Mindf*ck: Cambridge Analytica and the Plot to Break America

by Christopher Wylie

By most metrics, Russia’s military is significantly weaker than that of the United States. The U.S. military budget, at $716 billion, is more than ten times that of Russia. The United States has 1.28 million active military personnel, as compared with Russia’s 1 million; has more than 13,000 total aircraft, as compared with Russia’s 4,000; and has twenty aircraft carriers, whereas Russia has one. By all existing conventional measures, Moscow would never again be competitive with the United States in terms of “great powers” warfare, and Vladimir Putin knew it. So the Russians had to devise another way to regain the advantage—one that had nothing to do with the physical battlespace.