Lady Helen’s ex-lover behind UK firm that boasted of ‘psychological warfare’
THE firm at the centre of the Facebook data scandal was launched by a shadowy British business with its roots in psychological warfare, the Mail can reveal.
Cambridge Analytica, which is accused of using private information to manipulate voter behaviour, is an offshoot of SCL Group.
The parent company was founded by Old Etonian Nigel Oakes, who once dated Lady Helen Windsor.
The business he created once boasted at an arms fair that it had the power to manipulate the public with secret messages using military propaganda techniques.
Bosses even bragged about how they were willing to trick citizens in Western democracies such as the UK.
SCL set out its stall in 2005 at the DSEi exhibition in London, an annual meeting for defence firms to show off their latest technology. It promoted itself using fictional scenarios involving psychological specialists.
One example featured a smallpox outbreak in London.
SCL said it would prevent mass panic by taking over the TV networks and running fake news bulletins about a toxic chemical spill to trick the public into thinking they had to stay indoors.
Another scenario described how disinformation could be used to support a coup by Western forces in a fictional South Asian country, installing a benevolent ruler who was in favour of democracy.
The company’s then-public affairs chief Mark Broughton said at the time: ‘If your definition of propaganda is framing communications to do something that’s going to save lives, that’s fine. That’s not a word I would use for that. There is some altruism in it, but we also want to earn money.’
Literature handed out at DSEi said the company specialised in psychological warfare.
A centuries-old technique practised by armed forces around the world, it includes everything from dropping leaflets to highly-sophisticated campaigns to spread lies and bring down governments.
SCL has its origins in the worlds of academia and advertising. Founder Mr Oakes, a former TV producer and ad executive, was a minor celebrity in his youth as the boyfriend of Lady Helen Windsor, a first cousin once removed of the Queen.
In 1989, he is said to have brought together a team of university experts to discuss how science could manipulate behaviour. Among the names reported to have been involved were Professor Adrian Furnham and Professor Barrie Gunter, top psychologists from University College London and the University of Leicester.
Both men have since disavowed the project and cut their ties with Mr Oakes, claiming they were inappropriately used to lend him credibility. This led in the early 1990s to the formation of the Behavioural Dynamics Institute (BDI), a not-forprofit organisation which supports academics investigating behaviour change. It has looked into the causes of youth crime in St Lucia and child marriage in South Sudan.
The institute’s source of funding is not clear and it did not respond to requests for comment last night. It is credited with developing ways to understand individuals’ behaviour and recommendations on how to change it – research that formed the core of SCL’s work. In its early years, the group is said to have focused on civilian operations for employers including post-apartheid South Africa and the United Nations.
One project in 1999 saw it work to enhance the reputation of then-Indonesian president Abdurrahman Wahid, operating out of an office in Jakarta with huge TV screens and staff hidden behind a one-way mirror.
Visitors said it looked like something from a thriller novel by Tom Clancy.
But SCL’s direction changed in 2005, the year of its arms fair debut. The business sought to win military work with its credentials bolstered by another director, former British special forces officer Roger Gabb.
A multi-millionaire, who made his fortune as a wine distributor, had served in Kenya and behind enemy lines in Borneo. He had impeccable foreign connections and brought gravitas to the firm. The same year, SCL also won a £1million investment from Iranian-British property mogul Vincent Tchenguiz, a globe-trotting businessman with close ties to London’s super-rich.
Mr Tchenguiz sold his shares for £150,000 in 2015. A spokesman said he had no involvement in the running of the firm and it was never a core part of his business. In the meantime, SCL racked up a growing list of government contracts.
It helped the Foreign Office tackle jihadi propaganda in Pakistan, carry out surveys in Iran and Yemen for the Pentagon, and netted a £533,000 deal to assist Nato in challenging Russian misinformation in Eastern Europe.
In 2008, the business is reported to have latched on to research by Cambridge University academics about how Facebook can be used to gather vast amounts of data on the personalities of potential voters.
By 2014, this was such a central part of the business that SCL set up Cambridge Analytica in America to focus on political and commercial influence, with a heavy focus on social media.
The firm’s work on Donald Trump’s presidential election campaign finally pulled it out of the shadows and into the light of public scrutiny. SCL did not respond to requests for a comment last night.
Like a Tom Clancy thriller