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Spyware Maker NSO Group Is Paving a Path Back Into Trump’s America
The Israeli spyware maker, still on the US Commerce Department’s “blacklist,” has hired a new lobbying firm with direct ties to the Trump administration, a WIRED investigation has found.
Shortly after Donald Trump declared victory in November, NSO Group cofounder and majority owner Omri Lavie rushed to X to congratulate him, speaking of a “new chapter where the world goes back to common sense,” while accusing the outgoing Biden administration of being “weak.” In another tweet, he gushed in Hebrew that Republicans “won in every category: the presidency, Congress, Senate, and the popular vote.” Experts closely monitoring the commercial spyware industry are raising the alarm about the prospect of NSO Group regaining business under Trump—further exacerbated by new reports that the company has been simultaneously pushing its interests on the international stage through the so-called Pall Mall Process, a UK- and France-led initiative to regulate such technologies. Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, who has actively worked to address concerns related to surveillance and spyware, tells WIRED that “the Biden Administration blacklisted NSO” because its tool was used to “maliciously targeting journalists, human rights workers, and even US government officials around the world on behalf of foreign dictators and making all Americans less safe.”
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