The phrase
social engineering splashed into the public's view as a result of actions from a cluster of companies whose services focused on influencing and manipulating people's thinking. The history of these companies is complex, but seems to have all started with Strategic Communication Laboratories, which became SCL Ltd, then it became SCL Group, which then created a subsidiary called Behavioral Dynamics Institute (BDI) and another subsidiary infamously known as Cambridge Analytica, a company that was intimately involved in influencing US voters during the 2016 elections. Cambridge Analytica stated at the time that their expertise was in "behavior change," "military influence campaigns," "psychographic segmentation" and other types of mind-manipulation.
SCL Group's services focused on psychological operations (psyops), which is a strategy to alter people's minds through the use of rumours, disinformation, bots, fictitious accounts and fake news. The BDI subsidiary claimed they had several leading psychologists and strategists on staff that developed tools to better understand audiences and to shape their behaviors. They claimed they had invested over $25 million USD in developing scientific approaches for "influencing target audiences." They provided services such as delivering training in counter-Russian propaganda in Eastern Europe funded by the Government of Canada, as well as conducting research on target audience analysis which has influenced counter-insurgency doctrine.
