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What's the consequence for destabilizing governments worldwide? Logistics headaches? Got it.

The NSO guys are in it purely for the money. IIRC there was a deal on the cards for some investors to buy the company that fell apart because of the sanctions, so the NSO founders can no longer cash out.

As for destabilizing governments, they are doing the opposite, they are helping authoritarian governments worldwide crack down on journalists and dissidents, or murder them in the case of Saudi Arabia and Jamal Khashoggi. Reportedly, after the Khashoggi murder, NSO yanked the Saudi account but was forced to reinstate it by Netanyahu who was pursuing diplomatic relations with them.

The episode of Darknet Diaries on NSO was very informative.

https://darknetdiaries.com/episode/100/

I knew about Israeli security consultancies putting out stringrays and phone cracking tools, but I did not know about NSO. He has a good interview with one of the lead devs.

correction the interview isn't a lead dev of NSO but from a third party who investigate malware attacks on reporters etc

Good point. Although i think the preceding comment was using "destabilizing governments" as a catch-all for non-democratic and morally dubious activity.

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