It is centrally important that readers understand that certain neuro-atypical people possess "spiky skills" that make them desirable as assets to intelligence services, criminal networks and tech companies.
Very often such people struggle with feelings of loneliness and being an outsider and in times past would have struggled with their lives generally.
I know a lot about this as I am one of those people. I have moved in cricles where I got to know many similar people very well. At one point, largely through enjoying rave culture late in life, I was friends with a wide circle of tech company VIPs.
Obviously not all people with ASD and other neuro atypical people are savants and geniuses. However when you "march to a different drum" to most other people it can be a relief to socialise with others who are similarly "outsiders".
It is my undertanding that this particular group of people have been targetted by cults and social engineers. Given the usefulness of spiky skills to a variety of actors it would be remarkable had this not happened.
My provisional hypothesis is that it is no accident that so many neuro atypical people identify as trans.
During my years on the rave / clubbing scene where my friendship group consisted primarily of ethical hackers / tech security consultants, internet entrepreneurs and VIPs in various unicorns and internet startups it became apparent to me that most of my neuro atypical friends lived in an entirely different world to most ordinary people.
Obviously they were making a lot of money. Any innovative new tech such as phones and other devices they would receive as gifts in the development stage in order to asses and provide feedback.
There was a lot of drug use, but people seemed to be able to use drugs (it was mostly psychedelics) in order to reflect about algorithms, computing, physics and other issues and suffer few of the side effects that ordinary people experienced (there were a couple of notable exceptions where I knew people who struggled with drug use, one was someone who, although mathematically extremely gifted demonstrated significant manipulative / antisocial/ psychopathic behaviour).
Sexual relationships between people in my then social group were largely unconventional. While some people had monogomous relationships this was not the norm. Open relationships, bisexuality and playing around with gender stereotypes were extremely common.
I drifted away from this social group largely because I could not keep up with the drugs and the clubbing and I did not have the financial resources to keep up with their lifestyle.
During the time I was involved with this group of friends I noticed that several people in my social group were drifting into cults. Sometimes it started with meditation sometimes with yoga, sometimes via a sexual relationship with a cult member.
I have occasionally bumped into old friends at music festivals and other events and their careers have progressed to the point where they are extremely influential people in a variety of settings.
Back to the OP
If you are interested in how quacks, scammers, grifters, social engineers etc. have managed to secure so much influence in social media companies and tech companies a good place to start is by looking at the Wisdom2 events
This is a really good starting place
<a class="break-all" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20140208024118/wisdom2conference.com/Speakers" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">web.archive.org/web/20140208024118/wisdom2conference.com/Speakers
You can use the above link to further explore Widom2 and its links to both apparently reputable tech companies and all manner of cults