Who'all remembers the A-bomb Kid? Guess what he's doing today...
I didn't know where to categorize this. It's not current, kinda politics, kinda tech, kinda a lot of things, but mostly I guess, I was just freaked out and wanted to share/discuss.
I read about this guy 40-50 years ago in The Readers Digest, have never heard anything about him since then, until the other day, a forum chat reminded me and I went rabbit-holing...
John Aristotle Phillips did an independent research project for his Physics degree at Princeton, on how to build a simple nuclear explosive device, including explicit instructions on how and why and etc. His larger goal was to help stop nuclear material proliferation by showing that there were no "secrets" left, no tech hurdles for anyone with a brain, except that of actually acquiring weapons-grade material.
His advisor was no less than Freeman Dyson, who gave him an 'A' and then immediately pulled the paper out of circulation. A couple months later, the Pakistani govt called Phillips, asking to buy a copy of his paper.
So, that's the background. It was his claim to fame back in the '70s.
From there, he went into politics, and etc etc, long story short, he's a top data broker. For decades now, he has been the CEO of one of the biggest US data trawling corporations, holding detailed personal info on at least 175M Americans (as of 2007 - doubtless, it's more today), which they use to help get politicians elected.
"Aristotle has served every occupant of the White House since Ronald Reagan, and consults for several top political action committees."
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Aristotle_Phillips#Aristotle,_Inc.
Perhaps unsurprisingly for someone who's devoted his life to gathering info about other people, there doesn't seem to be all that much out there about him or his company.
So, my gut tells me he has become "a bad guy", just my automatic reaction to anyone who deals in this field ... But, IDK, bigger picture is just, I don't know how to process this info. Maybe there's nothing to process, it is what it is.
IDK. Just looking for other people's perspectives, I guess.
Oh, wow. I knew that guy and met him a few times but I had no idea about the nuclear stuff. I just thought he was the CEO of that company. Iirc, he offered me a job with Aristotle while I was working at the DNC.
I always had the impression that Aristotle (the company) was never really that successful in political data because it was a very tribal thing and neither side could really trust them to engage on anything big.
I recall them doing something in Afghanistan back in the day but I don't remember it being alarming. I will say they always seemed to be a little "bigger" in terms of staff than their business would allow for, but I always assumed it was the guy (Aristotle) who was just independently wealthy or something.
Could be there really was something there and I was just oblivious to it and his company was always a little weird in some way that was tough to put your finger on, but from what I knew/remembered I would think other things would be more concerning.
I also just remembered his company sued NGP (another political data company that worked exclusively with Dems). Not the kind of thing you would do if you were trying to be clandestine.
I was getting this guy confused with the "Radioactive Boyscout" https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Hahn
And got very confused since I was sure he had already died.
It's wild that his home chemistry experiments turned his mother's house into a small Superfund site!