I have to say, hearing an obvious gay man talking about his work with DARPA, with Steve Bannon and other forces of harm, and talking about hybrid weaponization in the context of fashion, was surprisingly interesting. A very well-organized and lucid discussion, IMO.
https://edition.cnn.com/style/article/ch...index.html Wrote:Fashion is a powerful tool. Covering our bodies in clothes or adornments is an almost universal behavior, and how you dress is one of the most obvious indicators of who you are.
Show me a list of people, and the fashion brands they buy from or engage with, and I could easily produce a series of assumptions about each one. I might make an educated guess about their spending power, or how fashion-conscious they are (or aren't). I might even be able to give you a sense of their character -- at least, I'd feel fairly confident distinguishing the peacocks from the shrinking violets.
The future of fashion: Complex, diverse, and more vocal than ever
Speaking at The Business of Fashion's Voices conference in the UK on Thursday, data analyst and Cambridge Analytica whistleblower Christopher Wylie took this relatively simple idea to its worrying but logical extension: Like any tool, he said, fashion can become a weapon in the wrong hands.
"Fashion data was used to build AI models to help Steve Bannon build his insurgency and build the alt-right," he told the conference. "We used weaponized algorithms. We used weaponized cultural narratives to undermine people and undermine the perception of reality. And fashion played a big part in that."
