The “develops weaponised software exploits” is not clear for me. Maybe it’s the same kind of mindset that lets people design and build weapons and bombs and such?
There are good applications of these tools. If you can hack the phones of a terrorist organization, you can find out about attacks before they happen and stop them. If you can extract data off of locked computers, you can help win convictions that wouldn't otherwise be possible against people who do truly awful things.
The question, of course, is whether these good applications outweigh the misuse, but that's where it gets murky in a hurry. Individual researchers at these privately owned "boutique" exploit companies (to my knowledge) tend not to know the nitty gritty details of how their work is used out in the world unless it gets caught and dissected online. The more reputable western companies sell only to "democratic" governments which are political allies, but that only goes so far as misuse and abuse is always a risk (not to mention the shaky nature of...certain... western democracies).
At the end of the day, you really just have to hope your work is being used to target terrorists and not journalists. The money obviously makes it easier, but it's not completely disingenuous of the people who work there to believe they're doing good.
But, but, but.
> "[...] it's not completely disingenuous of the people who work there to believe they're doing good."
Given how well and widely NSO and their merchandise were reported on, including the dissection of various associated scandals in the mainstream media, I beg to differ. These people are not dumb, they know exactly what they do, and who their clients are. Your good-faith assumptions with regards to these players come across as extremely naive, to put it mildly.
Anyone that works at FAANG or "big"/mobile game studios, anything to do with advertising, banking, natural resources extraction/processing, non-sustansible farming, etc, etc.
In my opinion there are not many constructive things you can work with that really improve society or peoples lives.
But then again I'm in a quite dark place this year.
Sorry about your dark place. Keep looking for the light!
Isn't it the other way around: the public sector funds the private sector that allows people to amass their hoards?
But, is it worse than ad tech at large? Is it worse than companies addicting people to their phones via psychological tricks at alarming rates? Or siphoning money from kids via freemium models? Or working on a chatbot that helps kids kill themselves? Or the gazillion payday loan apps? Or the gazillion prediction market/sports betting avenues?
I'm sure some work for more ethical companies, and I like to think I do.. But let's not pretend the vast majority of big money and biggest employers are doing any good in the world.
Given the choice between said evils, I'd probably rather work for a company that is at least honest about what they do.
Outcasts. You know, some people aren’t gratified by society. Even well-inserted people.
I’ve always wondered why people had ethical questions as soldiers dropping Little Boy. Imagine being a soldier at war, of course you hate your enemies. Now imagine being bullied at school and later. Some criminals even literally do crime for the thrills.
Life isn’t generally rewarding, except for a few lucky with a nice social fabric.
There are also many governments that use this tool to combat terror or drug dealers and more.
"In October 2018, Citizen Lab reported on the use of NSO software to spy on the inner circle of Jamal Khashoggi just before his murder."
If your work indirectly kills people you can't say that it's not your job not to fight this. You are if that is the case among the causes, so you are responsible.
> “This investment does not mean that the company is moving out of Israeli regulatory or operational control,” said Hershowitz. “The company’s headquarters and core operations remain in Israel. It continues to be fully supervised and regulated by the relevant Israeli authorities, including the Ministry of Defense and the Israeli regulatory framework.”
Also investors: let's invest in hacker business and break into all phones in the world
There’s a reason government need to hand out tax benefits for people to invest into eco-friendly companies.
I feel like ESG has been rammed in to every company i've worked at for a couple of decades now.
Americans, if you don't stand up now, you will have to relearn the lesson Germans had to learn eighty years ago.
Have their capabilities been overplayed? Is selling done under pressure? Are they not actually sitting on big bank and procurement network of valuable 0days?
sofixa•3h ago
What a failure for a spokesperson.
steventhedev•2h ago
This isn't good journalism and should not be celebrated.
calcifer•2h ago
The implied agreement is that everything is on the record unless explicitly agreed otherwise beforehand.
saubeidl•2h ago
terribleperson•2h ago
spankibalt•2h ago
porridgeraisin•1h ago
Now, the "victim" here is NSO, so not expecting any sympathy, but journos do this to everyone, even normal people.
> Puff pieces
But with the aforementioned rhetoric in vogue these days, every piece of journo is a forced "scoop", leading to most of modern media(social and mainstream, the incentives are the same) being misconstrued non-factual brain damage. Even press conferences, most questions are just loaded and very bad-faith, basically trying to get you to say something they can quote out of context, or use for a misconstrued "non-truth", or a false equivalence. Or sometimes they just make things up! Retarded scoop-bait headlines as well.
The root cause for all this is that adversarial rhetoric.
Before you say "but the press is an adversary against the government", they do this to sportspersons, and a variety of other normal people too. If they only did this to the designated government spokesperson, it would be OK.
Now, this rhetoric itself is a result of "news"[1] companies competing for audiences. A fairly obvious incentive there. On socials too. Engagement is rewarded, leading to the same thing.
Furthermore, LLMs if used for content generation, will compete for audience, and even inference-time feedback driven optimisation leads to it giving the same reality-bending outputs. It's been simulated and shown in this stanford paper already: https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.06105
[1] they really deserve the quotes these days
robotwizard•1h ago
sofixa•1h ago
seydor•40m ago