Newly leaked emails show how Cambridge Analytica tried to help BN win GE14 – like in GE13

Can you guess what is the connection between Donald Trump being elected as US President in 2016, majority of UK citizens voting for Brexit, and BN winning GE13?

In case you didn’t read the title – because the answer is there, you guys – the connection is this little company called Cambridge Analytica.

 

Cambridge Analytica was a not-so-little data mining and analysis company that got really good at influencing national polls and elections. So how exactly did it do that, so much so that it managed to get Trump in the oval office and landed an historic moment by getting the British to pull out of the European Union?

Well, through Facebook. It’s a very complicated process, but to simplify it for you, the company essentially looked through Facebook profiles – yes, even yours – and found out Facebook users’ views and personalities through things like personality tests and the things users had ‘liked’. And then, it would target ads based on the data to influence potential voters in their clients’ favor.

And we do understand that Cambridge Analytica helping BN winning GE13 is kind of old news – something we even wrote about here. When it was first discovered that Cambridge Analytica had a hand in BN’s campaign during GE13, it was said that Chief Minister of Kedah Mukhriz Mahathir was the main point of contact between the party and Cambridge Analytica. But Mukhriz denied any contract or dealings with the company, so the whole thing kind of…faded out.

But the thing is, apparently, Cambridge Analytica’s involvement in the Malaysian political scene didn’t exactly end there. On New Year’s Day this year, where we and the rest of the world transitioned into a whole new decade, ormer Cambridge Analytica employee and whistleblower Brittany Kaiser leaked more Cambridge Analytica-related data and documents…that might have opened up a whole new world on the company’s continued efforts to help BN during GE14!

And these leaked papers are now called the Merdeka Papers, which you can easily download here. Just be aware that the papers come in a zip file, and there are a lot of files that even got our heads spinning while looking through them.

So now the questions are: how did Cambridge Analytica try to interfere in GE14? Who did they approach in the first place? Who was involved? We dig deeper into the leaked data and document to find out, some of which we have screencapped for you, including the file names so you can find them easily if you’re actually curious enough to read the Merdeka Papers yourself.

(Disclaimer: we ask that you take these leaked documents with a grain of salt since they essentially unverified.)

 

The company wanted to start with an “innocent” ad campaign for Petronas

Let us get this party started with…Petronas.

So back in 2014, this fella called Shahid Shayaa was the director of SCL Southeast Asia – SCL was the parent company of Cambridge Analytica. And before that, he also used to work for Najib Razak, who was still Prime Minister and BN president at the time.

So apparently, the Merdeka Papers indicated that when Shahid was still around, Cambridge Analytica, under SCL, tried to establish contact with BN in as early as 2014 – only one year after GE13 – by first approaching Petronas with campaigning proposals to improve the people’s perspectives on Petronas in Sabah and Sarawak.

But things weren’t that simple, apparently. On the surface, the campaign was intended to “improve Petronas’ reputation”, but the truth was that the campaign was actually meant as a trial run for a larger-scale BN campaign during GE14.

“…can be operationalized as preparation for the 14th General Election.” – SCL Petronas Proposal, as quoted in the Merdeka Papers

If the Petronas campaign had been successful, then the same campaign model would allegedly be used for the BN campaign for GE14, but then Petronas didn’t have enough funds to fund the campaign that cost a whopping USD$2.1million, so…too bad for them? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

But Cambridge Analytica was a resilient company. If Petronas didn’t pan out, then maybe…

 

It could try working with BN’s second top man at the time…

…former Deputy Prime Minister and current UMNO president Ahmad Zahid Hamidi.

Wait, but how did Zahid even come into the picture? O.o

Well, few years after the failed Petronas venture, Shahid went out of the picture and SCL appointed a new director for its Southeast Asia branch, the late Azrin Zizal, who became Cambridge Analytica’s main representative in Malaysia, and passed away last April from lymphoma. With him at the helm, the company then shifted its target to Zahid in 2016 to get a campaigning deal with BN. It first wanted to arrange a meeting between Zahid and Cambridge Analytica CEO Alexander Nix.

But the meeting between Zahid and Nix probably didn’t happen, because following this, there were more concerted efforts to secure another meeting with Zahid for Cambridge Analytica, and Azrin was supposed to set it up.

Cambridge Analytica and Azrin arranged for Zahid to attend the Concordia Summit in New York on the 19th and 20th of September, 2016. According to the Merdeka papers, the meeting was meant to allow a Cambridge Analytica director Mark Turnbull an opportunity to present the company’s ability to work on a campaign for BN in GE14.

The Concordia Summit is, in name, a “nonprofit, non-partisan organization dedicated to actively fostering, elevating, and sustaining cross-sector partnerships for social impact“. However, the Merdeka Papers described it as something else.

“Concordia is a more right-wing version of the Clinton Global Initiative, an
opportunity for high level networking and deal-making.” – the Merdeka Papers

We sifted through the Merdeka Papers and found many emails regarding Zahid’s attendance at the summit. Below is our weak attempt at trying to construct a timeline of what exactly went down to facilitate his attendance:

• So first, Zahid’s office had some questions 

This email between Azrin’s subordinate and Cambridge Analytica confirmed that there had been interactions between them and Cambridge Analytica. Zahid’s office inquired for more details of his attendance, pertaining to his role there and the confirmation of a meeting with Cambridge Analytica.

In reply, Cambridge Analytica said the summit organizers can have Zahid speaking at one of the dialogue sessions if he was interested.

• Then there was a confirmation of Zahid attending the summit 

The very next day, it was confirmed that Zahid would be attending the Concordia Summit in New York. Not only that, he would be speaking at a dialogue titled “Intelligence from Open Sources: Partnerships for International Security“.

• The arrangements to set up a meeting between Turnbull and Zahid began

As the Concordia Summit drew near, Cambridge Analytica began to get the ball rolling to arrange a meeting between Zahid and Turnbull there. Turnbull’s schedule was sent over to Zahid’s office and it was said in an email that Azrin was working on setting up a meeting for Zahid and Turnbull while they were at the Summit.

• Azrin confirmed he was in touch with Zahid’s office 

According to Azrin in his email, he had already made contact with Zahid’s office. However, he made a disclaimer that a meeting can only be confirmed last minute due to security reasons (?) and that Cambridge Analytica can only know for sure if the former Deputy Prime Minister would be meeting Turnbull while in New York.

After that, the emails could have tapered off, given that the Merdeka Papers revealed nothing else about the Concordia Summit. We can’t even be sure if Zahid actually made it to the summit and spoke at the dialogue, since there was no media coverage about it.

Still, it is important to remind y’all that these leaked documents are not verified. At the point of writing, none of the people involved have stepped out to confirm or deny anything. Plus, the leaked emails were only between Cambridge Analytica personnel and Zahid’s office, while the man himself seemingly didn’t personally say anything.

But if we were to go with the Merdeka Papers, we can kind of assume that some sort of meeting did occur, because following that…

 

There was a plan for Cambridge Analytica to meet BN reps in KL

After the back-and-forth about the Concordia Summit in September 2016, Azrin went one step further and suggested organizing meetings in Kuala Lumpur itself, to pitch Cambridge Analytica’s services to key BN figures.

Based on one of the emails, Azrin wanted to “creatively nudge the governments to open their doors” apart from all the past efforts they have made.

“While I still believe what we are doing now is the right way to go and we will eventually break market here…I am [thinking] of creatively nudging the governments to open their doors.” – Azrin, in a leaked email in the Merdeka Papers

As such, he initially suggested a courtesy call with then-Malaysian Prime Minister, Najib Tun Razak, in October 2016, and also setting up a meeting with then-UMNO secretary-general Tengku Adnan Tengku Mansor.

We’re not sure whether the call with Najib happened because there was no follow-up after that. But what we did find among the Merdeka Papers were more emails and even itineraries for the Cambridge Analytica-BN meetings in KL in October 2016.

To start with, Azrin apparently managed to establish contact with Tengku Adnan and was planning to bring the Cambridge Analytica team, including Turnbull, to a retreat for Selangor BN Elections Candidates in Port Dickson from 7th to 9th of October 2016.

However, later on, the retreat didn’t pan out because according to Azrin, many of the invitees couldn’t make it. After subsequent revisions, the final itinerary suggested that Turnbull would be meeting with an Aminuddin Mustafa, who was assigned as Tengku Adnan’s representative, on the 10th of October, 2016. The meeting was meant to “evaluate [Cambridge Analytica]’s services and success stories.”

But before the meeting, Azrin stated that Tengku Adnan had requested for Cambridge Analytica to come up with a campaign proposal on how to secure 40 constituencies for BN in GE14, alongside the costs of the company’s services.

“He believes we should have a proposal to give to Dato Seri Aminudin. The offer will be evaluated by the Secretary General and then forwarded to the main leadership.” – Azrin, in a leaked email in the Merdeka Papers

According to the Merdeka Papers, it can be assumed that the meeting between Aminuddin and Turnbull took place, because following that, emails dated in 2017 suggested that Turnbull was ready to travel to Malaysia again in 2017 to receive feedback from BN leadership about the company’s proposal the year before. ?

It is unclear as to how far the collaborative efforts between Cambridge Analytica and BN went, because there were no more documents after that. But it probably couldn’t have gone that far, because, we don’t know if you’ve heard…

 

The Facebook-Cambridge Analytica scandal happened

As mentioned above, Cambridge Analytica was well-known for its involvement in Trump’s win in the 2016 US elections, among its other ventures into smaller countries like ours.

And in March 2018, the whole thing blew up in its face, when it was exposed for knowingly stealing data from millions of Facebook users and using it to manipulate the 2016 US elections. The company actually called it “psychological warfare” to manipulate voter behavior.

The exposé opened up a wormhole of investigations and accusations against Cambridge Analytica and Facebook. As a result, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg had to testify before Congress, and both SCL and Cambridge Analytica announced their halt in operations, officially shutting down on the 2nd of May, 2018.

Coincidentally enough, GE14 occurred only days after, on the 9th of May, 2018. And as we all know, it was an historic event in Malaysia, where BN lost for the first time and Pakatan Harapan (PH) took over the government.

Whether or not Cambridge Analytica actually managed to implement the proposal it supposedly submitted to BN is still up in the air, but if it did, it certainly wasn’t as successful as the campaign it did with BN during GE13.

But the scary thing about all of these is that CA’s tactics have been shown to work in terms of influencing voters, when you look at Trump’s campaign. Considering how most of us get our views from social media, such as when you clicked in to read this article, just be aware that it’s very likely that you are only seeing what has been targeted towards you based on your existing views. It’s a matter of confirmation bias, really, so that brings forth the question: Do you really know what you think you know?

“The Merdeka Papers are just the tip of the iceberg. It may not be easy to say exactly who has interfered in Malaysia’s democracy and society, or in exactly what way. But it is long past time for the people of Malaysia to claim their independence, and to throw off this corruption.” – The Merdeka Paper