For decades, cybersecurity focused on protecting information.

At the same time, an entirely different industry was solving a different problem.

Advertising platforms learned how to capture attention.
Data brokers learned how to profile behavior.
Recommendation systems learned how to optimize engagement.
Machine learning learned how to predict decisions.

Then generative AI arrived.

Suddenly, the ability to understand people, predict people, target people, and persuade people began converging into a single operational stack.

This session argues that we are witnessing a fundamental shift in the threat landscape: persuasion itself is becoming computable.

Modern attackers no longer need to guess who to target, what to say, when to say it, or how to build trust. Increasingly, those decisions can be informed by behavioral data, optimized by machine learning, generated by AI, and delivered across coordinated channels at scale.

Drawing on examples from fraud operations, social engineering campaigns, data brokerage, behavioral targeting, and AI-enabled deception, this talk examines how influence is evolving from an art into an engineering discipline.

The result is not simply better scams.

It is the emergence of programmable persuasion as a security problem.

Attendees will leave with a new framework for understanding how behavioral intelligence, AI systems, and influence infrastructure are reshaping both offensive and defensive security.

Session Type:
Security Research / AI Security / Human Risk / Emerging Threats

Technical Level:
Intermediate

Audience:
Security researchers, threat intelligence teams, fraud investigators, red teams, blue teams, AI practitioners, security architects, and cybersecurity leaders.

Topics Covered:

Social engineering
Behavioral targeting
Data brokers
AI-enabled persuasion
Human risk
Threat modeling
Fraud operations
Influence systems

Original Contribution:

This talk introduces the concept of computable persuasion as an emerging security paradigm. Rather than treating fraud, social engineering, behavioral targeting, AI-generated content, and influence operations as separate domains, it presents them as components of a unified persuasion stack that increasingly functions as an operational capability.

Preferred Length:
45 minutes

Village Track Suitability:
AI, Threat Intelligence, Human Risk, Social Engineering, Privacy, an