STATUS

A data-harvesting startup is hired by Steve Bannon, Kushner etc to "weaponize user data" in 2014. The startup then uses various Facebook software loopholes to farm data from 50 million+ Americans. Afterward, they use those same algorithms to found an entire company, eventually giving the data to a bilingual professor - who finally distributed it to Russians. The Russian agencies use that Data to run (now empirically confirmed) extreme disinformation campaigns, intended to derail the US elections.

(..The professor had long studied processes by which digital data could be used for extreme psychological manipulation. Many of Trump's slogans and buzzwords were "tested" long before he even announced a campaign).

Tbh, sounds like a really bad/cliche dystopian novel, or a Mr. Robot episode, but sadly it's reality.