Cybersecurity & Tech

Lawfare Daily: The State of the Spyware Industry with Jen Roberts and Sarah Graham

Justin Sherman, Jen Roberts, Sarah Graham
Thursday, October 9, 2025, 7:00 AM
How has the spyware industry evolved in recent years?

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Jen Roberts, Associate Director of the Atlantic Council’s Cyber Statecraft Initiative, and Sarah Graham, Research Consultant with the Atlantic Council’s Cyber Statecraft Initiative, who are coauthors along with Nitansha Bansal of the recent paper, “Mythical Beasts: Diving Into the Depths of the Global Spyware Market,” join Lawfare’s Justin Sherman to discuss the global spyware industry, how it has evolved in recent years, and what its future holds. They also discuss the geographic concentration of key spyware entities in several countries; a rise in U.S. investors in the spyware industry; how “strategic jurisdiction hopping,” name changes, and corporate structure shifts impact spyware firms’ evolution and transparency into their activities; and how U.S. policymakers should approach the global spyware market going forward.

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Justin Sherman is a contributing editor at Lawfare. He is also the founder and CEO of Global Cyber Strategies, a Washington, DC-based research and advisory firm; the scholar in residence at the Electronic Privacy Information Center; and a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council.
Jen Roberts is an associate director with the Cyber Statecraft Initiative at the Atlantic Council.
Sarah Graham is a research consultant with the Atlantic Council’s Cyber Statecraft Initiative.
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