Control of chemical photoionization, dissociation, and rearrangement has been demonstrated using tailored strong field (10¹³ W cm^-2) laser pulses. The heart of the new technology is the exploitation of laser-driven coherent molecular dynamics. A shaped laser pulse is used to both excite a time-dependent wave packet and then specifically probe for a given product channel using rapid time-of-flight detection methods. The laser pulses are created using a closed-loop learning algorithm with the product distribution guiding the shape of the laser pulses. For example, we have controlled the dissociation and rearrangement of a polyatomic molecule such as acetophenone. The generic nature of the technique is demonstrated and the fundamental underlying principles of such strong-field control experiments are considered. We investigate the mechanisms of strong field control using a combination of ion and photoelectron spectroscopies. The structure-based and nonadiabatic multielectron dynamics model will be presented in order to understand the nature of the control and the associated limitations of strong field approaches.