“…because it’s actually all about emotion.”

This observation, spoken by Cambridge Analytica managing director Mark Turnbull, is actually fairly astute. Elections primarily are about emotion, and any parties looking to explore the whys and wherefores of “hidden fears and concerns” and then spread information to agitate and exploit these feelings is up to something devious, and yet probably effective.

Turnbull and other Cambridge Analytica execs (including CEO Alexander Nix) were secretly filmed for a Channel 4 News investigative undercover report that was aired in England on Monday, 3.19, and now the world is saying “these guys are skunks.”

Cambridge Analytica is a rightwing data-mining and political intelligence outfit, founded by Steve Bannon and Robert Mercer, that covertly campaigns in elections all over and has claimed a good amount of credit for Donald Trump’s presidential victory.

Channel 4’s report followed stories in The New York Times (posted on 3.17) and London’s The Observer that CA had harvested data from more than 50 million Facebook profiles in its bid to develop techniques for predicting the behavior of individual American voters.