I did a bit of digging on this just now, since I was curious why the Biden administration would want to stop a US defense contractor from pursuing this acquisit

I did a bit of digging on this just now, since I was curious why the Biden administration would want to stop a US defense contractor from pursuing this acquisition. Strictly from a strategic perspective, the purchase seems like it would have benefited the US, since NSO possesses uniquely valuable capabilities, and bringing them under the wing of a US defense contractor would mean the US would get to determine which zero-days it kept for itself and which it parsed out to its allies. According to The Guardian: "...a senior White House official suggested that any possible deal could be seen as an effort by a foreign government to circumvent US export control measures. The senior White House official also said that a transaction with a blacklisted company involving any American company – particularly a cleared defence contractor – 'would spur intensive review to examine whether the transaction poses a counterintelligence threat to the US government and its systems and information'. ... There were other complications. The Israeli ministry of defence would have had to sign off on any takeover of NSO surveillance technology by a US company and it is far from clear whether officials were willing to bless any deal that took control of NSO’s licences away from Israel. ...the person also said that the deal faced several unresolved issues, including whether the technology would be housed in Israel or the US and whether Israel would be allowed to continue to use the technology as a customer." [1] Of these obstacles, it seems like the biggest was related to counter-intelligence, i.e. that the Israeli intelligence services could feed any disinformation they liked to the American intelligence services via NSO? That's how I read this, anyway. I'm a noob to this though, and would love to be corrected if I'm wrong. 1. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/jul/10/us-defence-firm-ends-talks-to-buy-nso-groups-surveillance-technology https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/jul/10/us-defence-f...