Comment by udev4096

Short and sweet: Unit 8200.

Unit 8200 is Israel's elite military intelligence cyber unit - think NSA but with mandatory military service. Israelis serve in their late teens/early twenties, the most tech-savvy and promising recruits land in Unit 8200 where they develop world-class offensive cyber capabilities on the state's dime.

When they finish their service, they take those skills directly to companies like NSO, Candiru and Paragon. It's not a secret - these companies are often funded, and actively recruit Unit 8200 alumni. The talent isn't necessarily found, it's manufactured by the state and then handed off to the private sector.

That's why Israeli spyware is so effective. Arguably, it's not commercial R&D - it's military grade capabilities with a profit motive and little, if any, ethics oversight.

Probably mostly the same way everybody finds extremely talented exploit developers? By bidding for them? Why do people think exploit developers are a strategic resource like rare earth metals? They're probably uniformly distributed across the world --- including in developing countries.

Just about every single Israeli citizen is required to complete mandatory military service. In effect this means that both the local baker and the stay-at-home programmer have likely worked for the IDF in some capacity.