The same people are playing both sides
It's not like the government doesn't purchase private sector cyber security. It's just 1 group of very smart people doing all the work for both sides
I think there might have been pressure on NSO as part of trial of Google|Fb.. against them. https://www.theverge.com/2020/12/22/22194930/microsoft-googl...
That is the link to episode 47 of dark net diaries.
I guess Hacker News has devolved into a place of talking over each other and downvotes.
It seems to me like you are overestimating the skills of people that just don't have any moral barrier while underestimating the skills of many proper security researchers. Companies like NSO are most of the time able to do what they do because they shake the right hands and get the right support (or the right people to look the other way), not because they have some special people that you can't find anywhere else.
The thing with this line of work is that one mans ethics becomes another mans sin. The tl;dr of that episode is that some of these people were led on to believe they were actually targeting criminals and terrorists. It later became clear that was not the case.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions and all that. It would surprise you that even the most noble of pursuits in engineering have very cruel applications in war.
I find it logically untenable that a 'prized mind' would not be completely aware of the types of things they were building and the intended usage thereof. If they aren't smart enough to figure it out, then we're not losing access to some particular genius. If they are smart enough to figure it out and continue to contribute to the work they have become complicit at best, and likely are an amoral psychopath.
The NSA and other government agencies seem to not be attractive from the point of view of a great place to work and the money to be made in the private sector in the US alone is thin. . . economic forces dictate that supply will meet demand especially when the demand is rich middle eastern wealth.
There is no obvious "red team" or similar career for these people in the US to help defend the nations systems for a fee. All government contracts for cybersecurity go out in tenders that prioritize entities that can navigate the complex logistics of filing a response with the Government and working their way.
That's the biggest concern for me seeing this pattern emerge. On the specific entity here, the NSO group being blacklisted, that will change little. There is a systemic risk of us continuing to lose great talent to more attractive ventures.