The Nuclear Logic of Digital Surveillance: Why the World Is Once Again Waiting for a Catastrophe Before Finally Taking Up the Rules
Humanity has a strange habit first create a dangerous technology, let it grow, allow powerful players to learn how to profit from it and use it for influence, and only then begin a serious conversation about regulation. Preferably after the consequences can no longer be ignored. That is how it was with nuclear weapons. First, the world saw what they were capable of. Then it realized that the new reality no longer had a “cancel” button. And only after that did it begin building treaties, restrictions, rules, safeguards and other mechanisms meant to prevent complete self-destruction.
Now a similar logic is repeating itself in the digital sphere. Only this time, instead of a nuclear mushroom cloud, there is a phone in your pocket, a messenger, a camera, a microphone, geolocation, a message archive, photos, contacts and a full digital portrait of a person. Less spectacular, but far more convenient for those who want to look into someone else’s life without permission.
Time for Action analyzed why commercial cyber intrusion technologies are becoming one of the most dangerous industries of the digital age and why voluntary regulation so far looks weaker than the interests of those who profit from it.
Privacy Has Become a Service, Just Not for the Person It Belongs To
Commercial cyber intrusion tools are instruments and services that make it possible to gain remote access to digital data. These are technologies capable of penetrating devices, reading messages, collecting personal information and tracking a person’s activity from anywhere in the world. Formally, such tools are often sold to governments to fight crime, terrorism or other threats. On paper, everything looks almost noble. In reality, the market has long gone beyond the comfortable legend of “protecting security.” If access to someone else’s digital life can be bought, there will always be those who buy it not to save democracy.
The problem is not only the technology itself. The problem is that it has become a commodity. And a commodity on the market must be sold, scaled, generate profit and find new clients. Then the classic story begins ethics enters the room, sees the financial model and quietly walks out. The most dangerous thing is that not only journalists, activists, opposition figures or businesspeople are unprotected from such surveillance. Even political leaders are not protected. In a digital system where a smartphone is simultaneously an office, a diary, a safe and a weak point, hacking a device can provide more information than years of traditional intelligence work.
Why the Comparison With Nuclear Weapons Is Not as Strange as It Seems
At first glance, nuclear weapons and spyware software are different universes. One destroys cities, the other quietly enters a phone. But they have one common feature both technologies change the balance of power faster than politicians manage to create rules. Nuclear weapons made states hostages to permanent vulnerability. Commercial cyber espionage makes everyone who has a digital life vulnerable. In other words, almost everyone. The difference is that the nuclear threat is visible. It has an explosion, radiation, destruction and historical memory. Digital surveillance works more quietly. It does not leave a crater in the center of a city. It leaves broken trust, control over information, blackmail, persecution, political pressure and the feeling that private life is no longer private. That is precisely why this threat can remain underestimated for longer. When a technology does not explode on live television, it is easier to put it into the folder labeled “important, but not now.” In international politics, that folder is usually very roomy.
The Pall Mall Process and the Problem of Voluntary Rules
Since 2024, 27 states, including the United States, EU countries and the United Kingdom, have supported the Pall Mall Process initiative. Its goal is to limit the spread and misuse of commercial cyber intrusion tools and to develop voluntary norms and control standards. The initiative is important because it recognizes the problem at the international level. But it has a serious weak point regulation still does not reach a significant share of those who need to be regulated. According to a study by the Economic Security Council of Ukraine, out of 31 high-risk manufacturers of such technologies, 21 remain outside the scope of regulation. Most companies that create spyware technologies are based in Russia, India, Israel, the UAE, Turkey and other jurisdictions not covered by this process. So the situation looks roughly like this: some states have gathered to agree that dangerous technology should be handled more carefully, while a significant share of the manufacturers of this technology are standing outside the door, counting profits and carefully not interfering. Voluntary regulation can work where players have a shared interest in transparency. In the case of commercial cyber espionage, such an interest barely exists. The market is too profitable, too useful for states and too convenient for those who want to act without unnecessary questions.
A $55 Billion Market and a Very Uncomfortable Question
In 2025, the market for commercial cyber intrusion tools was estimated at more than $55 billion. This is no longer a shadowy story about a few talented hackers in a dark room. It is a large industry with investors, exports, specialists, clients and political interests. And this is where the main issue begins. The market rests on three groups. The first is manufacturing companies. They invest money in finding vulnerabilities, creating platforms, developing tools and supporting services. After that, every new client becomes a way to recover investments and increase profits. The more buyers, the better for business. The reputation of these buyers in the field of human rights is often not a decisive factor.
The second is buyer states. For them, commercial espionage is a shortcut to capabilities that previously required years of development, large budgets and their own technical infrastructure. Instead of building everything themselves, they can buy a ready-made tool. In a world where information gives power, such an offer looks too attractive to refuse. The third is states where these companies are located. They receive money, jobs, highly qualified specialists and additional levers of influence. After all, the country on whose territory a manufacturer operates can see who buys the technologies, where they go and how this can be used in its own interests. As a result, a triangle forms in which all key participants benefit. Companies earn money. Buyers receive tools. Host states get an economic and political bonus. And now the question which of them is sincerely interested in making this market transparent, controlled and restricted? The answer is unpleasant. Almost no one.
Why States Are Not Rushing With Restrictions
Officially, everyone likes to talk about protecting human rights, digital security and the responsible use of technologies. This is correct, solid and looks good in international statements. But real politics often works more simply: if a tool provides an advantage, no one wants to lose it. Commercial cyber intrusion tools give states exactly such an advantage. They allow them to obtain information, control targets, penetrate closed communications, act through contractors and preserve room to deny involvement. That puts states in an awkward position. On the one hand, they need to talk about control. On the other, they do not want to break a system that may be useful to their own intelligence services, diplomacy or political influence. This is why regulation moves slowly. The problem is not that the world does not understand the risks. The problem is that too many players benefit from keeping those risks managed only in words.
Who Digital Surveillance Hits First
The greatest harm from such technologies is suffered not by abstract “users,” but by specific groups of people. Journalists, human rights defenders, opposition politicians, activists, lawyers, diplomats, representatives of civil society, businesspeople and people who have access to sensitive information. For authoritarian regimes, such tools are especially valuable. They allow them not only to monitor, but to anticipate actions, destroy networks of contacts, identify sources of information, pressure opponents and destroy safe spaces for organizing resistance. This is no longer classic espionage in the style of a cloak, a hat and a mysterious meeting by a bridge. Although, to be honest, cloaks at least had a certain charm. Modern surveillance works without drama. It does not need a person standing near the entrance. A vulnerability in a phone and a client willing to pay are enough.
Why the Price May Be Invisible, but Very High
In the case of nuclear weapons, the price was terrifying and obvious. In the case of digital surveillance, it is diffuse. It is harder to show in a single frame. The price may look like a journalist who can no longer guarantee the safety of a source. Like an activist whose contacts have ended up with the authorities. Like an opposition figure who is being blackmailed with private information. Like diplomatic negotiations that have stopped being confidential. Like a citizen who no longer knows where their private life ends and someone else’s access to it begins.
The danger of commercial cyber espionage is precisely that it does not destroy buildings, but the rules of trust. And without trust, journalism, politics, advocacy, civil society, business and even personal security do not function. When privacy becomes a commodity, democracy loses part of its infrastructure. Because freedom of speech is impossible if any message can become evidence against you. Political competition is impossible if an opponent does not have to be defeated, but can simply be hacked. Safe communication is impossible if access to it is sold as a service.
The World Is Once Again Waiting for Painful Proof
The history of regulating dangerous technologies is rarely beautiful. It almost never begins with foresight. More often it begins with the phrase “Well, now we really have to do something.” This is probably humanity’s official motto when working with risks. With commercial cyber espionage, the world is dangerously close to exactly that moment. The market is growing. Manufacturers are adapting. Investors are coming in. States are buying. Regulation is trying to catch up with the look of a person who missed the train but is still convincing themselves they simply arrived early for the next one. The question is not whether rules are needed. The question is whether they will appear before digital surveillance becomes so ordinary that society simply learns to live with permanent vulnerability. Nuclear weapons changed the understanding of state security. Commercial cyber intrusion tools are changing the understanding of human security. And if the former threatens physical destruction, the latter threatens the slow dismantling of privacy, freedom of communication and the right not to be transparent to those who have money and access to the right tool. The main danger is not that the world does not see the problem. The main danger is that it sees it well enough, but is not yet ready to give up the benefit.
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