas: He not only says that he used Cambridge Analytica; he said, specifically, that he hired you.
Alexander Nix: That is not true.
Q648 Ian C. Lucas: There are no financial payments from Leave.EU to Cambridge Analytica or any of associates?
Alexander Nix: Let me be absolutely crystal clear about this. I do not know how many ways I can say this. We did not work for Leave.EU. We have not undertaken any paid or unpaid work for them, okay? There is nothing else I can add to that that is going to clarify that statement in any more detail.
Q649 Ian C. Lucas: Mr Nix, I am sorry, but I am going to quote back to you what you said, which is, “We did undertake some work with Leave.EU”. It is in the quotation, and you have just said exactly the opposite. Which is true?
Alexander Nix: I was using the word “work” to mean that we met with them to discuss an opportunity. That is working. Unfortunately, having meetings, even if they do not lead anywhere, is still work but it does not entail the sort of relationship that you are trying to suggest existed between their organisation and our company.
Q650 Ian C. Lucas: Would you disclose your bank statements to show that no payments have been made from Leave.EU to Cambridge Analytica?
Alexander Nix: Yes, I would. I would be pleased to do that.
Ian C. Lucas: I would be very grateful if you would send those to the Committee so that we can check them.
Q651 Simon Hart: Why are you so desperate to distance yourself from Leave.EU?
Alexander Nix: I am not. I am desperate to make sure that the facts of the matter are crystal clear, because that is the purpose of this inquiry, although I thought the purpose of this inquiry was that I could help inform the Committee on how data and targeting are used in communications.
Q652 Chair: Absolutely, and believe me we do want to come on to that. It is just that because you raised this in your letter to us we feel this is something we have to bottom out with you.
Simon Hart: Keep going. You were just getting to the end of that.
Alexander Nix: I was simply saying that we were trying to establish the facts.
Q653 Simon Hart: You suggested that the work that was involved was around preparatory discussions that might or might not have led to some form of contract. As a way of expanding on the answers you gave to Mr Lucas, what went wrong? Have you any idea why you did not get the job? Have you any idea why Arron Banks is apparently so determined to argue that you did? I do not understand how something so simple could become so complicated.
Alexander Nix: Deals fall down or transactions fall down for all manner of reasons. It could be price, or it could be personalities.
Q654 Simon Hart: What was it in this instance?
Alexander Nix: There simply was not the appetite to move forward.
Q655 Simon Hart: By you or by them?
Alexander Nix: I think by both parties. We did not feel that the marriage value of Cambridge Analytica working with Leave.EU, and clearly vice versa, was going to bear a fruitful and successful relationship.
Q656 Simon Hart: Yet it would seem that Leave.EU are, according to you, making claims now that suggested that that relationship did exist. Why, if there was not the will go forward and if there was not the will to enter into any sort of contract, do you think that they are misrepresenting the truth or, as you put it, commenting inaccurately?
Alexander Nix: I cannot possibly speculate on Arron Banks or Andy Wigmore or anyone else’s motivations. That would be an unfair question.
Q657 Simon Hart: A final point on this, and I think we will come back to the data element. There is a sense of irony in the way you seem to have found yourself to be the victims of misinformation being peddled online, which is arguably one of the accusations that is made about your company since you assist people in playing to the fears of vulnerable sections of the electorate in order to alter their voting plans. Do you set a moral compass anywhere in the manner in which you advise clients on vulnerable-voter sections in order to try to move them from one position to another? Do you see that as a positive contribution to society or do you just say, “They are paying the bills, therefore we will provide whatever it is they want”? Where does the social responsibility sit in all this?
Alexander Nix: I think that is another entirely unfair question that stems from a total misunderstanding about what it is that we are trying to do and how we help our clients. We are trying to use data and technology to allow campaigns to engage with voters in a more informed and relevant way. We are trying to make sure that voters receive messages on the issues and policies that they care most about, and we are trying to make sure that they are not bombarded with irrelevant materials. That can only be good. That can only be good for politics, it can only be good for democracy and it can be good in the wider realms of communication and advertising.
Q658 Simon Hart: It is not an unfair question to simply report the fact that some people consider the manner in which the data is used for electoral purposes is quite subliminal. It is arguably manipulative. I am simply asking for comment; I am not expressing a view myself. Quite a lot of political parties wish they could afford your services, I suspect, but they do not. I am simply asking whether there is any element of this that causes you concern. If you are trying to nudge—we were all watching the presentation you made yesterday, where you are trying to help people move from one voting position to another. It is not anything that is particularly drastic; it is just moving a couple of notches on the dial. Do you have any comments about whether it is unusual when you see a political party using the advice that you have given perhaps to alarm certain sections of the voting community into taking a position on the basis of what, in the old-fashioned term, would be subliminal advertising? Is that an unfair accusation?
Alexander Nix: Let’s start by establishing the fact that the use of big data and predictive analytics in political campaigns was something that was really championed by Obama’s campaign in 2008. They were the ones who made the significant advances in what is known now as micro-targeting—the use of data to start to look at the electorate as very small groups of people, hopefully, ideally as individuals as opposed to homogeneous masses, and to start to serve them most relevant messages. Again in 2012, the Democrats pioneered the use of addressable advertising technology in order to improve the way that they use this data to target people as individuals.
As Mr Collins well knows, they have been using these sorts of techniques in the realm of advertising to personalise advertising for many years—decades even—as they seek to build relationships between brands and their consumers such that you do not get blanketed with generic messaging but everything becomes more relevant to you. That is an entire industry that is moving in this direction. It is not Cambridge Analytica. All we have simply done is look at the industry—the advertising industry—and at what is going on in the political industry, and we have taken the best practices and in a very short of time we have replicated them and, I would like to say, improved on some of these techniques and methodologies and served them up to a different political party in order to help them have an equal chance of competing in a free and fair democracy.
I think part of the issue is that our candidate is somewhat polarising and so people see the work that we did in a negative light, and they refuse to accept the fact that Clinton’s machine was twice the size or three times of anything that we were doing for Trump. She had hundreds of data scientists and digital practitioners working for her. They were using very similar techniques, and they were targeting the audience in a very similar way, yet they do not come under the limelight and they do not get the scrutiny that we get simply because of the candidate involved.
I think if you look at the industry and you say to yourself, “Is it good for politics that you can make communications more relevant, that you can start to run a national campaign that involves millions or tens of millions or even hundreds of millions of voters and you can start to treat that campaign as you would a small mayoral election or a local election in the UK and you can start to speak to press releases about very local concerns that are relevant to them?” Whether it is speeding cameras or regulation of parking permits or whatever it is—things that matter as opposed to blanket messaging—that has to be good to make politics more personal, more individualised and more engaging.
Q659 Simon Hart: Last question, and I should know the answer to this: were you involved in the 2017 election here?
Alexander Nix: No.
Q660 Simon Hart: 2015?
Alexander Nix: As a rule of thumb, we do not involve ourselves in politics in the UK.
Q661 Chair: You said as a rule of thumb, but have you?
Alexander Nix: I have been with the company for about 14 years and I have never worked on a campaign in the UK, simply because, as a predominantly British campaign, we think it would be complex and possibly divisive to ask our employees and staff to support a particular political party in the country that they reside in.
Q662 Chair: Following up, you took umbrage at one of Simon’s questions about playing on people’s fears, but you gave a presentation about your work for the Ted Cruz campaign where you demonstrated that, based on the psychological profile of the audience, you might use an advertisement that played on a woman’s fear of being attacked in her own home to support the gun lobby. You might say that techniques like that are used by other people, but is that not a good example of the sort of campaign that Mr Hart was referring to?
Alexander Nix: Both sides used fear of spending and fear of economic exclusion as arguments for staying and remaining in Europe. I think presenting a fact that is underpinned by an emotion is not fearmongering. If you believe that yourself, it is very sensible. I think there is an argument to say that, in the particular instance you are talking about, there are people who look to the second amendment for self-protection. In fact, I would say there are quite a lot of people who fall into that bucket.
Q663 Chair: In that example there that you gave, fear was the emotion that you were playing on.
Alexander Nix: You are looking at the drivers that are going to influence the decision making.
Chair: In that case, the driver that was selected in that example for that decision maker was fear.
Alexander Nix: The fear of being unable to protect yourself.
Chair: The answer to that question is yes?
Alexander Nix: Yes, in that case.
Q664 Christian Matheson: Who is Brittany Kaiser?
Alexander Nix: Brittany Kaiser is an employee of Cambridge Analytica.
Q665 Christian Matheson: Is she still an employee?
Alexander Nix: As of three years, I believe—three or four years.
Christian Matheson: Is she still an employee?
Alexander Nix: She is still an employee.
Q666 Christian Matheson: She spoke, representing Cambridge Analytica, at a panel on the launch of Leave.EU, did she not?
Alexander Nix: I believe so.
Q667 Christian Matheson: Representing Cambridge Analytica.
Alexander Nix: Representing our proposed involvement as a company that was going to support Leave.EU.
Q668 Christian Matheson: She said at the time that, “The most important part of this referendum is appealing to first time and apathetic voters”.
Alexander Nix: Yes.
Q669 Christian Matheson: We have had the press release put out by the junior press officer—that was scotched straight away—but your involvement with Leave.EU continued up until the very launch and her speaking at that launch.
Alexander Nix: She was not speaking as a consultant to Leave.EU, she was speaking as a representative of Cambridge that was seeking to do some work for Leave.EU.
Q670 Christian Matheson: Did she get paid for being on that panel?
Alexander Nix: No, she did not.
Q671 Christian Matheson: We had the tweet from 29 November, which again was quickly being scotched by Andy Wigmore, but a couple of months later, on 10 February 2016, you were quoted in Campaign magazine as saying, “Recently Cambridge Analytica has teamed up with Leave.EU… to help them better understand and communicate with UK voters. We have already helped supercharge Leave.EU’s social media campaign”. I know you are unhappy with the line of questioning, but it is yet another piece of evidence, is it not, Mr Nix, that is contradictory to the statement that you have given in your letter to the Chairman?
Alexander Nix: I think it is the same piece of evidence that has already been brought up, so rather than go round the houses and have exactly the same conversation that we had 20 minutes ago, we have probably addressed this one.
Q672 Christian Matheson: My fear is that there are several individual pieces of contradictory evidence that provide a weight to each other.
Alexander Nix: No, there are two pieces of evidence that suggested an association, and we have addressed them both.
Q673 Paul Farrelly: I want to try to close this opening line of questioning in my own mind, because I fear that I am hearing the English language changing in my ears as this session has gone on. You firstly described that you were not working for someone, but by “work” you meant that you had meetings about working for someone, which to my mind does not count as working for someone, so that rather confused me. We have two sets of characters: you and Mr Banks. I use the book as a coffee mat in my office, because we were all sent unsolicited copies of it during the election. Mr Banks is saying, “Hey, we are hiring Cambridge Analytica”, and you are wanting to be Cambridge Analytica working with Leave.EU, so you are both going around professing love for each other and your intention to get hitched. Then you say there was no marriage value in this. What did you mean by that?
Alexander Nix: That we did not get hitched, to use your metaphor. To use your metaphor, we dated each other, we had a couple of dinners but we did not get married. Again, how can I spell this out to you? It is pretty obvious.
Q674 Paul Farrelly: I am continuing your metaphor. I do not know what a marriage value is, so perhaps you could help me. There was no marriage value in it for you. What do you mean?
Alexander Nix: The idea that when two parties come together, the sum of the relationship is better than the individuals staying on their own.
Q675 Paul Farrelly: I am still confused as to why your relationship broke down.
Alexander Nix: I am sure, as experienced businesspeople, you understand that there are often situations where you engage in conversations about working together with clients and they do not lead to a relationship being formed. Unfortunately, this is the nature of business.
Q676 Paul Farrelly: Could you spell it out? Did they not think you could deliver or were they not prepared to pay the rate that you wanted? Could you be a little bit clearer?
Alexander Nix: I cannot be more clear because I cannot recall. This was four years ago or three years ago. It was one meeting three years ago that did not lead to business. We do dozens of meetings every day and some of them lead to contracts and some of them do not, so I cannot be more clear. All I know is that we met some representatives from Leave.EU, we had some discussions, but no business was taken forward.
Q677 Paul Farrelly: It also led to a presence on a launch platform for something that is pretty seminal in the recent history of this country, but your memory is not very clear.
Alexander Nix: At the time we were preoccupied with some fairly important work in the United States and other countries as well.
Q678 Chair: Mr Nix, you are very clear in saying that Cambridge Analytica received no payment for any work relating to the referendum. Is that also the case for SCL, your parent company?
Alexander Nix: It is not our parent company, but that is also the case, yes.
Q679 Rebecca Pow: I want to look at the system that you used—I think you might describe it as a trait-profiling system, the OCEAN system—and at how you gather data and what you include. Could you very briefly explain the OCEAN method to us?
Alexander Nix: Obviously, depending on which territory you are operating in, there are different means to gather data depending on the legislative environment available. In a country such as the United States, we are able to commercially acquire large datasets on citizens across the United States—on adults across the United States—that comprise of consumer and lifestyle data points. This could include anything from their hobbies to what cars they drive to what magazines they read, what media they consume, what transactions they make in shops and so forth. These data are provided by data aggregators as well as by the big brands themselves, such as supermarkets and other retailers. We are able to match these data with first-party research, being large, quantitative research instruments, not dissimilar to a poll. We can go out and ask audiences about their preferences, their preference for a particular purchases—whether they prefer an automobile over another one—or indeed we can also start to probe questions about personality and other drivers that might be relevant to understanding their behaviour and purchasing decisions.
Q680 Rebecca Pow: I think the stated commercial aim of the SCL Group said that you then collate all this information to micro-target people with all your analysis in order to influence their long-term behaviour. Can you give an example or a couple of examples of where this has been very successful?
Alexander Nix: Let me try to route this into something that is a bit more relatable. If you were an automotive company and you were seeking to advertise your product to an audience, just knowing whether that audience was more interested in the engine and performance of the vehicle, as opposed to the safety features or the boot space or anything else, is going to be very relevant to how you communicate with them. That is an example of one or two data points. If you can expand on that and start to really understand what it is that you, as an individual, care about in purchasing decisions—purchasing a car for instance—you can start to tailor the product to the individual and start to tailor the communication in a similar way. Then you can talk about, in the case of somebody who cares about the performance of a vehicle, how it handles and its metrics for speeding up and braking and torque and all those other things.
Q681 Rebecca Pow: I assume you are gathering all this data on the British population as well.
Alexander Nix: Obviously there is a different set of regulations in the EU as opposed to the US. The EU is an opt-in data culture as opposed to an opt-out data culture, as is the case in the United States, so the datasets that we have in the UK, for instance, are not the same as those that we have in the US.
Q682 Rebecca Pow: Does any of the data come from Facebook? I have read that you have said that within so many “likes” you can almost predict what somebody is going to think about something, or indeed possibly how somebody might vote, and that you might know more about them than, say, their partner or spouse or work colleague does within a few simple steps. Is that right?
Alexander Nix: I have read a similar article. It was not published by us or written by us, I should say. It was written by an academic active in the space, so I cannot comment on whether that is true or not. We do not work with Facebook data, and we do not have Facebook data. We do use Facebook as a platform to advertise, as do all brands and most agencies, or all agencies, I should say. We use Facebook as a means to gather data. We roll out surveys on Facebook that the public can engage with if they elect to.
Q683 Rebecca Pow: But you can put your micro-targeted messages, as you were saying, on Facebook as advertisements to try to persuade people or nudge them in one direction or another.
Alexander Nix: We are platform-agnostic. We will match our offline data segments with any platform out there. Facebook obviously is an extremely prevalent platform and has an incredible global reach so it is a go-to platform of choice for many or most agencies, but if there are other more-targeted platforms, we would use those.
Q684 Rebecca Pow: We had a gentleman before our panel called David Carroll, who was an associate professor of media design in the States. He said that there is no indication of where Cambridge Analytica obtained its data for any of your rankings. Do you not feel people ought to know where you are getting your data from and then what you are doing with it, how you are sharing it, whether you are processing it or even whether people ought to have a right to be able to delete it?
Alexander Nix: In the United Kingdom, individuals, as governed by EU law and data protection regulation, are entitled to make a subject access requests and, as they will be able to under GDPR with all companies, they will be able to ask for their data and have that data removed from those companies’ databases. We are fully complicit with the law and the legislation that is currently in place.
Q685 Rebecca Pow: Do you see yourselves as being an all-powerful presence with all the knowledge and data that you have and that it is not surprising people are trying to find out whether you are doing anything perhaps you should not do in the way of influencing elections? You do seem to be in a position where, with all your knowledge and your powerful data, you could do that.
Alexander Nix: It is very flattering that you suggest that people might see us as having these incredible powers. What we are doing is no different from what the advertising industry at large is doing across the commercial space. We are a small technology company that is trying to develop best-in-practice technologies. We are not a political agency, and we do not have a political ideology. We work on as many elections each year that are left of centre as are right of centre. We only work for mainstream political parties; we do not work for fringe actors. We only work in free and fair democracies. The science of political campaigning goes back hundreds of years and what we are doing is a very natural evolution to what has been done before, and what is being done by many other people as well.