They promised to fight terrorism. Instead, they built the ultimate weapon against democracy.
In 2010, three Israeli intelligence veterans founded a startup that would hack the world. NSO Group's Pegasus spyware could silently infiltrate any smartphone on earth-reading encrypted messages, tracking locations, recording conversations-without the target ever knowing. Sold exclusively to governments for "counterterrorism," it was supposed to protect societies from existential threats.
Instead, it became the weapon of choice for silencing journalists, crushing activists, and hunting dissidents.
This is the definitive account of surveillance capitalism's darkest chapter.
Drawing on the explosive Pegasus Project investigation, leaked NSO documents, and forensic evidence from compromised devices, this book exposes how a small Israeli company built a billion-dollar empire by selling surveillance to anyone willing to pay-from democratic allies to murderous autocrats.
Inside, you'll discover:
- The targeting of 50,000 phone numbers across 50 countries, including journalists at major international outlets and heads of state
- How Saudi intelligence surveilled Jamal Khashoggi's network before his brutal murder-using technology approved by Israeli officials
- Mexico's digital dirty war against reporters investigating corruption, including journalists later found murdered
- European democracies deploying Pegasus against their own citizens-opposition politicians in Poland, independence advocates in Spain, investigative journalists in Hungary
- The secret intelligence partnerships between Israel and Gulf monarchies that paved the way for the Abraham Accords
- WhatsApp and Apple's unprecedented legal war against NSO, revealing how surveillance companies systematically exploit the platforms billions depend on
From the Unit 8200 alumni network that spawned Israel's cyber empire to the forensic labs where researchers detected infections, from diplomatic crises to courtroom battles-this is the human story behind the headlines. The activists imprisoned after their phones were compromised. The lawyers whose confidential strategies were intercepted. The families surveilled for their relationships with dissidents.
The technology was supposed to protect democracy. Instead, it nearly destroyed it.
But this is also the story of an unprecedented fightback-civil society researchers exposing operations, tech giants fighting surveillance vendors, governments finally imposing sanctions, and the legal reckoning that brought NSO to its knees.
Vichev, Ivo: - "
I was born in Varna, Bulgaria, on the edge of the Black Sea - a place where history is never really "past". Growing up between old empires and new borders, I was surrounded by stories of wars, occupations, disappearances and sudden changes of flag.
Later I moved to Warsaw, Poland, where I studied history and public relations at the Polish Academy of Sciences (PAN). Warsaw is a city built on ruins and memories, and it forced me to ask one question over and over again:
Why is so much of our most important history told in the most boring way possible?
From dry facts to living stories
Like every history student, I spent endless hours buried in heavy academic books - dates, treaties, footnotes stacked on footnotes. I respected the work, but I often felt like the life had been drained out of the events themselves.
That changed when I discovered Ryszard Kapuściński. His books had that rare tone I'd been searching for: history and politics told through people, scenes and atmosphere. It was factual, but it breathed.
From that moment I knew what I wanted to do: take serious history and tell it with the clarity and tension of a documentary - so future generations don't have to suffer through dead, lifeless books to understand the past.
What I write about
My books focus on the places where power is most visible - and most hidden:
- Wars and battles
- Espionage and cyber conflict
- Country histories
Some books are big, sweeping national histories. Others zoom in on a single battle, uprising or covert operation. All of them try to answer the same question: What really happened here, and what does it mean for the people who had to live through it?
How I tell history
If you read my books, you can expect narrative, scene-by-scene storytelling - not just lists of dates. Serious research from archives, memoirs, official reports and investigative journalism. Clear explanations of complex events like cyberattacks and proxy wars. And a refusal to simplify messy, uncomfortable truths.
I don't write official history. I don't write propaganda. I write stories that are honest, human and readable - the kind of books I was always looking for as a student and rarely found.
If you care about how we got from trenches and partitions to cyberwar and drone strikes - and you don't want to fall asleep over another textbook - I wrote these books for you.
"
