Israel’s zero-click future: How cyber veterans are reinventing offensive intelligence

Slomka is the founder and CEO of Radiant, and Moshkovitz, his right-hand man, is head of marketing.

It took Radiant around six months from its May 2023 founding to produce its first unique zero-click cyber tool. Since then, it has developed around 10 major cyber and technological tools.

Much of what Radiant does remains secret, but  Radiant and Moshkovitz explained its role in cyber offense as parallel to making the engine for a car, as opposed to the car itself. Radiant provides the core for developing or employing certain cyber tools as opposed to the tool which will be deployed.

That level of programming requires a unique level of talent, which can provide a peerless product to intelligence agencies that already have a menu of potential cyber tools.

Until now, Radiant has mostly glided under the radar, but it is said that the entire Israeli intelligence establishment knows exactly what it is.

It is logical that a variety of Israeli defense agencies would receive assistance from companies such as Radiant, given its strong understanding of the industry,  unique center of knowledge, and broader cyber center of gravity (CCoG).

Just as Israel’s defense agencies worked with private companies, notably Rafael and Elbit, as well as the government Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) to reach new heights in missile defense and radars, in the cyber arena, Radiant can be said to be a progressive manifestation of that strategy.

When October 7 hit the country, Radiant made a quick decision to provide tools to IDF intelligence, which helped locate some of the Israeli hostages.

In addition, much of the company paused its work and members brought their talents back to IDF intelligence, the PMO, the Defense Ministry’s MAFAT, and a cyber command center.

Some of this was extended reserve duty and some was in parallel to IDF reserve duty without requiring government pay.

One element about Radiant which is different from NSO, Paragon, and some of the other Israeli cyber offensive firms is that by choice, it almost exclusively works with democratic countries, specifically with those that are part of the Defense Ministry’s strategy for enhancing relations.

Working for such rule-bound nation-states ensures a basic level of ethics to the mission and its parameters as opposed to working for some kind of more mercenary cause, Radiant said.

The company noted that in today’s world, everyone wants to crack people’s cell phones and laptops for all kinds of commercial and other causes, unrelated to national security.

Countries which are known to have purchased Israeli cyber products in the past include “The Five Eyes” (the US, England, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand), as well as the Netherlands, France, Germany, Belgium, Switzerland, Norway, and Denmark, along with Japan, South Korea, and other Asian countries.

Radiant said that a lesson learned from other companies is that after-the-fact enforcement against a nondemocratic law-breaking country which abuses a cyber tool does not really fully work. This means that it will not be working with a variety of countries with which NSO and other Israeli outlets have done significant work. “We are the evolution, a new age of cyber Zionists. We have a different reputation and  have learned from their mistakes,” Radiant noted.

In March 2024, amid a variety of rocky disagreements between the United States and Israel, the US State Department formally sanctioned an ex-Israeli intelligence officer and current CEO of cyber spyware firm Intellexa and related entities.

In 2021, the US Commerce Department issued a blacklist to stop Israeli cyber offense companies from doing business in the US, and in July 2023, Intellexa was added to that initial blacklist of Israeli spyware entities.

NSO Group was also on that list, and while it maintained strong business relationships in Europe, its recent sale for tens of millions of dollars, down from its more than one billion net worth in its prime in the 2010s, shows how far the once supreme Israeli cyber firm has fallen.

After building a name by helping crack terrorists’ cell phones, NSO went on to receive continuous bad press for years after some of its clients abused its tools to hack journalists, human rights activists, and other problematic targets.

Despite those trends, the Trump administration appears to be reversing course and encouraging cyber offense, at least where that offense coincides with its broader goals.

In September 2025, it was announced that US immigration agents were being given access to one of the world’s most sophisticated hacking tools after a decision by the Trump administration to move ahead with a contract with Paragon Solutions.

The US Department of Homeland Security first entered into a contract with Paragon, now owned by a US firm, in late 2024, under the Biden administration. But the contract was put on hold pending a review regarding how well the firm complied with an executive order that restricted the US government’s use of spyware.

The Trump administration lifted the pause, and since then, the technology presumably has been deployed by the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) as a contracting agency, despite heavy criticism of that agency’s tactics.

NSO, which is now owned by US investors, appointed former US ambassador to Israel and Trump confidante, David Friedman, to chair the firm.

In contrast, Radiant’s leaders say they are proud that they are not beholden to foreign investors with unclear agendas but rather received their seed money exclusively from Zionist investors.

There has been criticism that Israel’s Defense Ministry was too hands-off in its licensing practices in some instances in the past, in order to achieve other perceived national interests to improve relations with a given non-democratic country – despite at other times having robust and extensive vetting practices.

Another aspect of Radiant is maximizing the productivity of former IDF cyber intelligence officers. Many graduates do not continue to use their true talents since much of the private sector is not at the level to even employ the incredible skills that they learned, Radiant reported.

This has led many Israeli cyber intelligence alumni to move to places such as Portugal, Spain, Greece, and Cyprus, where their talent is utilized outside of Israel, and they frequently do not return for reserve duty.

In contrast, Radiant’s top officials said they facilitate former IDF intelligence officers, including many other former NSO and related experts, to continue to use their skills at the highest level in working for Western intelligence agencies on public service security projects.

Moreover, they said that they are pushing their employees toward generating new ideas and products “100% harder” than do Facebook and other comparable tech giants.

In the vein of staying within the Israeli ecosystem, Radiant is expected to host more defense-tech conferences with other top Israeli cyberdefense officials, though the Post cannot share the keynote speakers’ identities.

All of this means that despite having companies and countries that Radiant will not do business with, its leaders are not worried about the veteran cyber competition. They said that many existing cyber behemoths are focused on just holding onto their old customers, whereas Radiant is aggressive about seeking new profit opportunities.

Anytime these existing large companies want to make a new move, they are as slow as a giant ship trying to slowly change its trajectory, whereas Radiant operates more like a racing, fast-adapting jet skier.