THE DATA THAT TURNED THE WORLD UPSIDE DOWN

TOP OF THE NEWS:

- The Data That Turned the World Upside Down (Motherboard) "The company behind Trump’s online campaign—the same company that had worked for Leave.EU in the very early stages of its 'Brexit' campaign—was a Big Data company: Cambridge Analytica. Psychometrics, sometimes also called psychographics, focuses on measuring psychological traits, such as personality. Remarkably reliable deductions could be drawn from simple online actions. While each piece of such information is too weak to produce a reliable prediction, when tens, hundreds, or thousands of individual data points are combined, the resulting predictions become really accurate. Above all, however—and this is key—it also works in reverse: not only can psychological profiles be created from your data, but your data can also be used the other way round to search for specific profiles: all anxious fathers, all angry introverts, for example—or maybe even all undecided Democrats? Essentially, what Kosinski had invented was sort of a people search engine. According to Nix, the success of Cambridge Analytica’s marketing is based on a combination of three elements: behavioral science using the OCEAN Model, Big Data analysis, and ad targeting. Ad targeting is personalized advertising, aligned as accurately as possible to the personality of an individual consumer. Cambridge Analytica divided the U.S. population into 32 personality types, and focused on just 17 states...the company discovered that a preference for cars made in the U.S. was a great indication of a potential Trump voter. Among other things, these findings now showed Trump which messages worked best and where. The decision to focus on Michigan and Wisconsin in the final weeks of the campaign was made on the basis of data analysis. The candidate became the instrument for implementing a big data model."

BUSINESS:

- Trump’s Trade War May Have Already Begun (NYT) "America’s traditional allies are on the lookout for new friends. The swift reassessment of trade relations — a realm in which Mr. Trump is directly threatening the order that has prevailed since the end of World War II — only amplifies the potential for a shake-up of the broader geopolitical framework. Mr. Trump owes his office in no small measure to factory workers who have come to view global trade as a mortal threat to their livelihoods. But their sentiments are grounded not in ideology, but in a desire for jobs at decent wages. If Mr. Trump impedes imports, he could put some of these voters out of work. Beyond the economic effects, Mr. Trump’s refashioning of trade has already altered global alignments."

- The Revolution Will Be Unprofitably Tweeted (NYT)

LIFE:

- Why Young Girls Don’t Think They Are Smart Enough (NYT) "Our research also suggests that these stereotypes may have lasting effects. Once internalized, they begin to guide girls’ interests away from things that they perceive as 'not for them.'"

NEWS:

- Steve Bannon Is Making Sure There’s No White House Paper Trail, Says Intel Source (Foreign Policy) "'He [Bannon] is running a cabal, almost like a shadow NSC,' the official said. He described a work environment where there is little appetite for dissenting opinions, shockingly no paper trail of what’s being discussed and agreed upon at meetings, and no guidance or encouragement so far from above about how the National Security Council staff should be organized. Under previous administrations, if someone thought another person or directorate had a stake in the issue at hand or expertise in a subject area, he or she was free to share the papers as long as the recipient had proper clearance. That did not sit well with Bannon or his staff, according to the official. More stringent guidelines for handling and routing were then instituted, and the National Security Council staff was largely cut out of the process. It’s possible that the current chaos and lack of bureaucratic process is a result of the Trump administration still going through growing pains and figuring out how best to run things. But former NSC officials said an organizational chart for the NSC is the kind of thing you have in place weeks before taking office." and President Bannon? (NYT) "Who sits at the National Security Council table when the administration debates issues of war and peace can make a real difference in decisions. In giving Mr. Bannon an official role in national security policy making, Mr. Trump has not simply broken with tradition but has embraced the risk of politicizing national security, or giving the impression of doing so." and Is Steve Bannon the Real President? (Ozy) "In the age of the permanent campaign, the political strategist is always going to be one of the last people in the room with the president on a big decision. But Trump is still the unpredictable decider." and Trump is taking the Bannon Way, and it will end in disaster (LA Times)

- The Jacksonian Revolt (Foreign Policy) "For the first time in 70 years, the American people have elected a president who disparages the policies, ideas, and institutions at the heart of postwar U.S. foreign policy. The Jeffersonian and Jacksonian schools of thought, prominent before World War II but out of favor during the heyday of the liberal order, have come back with a vengeance. The distinctively American populism Trump espouses is rooted in the thought and culture of the country’s first populist president, Andrew Jackson. The role of the U.S. government, Jacksonians believe, is to fulfill the country’s destiny by looking after the physical security and economic well-being of the American people in their national home—and to do that while interfering as little as possible with the individual freedom that makes the country unique. Jacksonian populism is only intermittently concerned with foreign policy, and indeed it is only intermittently engaged with politics more generally."

- White House aides who wrote Trump's travel ban see it as just the start (LA Times) "Trump’s top advisors on immigration, including chief strategist Steve Bannon and senior advisor Stephen Miller, see themselves as launching a radical experiment to fundamentally transform how the U.S. decides who is allowed into the country and to block a generation of people who, in their view, won’t assimilate into American society."

- What Trump Has Achieved Through the (Not) #MuslimBan (Breitbart) "The first and most important thing that Trump has done is put the world on notice that the United States is now serious about preventing terrorism from reaching our shores. The second achievement is that even though President Trump’s executive order is not a 'Muslim ban' — indeed, it does not even cover 87 percent of the world’s Muslims — it turns out to be useful for people to think that it is. The third achievement is that Trump has restored the credibility of American power."

- A White House Utterly Devoid of Integrity (Time) "Just a week into his infant presidency, President Donald Trump issued an executive order that affirmed his deepest beliefs loudly to the world: He will rule an incompetent, huge government dependent on fear-mongering... President Barack Obama's use of executive power drew great criticism while he was in office. Democrats should be incentivized to see that executive authority overreach isn't okay just because you agree with who is in office. And Congressional Republicans must restrain Trump. If Republicans want to emerge from the Trump presidency with any semblance of a party, never mind a conscience, they should start asserting principled opposition."

- Democrats shouldn’t go scorched-earth on Trump’s Supreme Court nominee (WaPo) "Filling the former Scalia seat won’t tip the court’s ideological balance, yet provoking Republicans to resort to the filibuster-abolishing 'nuclear option' would leave Democrats disarmed of that weapon against a second Trump pick should another vacancy arise during his presidency." and Democrats escalate their attacks on Trump, while Republicans accuse him of leaving them in the dark (WaPo)

- Navy SEAL, 8-year-old American girl died in Yemen raid (NBC News) "'Almost everything went wrong,' the official said. Defense Secretary James Mattis had to leave one of Washington's biggest annual social events, the Alfalfa Club Dinner, to deal with the repercussions, according to the official. He did not return."

READ/WATCH THIS:

- How To Make A Spaceship (Julian Guthrie) and Black Sky: The Race For Space, Space Ship One (Discovery Channel Documentary)

TECHNOLOGY:

- A Mystery AI Just Crushed the Best Human Players at Poker (Wired) "It does a little bit of everything well: knowing when to bluff and when to bet low with very good cards, as well as when to change its bets just to throw off the competition. If they ever felt they’d found a hole in its strategy, the hole would close."

BOTTOM OF THE NEWS:

- How Lego Built a Social Network for Kids That’s Not Creepy (Wired) and Club Penguin is shutting down (TechCrunch)

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