An investigation into the rise of NSO's Pegasus shows its widespread use by the CIA, UAE, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, and others; the FBI bought but didn't use it
Firstly, welcome to my new blog! (Or is it a “newsletter”?) Tweets: Eva / @evacide : Here I am, having taken to my fainting couch, wearing my finest clutching pearls, because NSO Group has been caught lying again. https://twitter.com/... John Scott-Railton / @jsrailton : BREAKING: Finnish diplomats were targeted by #Pegasus spyware. Yet another government coming forward and pointing the finger at NSO. Statement: https://um.fi/... https://twitter.com/... Mark Mazzetti / @markmazzettinyt : Several American firms are getting into this action. One firm, funded by Peter Thiel, boasted in a presentation obtained by The Times that, at one point, it had the capability to hack WhatsApp. WhatsApp is owned by Facebook, and Thiel is on the Facebooks's board. Happy Reading! Ryan Mac / @rmac18 : Meta/Facebook board member Peter Thiel's venture firm is backing a company that claimed it had the ability to hack WhatsApp, which is owned by.... Meta. https://t.co/nbpa8Iu2Tr https://t.co/DwlriFuhBJ Suhasini Haidar / @suhasinih : According to the @nytimes, sale of Pegasus was not just a backroom deal by former Israeli PM Netanyahu with leaders inc PM Modi, but also ensured a shift in position of countries like Hungary, Mexico and India at the UN. Very serious allegations, the government must respond to. https://twitter.com/... Eva / @evacide : If you are a journalist and you still take anything that an NSO Group spokesperson says at face value, you should consider a different career. Herbert Buchsbaum / @herbertnyt : If you think your Whatsapp messages are private, consider this. https://twitter.com/... Sucheta Dalal / @suchetadalal : Thread. Not just india, hope people read before drawing conclusions about misuse by govts- indian and others. People lost their freedom on this basis https://twitter.com/... @rondeibert : TAKEAWAY: You cannot trust anything NSO Group says, and journalists should not just parrot their statements uncritically and repeatedly. Eva / @evacide : @FoxCahn ... If you want to have the same capabilities for detecting tracking with an Android as you currently have with an iPhone, it will require Google and Apple to work together to add this to the Android operating system, which is something I have asked them to do. Sophie / @merryboffin : It's totally fine that Mike Kelly pushed the AABill, then went to work for Palantir. https://twitter.com/... Mohammed Zubair / @zoo_bear : “They had reason for the warm feelings. Their countries had agreed on the sale of a package of sophisticated weapons and intelligence gear worth roughly $2 billion — with Pegasus and a missile system as the centerpieces.” https://www.nytimes.com/... https://twitter.com/... @johnhhaskell : @MarkMazzettiNYT do you think they give presentations to the Board on how to hack Whatsapp Eva / @evacide : Did the FBI ever target anyone during their Pegasus test run? If so, what happened to all of NSO's grand statements about how their software couldn't be used to target US phone numbers? https://twitter.com/... David Benjamin / @davidmanonfire : We know. We said... Carbyne (Ehud Barak, Chertoff, Thiel and ..) Epstein dropped $1.5 million into it. NSO was used vs WhatsApp - thats why Rosenstein (DOJ) defended NSO.. Nobody is supposed to know.. https://twitter.com/... Edward Utyro / @eutyro : @MarkMazzettiNYT That would seem like a giant fiduciary breech that would expose Thiel to hundreds of millions in damages. Sheikh Saaliq / @sheikh_saaliq : According to this NYT investigation, India bought Pegasus as part of a larger $2 Billion deal with Israel in 2017. https://twitter.com/... @rondeibert : It would be a mistake to read into this reporting that NSO is just a pawn in US-Israeli-other gov's relations. The company (and its investors) is far from innocent, wittingly and repeatedly selling its technology to gov clients that are serial abusers of human rights. @rmac18 : This isn't the first time Thiel has been involved in a co with interests in direct conflict with Meta/FB. He also invested in the company that became Clearview AI, which has harvested billions of photos from Facebook and Instagram to create its facial recognition software. @naderalihashemi : NYT Investigation on Pegasus spyware finds that Israel uses it to advance its interests around the world (i.e. helping dictators, attacking journalists/dissidents) https://www.nytimes.com/... @sarahleah1 @MadawiDr @KenRoth @AgnesCallamard @DannyPostel Stephanie Kirchgaessner / @skirchy : An interesting takeaway from the NYT investigation of NSO is the perception in Israel that the Biden decision to blacklist the company is seen in Israel (by some?) as an attack on Israel itself. https://www.nytimes.com/... M K Venu / @mkvenu1 : “Though the Israeli government's oversight was meant to prevent the powerful spyware from being used in repressive ways, Pegasus has been sold to Poland, Hungary and India, despite those countries' questionable records on human rights.”, NYT report! https://twitter.com/... Evan Hill / @evanhill : The FBI bought and considered using domestically the notorious Israeli spyware program Pegasus in 2019. They never did, but the equipment remains in an office in New Jersey. That and other details in this new story by @MarkMazzettiNYT & @ronenbergman: https://www.nytimes.com/... @arvindgunasekar : “India and Israel had agreed on the sale of a package of sophisticated weapons and intelligence gear worth roughly $2 billion — with Pegasus and a missile system as the centerpieces. Months later (2018), Netanyahu made a rare state visit to India.” 👇🏻 https://www.nytimes.com/... Seth Hettena / @seth_hettena : Big expose focuses on how Israel used NSO's powerful phone spyware Pegasus as diplomatic leverage. https://twitter.com/... Nicole Perlroth / @nicoleperlroth : Should be a real fun one for Facebook/WhatsApp PR and GC. Peter Thiel funds a firm that sells the ability to hack WhatsApp, which is owned by Facebook, where he serves on the board. And Facebook/WhatsApp sues companies like NSO that hack its customers/products. I see lawsuits. https://twitter.com/... Nicole Perlroth / @nicoleperlroth : Fascinating to learn about Israel's conspiracy theories about NSO Group's blacklisting. They see it as an effort to “neuter” Israel's cyber advantage and warned Jake Sullivan Russia and China might fill the vacuum. Eamon Javers / @eamonjavers : NYT does a much needed deep dive on the mysterious NSO Group... https://twitter.com/... Mark Mazzetti / @markmazzettinyt : NSO is effectively a tool of the Israeli government, one Israel uses to gain diplomatic leverage. Netanyahu used Pegasus to knit together a new generation of global far-right leaders from Israel, Poland, Hungary, India and elsewhere Mark Mazzetti / @markmazzettinyt : The United States blacklisted NSO in November after countless stories of Pegasus being used against dissidents, journalists etc. What you didn't know was that, beginning in 2019, the FBI paid millions to NSO as the bureau considered deploying Pegasus in the U.S. Mark Mazzetti / @markmazzettinyt : In 2018, the C.I.A. bought Pegasus for the government of Djibouti, a country that has an established record of human rights abuses. Ronen Bergman / @ronenbergman : EXCLUSIVE: The CIA bought a Pegasus, the world's most powerful and notorious cyberweapon, for the intelligence service of Djibouti, a country with a horrible record of human rights abuses. W\ the great @MarkMazzettiNYT via @NYTmag https://www.nytimes.com/... Shaun Walker / @shaunwalker7 : Fascinating new longread on NSO... https://www.nytimes.com/... Marc Lynch / @abuaardvark : Fascinating reporting on Israel's cyber-surveillance diplomacy https://www.nytimes.com/... @metacurity : Must-read bombshell. FBI paid NSO Group $5m for its Pegasus spyware, tested it, but purportedly decided not to use it. CIA put Pegasus in the hands of at least one country, Djibouti, with a record of human rights abuses. Then the U.S. sanctioned NSO. https://www.nytimes.com/... @sonaliranade : “But the tech giant didn't have the entire picture. What Facebook didn't appear to know was that the attack on a U.S. phone number, far from being an assault by a foreign power, was part of the NSO demonstrations to the F.B.I. of Phantom” https://www.nytimes.com/... Don't miss. @globalfreemedia : Must-read @nytimes investigation into the rise of NSO's Pegasus tool, the go-to hacking device with which repressive regimes around the world surveil journalists. https://www.nytimes.com/... Mark Mazzetti / @markmazzettinyt : NEW: A deep investigation into NSO, the notorious hacking firm, w/@ronenbergman for @NYTmag. Short thread on some revelations 1/ https://www.nytimes.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
NSO’s Pegasus business had already expanded through large Gulf-state sales, while court filings had challenged the company’s claim that it did not itself conduct surveillance by alleging it monitored calls to help close deals. The new reporting places U.S. agencies inside that same commercial spyware ecosystem, even as Pegasus was associated with surveillance of journalists and dissidents.
The distinction between the CIA’s transfer of Pegasus to Djibouti and the FBI’s testing without domestic deployment matters because it separates overseas partner support from domestic operational use. It also arrives amid a documented case in which Pegasus activity targeting U.S. diplomats in Uganda contributed to NSO’s subsequent decline.
First-order effects
- The CIA’s provision of Pegasus to Djibouti made a U.S. intelligence agency a conduit for a tool NSO sold broadly to governments, while the FBI’s non-deployment preserved a stated domestic-use boundary.
- NSO faces intensified scrutiny of its sales and customer controls because the investigation ties its product to both U.S. agencies and governments accused of using it against journalists and dissidents.
Second-order effects
- The U.S. blacklist of NSO puts pressure on the company’s government-client model just as disclosures of Pegasus abuse had already contributed to severe financial trouble.
- Other commercial spyware vendors and government buyers face a sharper accountability test: technical testing or overseas transfers can become politically consequential even without acknowledged domestic deployment.
Third-order effects
- If governments continue to treat commercial spyware as both an intelligence capability and an export-control risk, access will increasingly depend on political alignment and oversight rather than a vendor’s claims about lawful use.
- The pattern points toward a more fragmented surveillance-tech market, in which vendors’ customer due diligence and states’ transfer decisions become central constraints on cross-border sales.
The trend: Commercial surveillance tools are becoming instruments of statecraft whose foreign deployments increasingly shape vendors’ access to major government markets.