Historical use of tactics of deception, hypnotic induction and illusion in economic competition and warfare.
Similar tactics employed on individuals or small groups are usually called “trauma-based” mind control. In the public space, advertising or editorial media.
In the tenth century Hasan al Sabah’s Assassins employed hypnotic induction, illusion and ritual ceremonies to initiate thousands of faithful believers willing to abandon their cover identities, as merchants or officials and assassinate an Emperor or Wazir. For four hundred years the cult get richer, until the Mongol Khan overran their fortress at Alamut in the Syrian mountains. Steven Runciman, preeminent authority on the Crusades and Byzantine History states when the Alamut fortress was overrun, the surviving assassins throughout the Mideast, changed their name, becoming the Ismailis.
Nation states have enormous difficulty finding large numbers of individuals willing to die on command. The groups employing the Assassin’s tactics has 100% loyalty and instant compliance with leaders’ instructions. Many groups and organizations, religious sects, cults and intelligence agencies were able to acquire the technology and learn the tactics.
The intelligence agencies and some groups developed a related control technology usually called “trauma-based mind control,” it is used to engineer 100% complaint human beings, however individuals exposed require therapeutic expertise due to the extensive alterations to the psyche inflicted on them, usually as children.