Last week, after six years of litigation, a U.S. federal jury ordered Israeli spyware company NSO, known for its Pegasus system to pay $168 million in punitive damages for hacking into some 1,400 WhatsApp (owned by Meta) users’ phones, including journalists, human rights activists and dissidents in several countries. This decision is both a precedent for the global spyware industry in general, but also for the Israeli defense industry specifically. For decades, a self-imposed bubble of immunity existed for Israeli companies like NSO, to the chagrin of digital rights activists. Yet still, this decision is not expected to be a game changer.