There is historical precedent: remember back in 2004 when congress shut down Poindexter's "Total Information Awareness" program, and we never had to worry about domestic surveillance ever again?
Rebranding has been the tactic of choice ever since Blackwater decided that PR was expensive and it would be cheaper to simply rebrand themselves as "Xe" (now "Academi" - they ruined the "Xe" brand, too).
Blackwater was a private company. They did briefly rebrand as Xe. A ridiculous name that sounds even more scary than blackwater. Academi may as well be a new organization.i don't consider it a successor to blackwater, even if it is in a legal sense. a company purchased blackwater for their extensive training facilities (possibly the most best in the world at the time). The blackwater IP left a long time ago.
the true spiritual successor is Prince's UAE private contractor company. according to Wikipedia it is called Reflex Responses, but Wikipedia is generally shit with this kind of information. *
* Wikipedia has to cite sources, the only publicly available sources are mainstream media, written by clueless journalists who barley understand the subject matter. for example the Wikipedia article mentions Prince recruited from Executive Outcomes, 12 years after they ceased trading. He may have recruited from EO's alleged spiritual successor, but he definitely did not recruit from a company that no longer existed.
Blackwater as a starting point is only a rough estimate.
Rebranding has, of course, existed ever since ancient humans figured out that using an alias was useful. My point is that it is not that it is a new tactic; I'm suggesting that it has been a tactic of choice, preferred over others such as using propaganda to deny problematic accusations (traditionally popular in Russia), or claiming bad things are good for patriotic reasons.
Rebranding has been the tactic of choice ever since Blackwater decided that PR was expensive and it would be cheaper to simply rebrand themselves as "Xe" (now "Academi" - they ruined the "Xe" brand, too).