# i360 The [[Koch Network]]'s voter-data and political-analytics platform — a privately held, Koch-funded data operation that, at its peak, rivaled and at times surpassed the Republican National Committee's own voter file. i360 is the clearest example of [[the Kochs]] building **parallel party infrastructure**: rather than route their political technology through the RNC, they built a better one and made the party dependent on it, a move that triggered open conflict between the network and the official GOP. ## What It Is Operating since 2009, i360 built a national voter file, predictive models, microtargeting tools, and mobile apps for door-knocking volunteers — the full data stack of a modern campaign operation. The Koch network poured tens of millions into it, and through [[Americans for Prosperity]]'s field program it married that data to one of the largest permanent grassroots ground organizations on the right. ## The War With the RNC i360's quality created a structural problem for the Republican Party. In 2014 i360 and the RNC-aligned Data Trust agreed to exchange voter files, but after the midterms the deal was allowed to lapse — and relations curdled into what one operative called "all-out war." RNC leaders (Chairman [[Reince Priebus]], chief of staff Katie Walsh) objected that depending on i360 handed a small group of unaccountable billionaires control over the party's most valuable asset; Walsh warned in 2015 that it was "very dangerous and wrong to allow a group of very strong, well financed individuals who have no accountability to anyone to have control over who gets access to the data." i360, meanwhile, grew more popular with individual Republican campaigns because it worked. ## Why It Matters Here i360 is the data-layer expression of the central [[Koch Network]] thesis: the Kochs built a **shadow party** — funding, field organization, policy infrastructure, and voter data — that could operate independently of (and apply leverage to) the formal Republican Party. Control of the data is control of the campaign, and for several cycles the Kochs, not the RNC, held the better file. The episode is also an early instance of the recurring tension in this KB between the donor network's interests and the official party's, a fault line that re-emerged in different form during the Trump era. (See [[Koch Network]].) ## See Also - [[Koch Network]] — The political machine i360 serves - [[Americans for Prosperity]] — The field organization that deployed i360's data - [[Koch Industries]] — The cash engine behind the network