Perhaps the better question is: "who do they think satan is?"
The conflation of the term Lucifer with the construct of Satan is a rather complicated lesson in biblical and historical scholarship.
What if I told you that seeking enlightenment is following lucifer?
Not a horrible sounding idea and accurate to its ancient meaning.
Now of I told you that lucifer was actually satan and that it is the job of the enlightened to test people to teach them - IE - subject them to abuse to teach them to overcome it.
… The idea becomes more suspect.
If you were an ancient sect of people who have historically held positions of influence and power, however… And this is how you were raised - bonus points if you are from a lineage that claims to be one of the fractured forms of lucifer during his descent (it's… A sublimation of the individual in a teaching that the family lines represent one of the angels/demons formed during lucifer's descent and each person is not themselves but a part of the role of that angel/demon)…
There's a lot of weird stuff out there that, as the whole lucifer, I condemn as a bunch of poppycock created to justify their own hedonism. They errantly believe that their current state is lesser than some state they can achieve at some later date when all souls are reconstituted into a god once again.
Basically, Evangelion is fucking real and Seele is the cabal. Thankfully, the military is a bunch of weebs, so we are well aware of what they think and how they operate.
Here, the opening to Evangelion, accurately translated: https://youtu.be/ZmJ5oBdJTXQ