Will NSO’s US Lobbying Pay Off Under Trump?

Vas Panagiotopoulos is a fellow at Tech Policy Press.

NSO’s lobbying efforts provide a stark case study of how spyware firms deploy vast resources to influence government and democratic decision-making in pursuit of their commercial interests.

In November, in a surprise development, the company announced that former United States Ambassador to Israel David Friedman would become its chairman.

Friedman, described by US President Donald Trump as a “long-time friend and trusted adviser,” previously served as the president’s bankruptcy lawyer. As ambassador, he helped co-architect the Abraham Accords and played a central role in relocating the US embassy to Jerusalem.

Friedman now pledges to “use his ties” to the Trump administration to “help rebuild” the notorious Pegasus spyware maker’s business in the US and “recruit US law enforcement agencies” as customers.

Achieving this objective hinges on reversing the trade restrictions (BIS Entity List designation) imposed on the company by the Biden administration in 2021 for supplying spyware to foreign governments that “maliciously” targeted journalists, activists, and others.

Friedman’s high-profile hire is intended to support NSO’s ongoing, multiyear lobbying campaign to overturn these restrictions.

The scale of NSO Group’s campaign — which has cost at least $7.6 million in lobbying fees between 2020 and 2024, with a further minimum of $190,000 spent in 2025 — has, until now, remained largely unknown.

This is significant because hiring professional lobbyists and other consultants to influence democratic decision-making is prohibitively expensive, rendering this option largely unavailable to ordinary citizens and effectively accessible only to powerful actors, such as the commercial spyware industry, whose interests not only differ from those of the public but have also been shown to cause demonstrable harms to human rights and national security.

Yet, NSO’s technology has been used to target US officials for many years, dating back to 2014. Its tools have been deployed not only by authoritarian regimes, but also by democratic states such as Poland and Spain.

An aggressive external consultants’ hiring spree

Since 2018, NSO Group has undertaken an aggressive hiring spree, reportedly engaging more than fifteen lobbying, law and PR firms, in addition to other consultants, according to lobbying disclosure (LD-1) and Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) filings, as well as multiple news sources.

These include the Vogel Group (2025-2025), Chartwell Strategy (2021-2025) jointly with Pillsbury (2021-2025), King & Spalding (2020-now), Quinn Emanuel (2026-now), Paul Hastings (2022-2025), Steptoe (2023-2024), Bluelight Strategies (2022-2022), Mercury Public Affairs (2019-2021 via NSO parent company Q Cyber), Arnold & Porter (timing unknown via Q Cyber), Paul, Weiss (2019 via Q Cyber owner OSY Technologies), SKDK (2019), Beacon Global Strategies (2018), and Omnia Strategy (2020-2021), the firm founded by Cherie Blair, wife of former British PM Tony Blair.

Previous NSO advisers also include several figures closely tied to President Trump, among them Michael Flynn, who was paid nearly $100,000 by NSO Group’s parent companies; Jeff Miller, a Trump fundraiser who received $170,000 from an NSO-linked firm; and Rod Rosenstein, the former deputy attorney general who represented NSO Group in a lawsuit, according to the Washington Post.

It is also not the first time NSO has hired former diplomats and senior officials. In 2018, the former Obama administration ambassador to Israel, Daniel Shapiro, advised the company on new clients, the New York Times reported; while in 2019, France’s former ambassador to the US, Gérard Araud, joined as a senior advisor, alongside the first Secretary of Homeland Security, Tom Ridge, and former Assistant Secretary at DHS, Juliette Kayyem.

NSO’s outreach efforts remained persistent during the Biden administration

Beyond engaging members of Congress and seeking to influence the American Bar Association, the company unsuccessfully sought to arrange a meeting with National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan and attempted to have its Entity Listing raised during a meeting between President Biden and Israeli PM Yair Lapid in July 2022, according to ProPublica.

Immediately after October 7, law firm Paul Hastings sent a letter requesting, on behalf of NSO, an urgent meeting with then Secretary of State Antony Blinken and other State Department officials, emphasizing that “the ongoing security situation in Israel and the Middle East highlights the necessity and urgency of employing cyber intelligence technology.”

However, NSO’s overtures towards the Biden administration remained unsuccessful, who in turn adopted a decisive ‘anti-spyware’ stance. In addition to adding spyware makers NSO, Candiru and Intellexa to the Entity List, President Biden signed Executive Order 14093 in March 2023 that restricted the US government’s use of commercial spyware, as well as introduced visa restrictions and economic sanctions on spyware-linked individuals and entities.

Consequently, the election of Trump presented the company with an opportunity to reset.

NSO lobbying Trump’s America: strategy and targets

To achieve its business objective (increased sales), NSO faces a regulatory hurdle (BIS Entity List designation). De-listing requires a lengthy administrative process, including review by an interagency committee comprising representatives from the Departments of Commerce, State, and Defense, among others. The National Security Council and Congress, although they do not play a direct role, could also exert influence over this process.

To achieve the de-listing, NSO needs to create a favorable regulatory and political environment and to that end, it appears to have a carefully crafted strategy in place:

A key element of that strategy appears to be completing its transition to US ownership — specifically to a group of investors led by Hollywood producer Robert Simonds — and potentially to adopt a new US corporate structure. This is an important strategic move as it could render the BIS Entity Listing redundant, as it solely targets foreign companies.

Secondly, NSO appears intent on positioning itself as a responsible actor and publicly distancing itself from its former leadership and owners, who may be perceived as culpable for past abuses. It was announced that Chief Executive Yaron Shohat stepped down in early 2026, while former majority owner Omri Lavie also left the company.

Thirdly, NSO appears to be trying to present itself as open, constructive, and willing to cooperate. To this end, it has attempted to associate with international initiatives that promote the responsible use of spyware, such as the French and UK-led Pall Mall Process. NSO’s latest transparency report highlights the company’s alleged participation in the process.

Fourthly, NSO Group appears to be seeking to neutralize its opponents, particularly Meta and its subsidiary WhatsApp — who, alongside Apple, are arguably the most powerful non-state US actors whose interests are strategically opposed to its own. NSO has long been embroiled in legal battles with Meta, including a ruling ordering NSO Group to pay $4 million and barring it from targeting WhatsApp users.

Lobbying, outreach, and strategic litigation

Already, NSO hired the elite Los Angeles law firm Quinn Emanuel in what appears to be a move to strategically retaliate against WhatsApp. In January, the firm filed a lawsuit accusing the popular messaging company of failing to properly encrypt users’ communications.

While the full scope of NSO Group’s lobbying targets is not publicly known, certain targets have already been identified.

NSO Group’s Washington outreach in recent months included contacts with Jared Kushner and even direct approaches from Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu’s office, but none of these efforts succeeded, according to Haaretz.

In May, lobbyists from the Vogel Group sought a meeting on behalf of NSO with National Security Council officials, only to be turned away, as they claimed “the company was not forthcoming in its motives for seeking the meeting.”

The Vogel Group also arranged NSO meetings with Republican lawmakers and aides on Capitol Hill, supported by lobbyist Jonathan Fahey, a Trump-era official who held senior legal and policy roles at ICE, DHS, and the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy.

According to recent lobbying disclosure filings, Vogel’s lobbying work for NSO Group lasted only a few months and appears to have concluded by July; with Friedman now at the helm, retaining Vogel may no longer be necessary.

NSO’s lobbying arguments

To influence its lobbying targets within the Trump administration, as well as potential customers, NSO appears to be deploying an updated set of arguments. Based on Friedman’s recent statements, these are:

1. The new ownership and chairman mark a “significant transition” and a “new phase” for the company defined by strengthened governance and accountability.
2. NSO’s technologies are “unique” and “best-in-class” products to serve “legitimate and necessary law enforcement and national security functions.”
3. Using NSO Group’s tools is an opportunity that “will keep Americans safer” but also to “achieve a safer world.”
4. NSO’s products are “additive” to existing technologies used by US law enforcement and intelligence agencies, and preventing abuses would depend on “finding trustworthy clients.”
5. NSO has invested significantly in building and operationalizing a robust human rights and compliance framework.
6. NSO has already implemented safeguards “closely aligning” with the principles of accountability, precision, oversight, and transparency articulated through the Pall Mall Process, “in which the United States now participates.”
7. Sources that appear to be close to the company, have stated that NSO was blacklisted for reasons that were “entirely political,” claiming the designation stemmed from the Israeli government’s use of an effective tool to stop Palestinian terrorism. These statements further note that Biden administration officials “never explained” why the company was added to the Entity List.
8. Finally, NSO is claiming that it doesn’t know who its clients target with Pegasus, and that it terminates contracts when it learns of abuses.

Civil society has repeatedly countered NSO’s argumentation

On using the company’s tools being an opportunity that “will keep Americans safer,” Citizen Lab senior researcher John Scott-Railton explains that their use actually creates “unbearable temptation for abuse” where “nobody is protected.” Extensive civil society and journalistic research can attest to that.

With respect to claims of “achieving a safer world,” NSO argues that it operates under “stringent export licensing requirements.” However, as Access Now’s Natalia Krapiva has noted, Israel — which controls the export licensing of Pegasus – has, over time, approved sales to authoritarian regimes, including Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Azerbaijan, Serbia, and Rwanda.

On NSO stating that they have a “robust human rights and compliance framework” in place, Scott-Railton has observed that “the evidence establishes one thing: whatever their alleged policy, they still have no problem selling to autocrats even after an absolute mountain of scandals.”

On NSO trumpeting its participation in the Pall Mall Process, French and UK officials have protested that they never invited the spyware maker to take part in the diplomatic initiative — the consultation was public, meaning anyone could submit input. The officials added that companies that offer submissions “are not necessarily acting in ways that make them responsible actors.”

On NSO’s Entity Listing being an “entirely political” move, civil society and investigative journalists’ tracking and documenting hundreds of abuse cases helped establish a factual basis for export controls, sanctions, visa and other restrictions — directly addressing why regulatory action was considered necessary rather than political.

Finally, on NSO trying to avoid responsibility, recently released documents in the NSO-WhatsApp lawsuit suggest that the spyware maker, not its customers, operated Pegasus, revealing that the company played a significantly deeper role in deploying its surveillance tools than it had previously acknowledged. This, in turn, raises serious questions about how much distance NSO can plausibly claim from its customers and their abuses.

Will NSO’s renewed lobbying efforts prove effective?

Whether NSO’s efforts will ultimately succeed remains to be seen. During Trump’s first term, the FBI secretly obtained Pegasus spyware in 2019 for limited testing and seriously considered putting it into use.

The second Trump administration policy on commercial spyware remains somewhat unclear. There have been reports, however, that the Trump White House does not plan to rescind Executive Order 14093. At the same time, the administration lifted sanctions in December – originally imposed by the Biden administration – on three officials linked to the spyware maker Intellexa, causing uproar among Senate Democrats.

Government and agency officials could prove receptive to arguments that “spyware helps fight terrorism,” just as they might be persuaded by counterarguments emphasising the counterintelligence risks such tools pose to US interests, for example. Yet, the levels of understanding vary significantly across departments and agencies with respect to the issues, harms, and risks associated with deploying such powerful yet commercially available technologies.

It’s impossible to know how individual officials will react to NSO’s overtures.

One thing is clear: never before has a spyware manufacturer invested such extensive resources or retained so many external advisers — lobbyists, lawyers, publicists, former diplomats and senior officials — to influence US democratic decision-making.

Now, with Friedman — a seasoned Trump insider — at its helm, NSO might finally achieve its long-awaited US comeback. The American public should keep a close eye on these developments.

The NSO Group did not reply to Tech Policy Press’s request for comment before publication.