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

by Christopher Wylie

The history of building codes stretches back to the year 64 C.E., when Nero restricted housing height, street width, and public water supplies after a devastating fire ravaged Rome for nine days. Though a fire in 1631 prompted Boston to ban wooden chimneys and thatched roofs, the first modern building code emerged out of the devastating carnage of the Great Fire of London, in 1666. As in Boston, London houses had been densely constructed from timber and thatch, which allowed the fire to spread rapidly over four days. It destroyed 13,200 homes, eighty-four churches, and nearly all of the city’s government buildings. Afterward, King Charles II declared that no one shall “erect any House or Building, great or small, but of Brick, or Stone.” His declaration also widened thoroughfares to stop future fires from spreading from one side of the street to the other. After other historic fires in the nineteenth century, many cities followed suit, and eventually public surveyors were tasked with inspections and ensuring that the construction of private property was safe for the inhabitants and for the public at large. New rules emerged, and eventually the notion of public safety became an overarching principle that could override unsafe or unproven building designs, regardless of the desires of property owners or even the consent of inhabitants. A platform like Facebook has been burning for years with its own disasters—Cambridge Analytica, Russian interference, Myanmar’s ethnic cleans...