What to make of US group acquisition of Israeli spyware firm Paragon as Trump returns

Israeli spyware maker Paragon Solutions has been acquired by American firm AE Industrial Partners for over $500 million, according to Israeli news reports that surfaced on Dec. 16. Crucially, the deal could point to a US-Israel spy-tech reset ahead of Donald Trump’s return to the White House in 2025.

Cyber relations between the two countries soured during President Joe Biden’s four years in office, headlined by the US government deciding in 2021 to blacklist Israel’s NSO Group, the developer of the infamous Pegasus hacking software and Paragon’s main competitor. 

Paragon and its powerful surveillance tools first came to attention in 2021, when Forbes reported on the super-secretive spyware startup’s existence two years after it was founded by former Israeli intelligence officers. In addition to former Prime Minister Ehud Barak serving as a director on Paragon’s board, company founders include Ehud Schneorson, former commander of Israeli intelligence Unit 8200, which is widely linked to Hezbollah’s exploding pager attacks in September.

The company has little online footprint: A barebones website for its US business, which was founded in 2022 according to LinkedIn, simply touts that Paragon Solutions provides “customers with ethically based tools, teams, and insights to disrupt intractable threats” by providing “cyber and forensic capabilities to locate and analyze digital data, cyber workforce training, and critical infrastructure analysis and threat mitigation.”