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Emma Briant, visiting research associate in human rights at Bard, comments that what has been revealed so far in the new Cambridge Analytica leak is “the tip of the iceberg.... The documents reveal a much clearer idea of what actually happened in the 2016 US presidential election, which has a huge bearing on what will happen in 2020. It’s the same people involved who we know are building on these same techniques,” she said. “There’s evidence of really quite disturbing experiments on American voters, manipulating them with fear-based messaging, targeting the most vulnerable, that seems to be continuing. This is an entire global industry that’s out of control.” 

The leak began on New Year’s Day, and more than 100,000 documents are set to be released in the coming months, revealing the defunct company’s work in 68 countries. Emma Briant specializes in the topics of propaganda and political communication, and is interested in changing technologies and their implications for democracy, international security, migration, inequality, and human rights. She is currently writing a book on Cambridge Analytica, Propaganda Machine: The Hidden Story of Cambridge Analytica and the Digital Influence Industry. This semester, Dr. Briant is teaching Migration and Media and Propaganda: Dark Arts at Bard College.

Wray, a senior scholar at the Levy Economics Institute at Bard College and a leading thinker in Modern Monetary Theory, recently testified before the House Budget Committee in a hearing reexamining the economic costs of debt. (As a reminder, MMT argues that sovereign governments with their own currency can’t go broke and can spend until inflation becomes an issue.) He told lawmakers this: “We do not have to repay the debt—what we have to do is make the interest payments.” If there were one sentence that captured the drastic change in economic thought over the past decade, writes Bloomberg columnist Brian Chappatta, “that might just be it.”