Future Tense is a partnership of Slate, New America, and Arizona State University that examines emerging technologies, public policy, and society. Facebook suspended two companies from its platform over the weekend for improper data collection. The social media giant has been racing to address privacy concerns in light of revelations that data firm Cambridge Analytica accessed private data from as many as 87 million accounts and later used it to support Donald Trump's presidential campaign. Late on Friday, Facebook responded to reports that the Canadian political consulting firm AggregateIQ is affiliated with Strategic Communication Laboratories (SCL), the parent company of Cambridge Analytica. "In light of recent reports that AggregateIQ may be affiliated with SCL and may, as a result, have improperly received FB user data, we have added them to the list of entities we have suspended from our platform while we investigate," Facebook said in a statement.

"The connectivity that is the heart of globalisation can be exploited by states with hostile intent to further their aims.[…] The risks at stake are profound and represent a fundamental threat to our sovereignty." "It's not MI6's job to warn of internal threats. It was a very strange speech. Was it one branch of the intelligence services sending a shot across the bows of another? Or was it pointed at Theresa May's government? Does she know something she's not telling us?" Senior intelligence analyst, April 2017 In June 2013, a young American postgraduate called Sophie was passing through London when she called up the boss of a firm where she'd previously interned. The company, SCL Elections, went on to be bought by Robert Mercer, a secretive hedge fund billionaire, renamed Cambridge Analytica, and achieved a certain notoriety as the data analytics firm that played a role in both Trump and Brexit campaigns. But all of this was still to come. London in 2013 was still basking in the afterglow of the Olympics. Britain had not yet Brexited. The world had not yet turned. "That was before we became this dark, dystopian data company that gave the world Trump," a former Cambridge Analytica employee who I'll call Paul tells me. "It was back when we were still just a psychological warfare firm." Was that really what you called it, I ask him. Psychological operations – the same methods the military use to effect mass sentiment change.