# John Aristotle Phillips

> John Aristotle Phillips is the co-founder and CEO of Aristotle, the Washington DC-based political technology firm he built with his brother Dean since 1983. Known worldwide as 'The A-Bomb Kid' after his Princeton term paper on nuclear weapon design made headlines in 1977, Phillips parlayed celebrity into activism, lost two congressional races, then quietly built a data empire that has served virtually every U.S. president from Reagan onward. Today Aristotle powers campaign compliance, voter data, PAC management, and identity verification for campaigns across the globe, while Phillips co-founded PredictIt, the world's largest political prediction market, partnering with Victoria University of Wellington to bring real-money political forecasting to the mainstream.

- **Role:** CEO at Aristotle
- **Organizations:** Aristotle Inc., PredictIt
- **From:** North Haven, Connecticut, USA
- **Nationality:** American
- **Education:** Attended (transferred), University of California, Berkeley, Bachelor of Science, Aerospace Engineering / Physics, Princeton University
- **Known for:** Co-founded Aristotle Inc. in 1983, building it into the leading non-partisan political technology company serving every U.S. president from Reagan onward, Wrote the first widely publicized academic paper demonstrating that an atomic bomb could be designed from publicly available information — changing U.S. nuclear proliferation policy debate, Co-founded PredictIt, the world's largest political prediction market, with 350+ million shares traded and 65 affiliated universities

## Career timeline

- **1955** — Born August 23 in North Haven, Connecticut to Greek immigrant parents; father a Yale engineering professor
- **1976** — Wrote 'The Fundamentals of Atomic Bomb Design' for Princeton junior-year physics project; advisor Freeman Dyson awarded it an A
- **1977** — Dubbed 'The A-Bomb Kid' by national media; Pakistani embassy contacted him seeking to buy the design; Phillips immediately notified the FBI
- **1978** — Graduated from Princeton University with BS in Aerospace Engineering/Physics
- **1979** — Co-authored 'Mushroom: The True Story of the A-Bomb Kid' with David Michaelis
- **1980** — Ran for U.S. House in Connecticut's 4th congressional district as a Democratic anti-nuclear candidate; lost to Republican Stewart McKinney
- **1982** — Ran again for the same Connecticut congressional seat; lost again to McKinney
- **1983** — Co-founded Aristotle Inc. with brother Dean, leveraging voter database experience from congressional campaigns; Dean coded on an Apple II
- **1984** — Aristotle retained by both Ronald Reagan and Walter Mondale campaigns simultaneously — non-partisan from day one
- **1986** — Marshall Brickman's film 'The Manhattan Project' released, inspired by Phillips's A-Bomb Kid story
- **1987** — Launched rival publication 'Campaign Industry News' after C&E Magazine published a negative review of Aristotle software
- **1992** — Aristotle served Bill Clinton, George H.W. Bush, and Ross Perot; filed $5.3M lawsuit against Metromail/RR Donnelley over voter data misuse
- **1994** — Purchased over $1M in RR Donnelley stock to demand board-mandated external audits on data privacy
- **1995** — Metromail settled for $2.7 million; Aristotle's voter database contains privacy protections that become an industry model
- **1998** — Phillips publicly emphasized targeted political advertising potential on the nascent World Wide Web
- **2000** — Aristotle client list included 45 senators, 200+ House members, and 46 state parties
- **2004** — Helped Ukrainian presidential candidate Viktor Yushchenko expose vote fraud by Kremlin-backed Viktor Yanukovich during the Orange Revolution
- **2007** — Aristotle database reaches ~175 million U.S. voter records; W.R. Hambrecht holds 27% stake, News Corp/Rupert Murdoch 13.5%
- **2009** — Research reveals 8.9% of registered U.S. voters (~16.3 million people) ineligible to vote due to relocation or death
- **2014** — Co-founded PredictIt with Victoria University of Wellington as a CFTC-authorized real-money political prediction market
- **2017** — Advised Kenyan opposition candidate Raila Odinga; Aristotle raises $420K seed funding
- **2021** — Aristotle grows to 120 employees with ~$25.5M annual revenue; FTC removes Aristotle from COPPA self-regulatory list
- **2022** — Delivered TEDxMidAtlantic talk on prediction markets and political forecasting
- **2026** — Continues leading Aristotle as CEO; PredictIt has processed over 350 million shares traded

## Achievements

- Co-founded Aristotle Inc. in 1983, building it into the leading non-partisan political technology company serving every U.S. president from Reagan onward
- Wrote the first widely publicized academic paper demonstrating that an atomic bomb could be designed from publicly available information — changing U.S. nuclear proliferation policy debate
- Co-founded PredictIt, the world's largest political prediction market, with 350+ million shares traded and 65 affiliated universities
- Helped expose electoral fraud by Kremlin-backed forces in Ukraine's 2004 presidential election during the Orange Revolution
- Built Aristotle's voter database to cover ~175 million U.S. voter records — one of the largest political data repositories in existence
- Won a $2.7M settlement against Metromail/RR Donnelley for misuse of voter data, setting a privacy precedent
- Pioneered microtargeting of voters using combined data sets — income, church attendance, gun ownership — decades before Cambridge Analytica made it controversial
- Inspired the 1986 Marshall Brickman film 'The Manhattan Project'

## Latest updates

- **2026-05** — Continues as CEO of Aristotle with 120 employees and ~$25.5M annual revenue; PredictIt processes hundreds of millions of shares traded
- **2024-11** — Phillips participated in Technology Policy Institute podcast discussing prediction market regulation and their role beyond 'gambling on politics'
- **2022-05** — Delivered TEDxMidAtlantic talk 'Can a stock market for politics predict the outcome of elections?' on PredictIt's role in political forecasting
- **2021-01** — FTC removed Aristotle from its list of COPPA self-regulatory organizations
- **2017-01** — Aristotle raised $420K seed funding; Phillips advised Kenyan opposition candidate Raila Odinga

## Links

- Website: https://aristotle.com
- LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/john-aristotle-phillips-7a13991
- Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/AristotleNews
- Facebook: https://facebook.com/AristotleNews

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Profile page: https://yespress.io/john-phillips
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-05-12