On August 12, 2026, President Trump officially signed a National Security Presidential Memorandum (NSPM) aimed at expanding capabilities to combat transnational cyber-enabled crime. On paper, the document sounds incredibly noble: it empowers U.S. federal law enforcement to use advanced cyber tools to disrupt transnational criminal organizations (TCOs) targeting Americans. But as you read the fine print, a highly alarming, common-sense danger emerges: the White House is officially enlisting private-sector tech companies to propose and help conduct offensive government cyber operations.
This is the digital equivalent of reviving the 18th-century practice of hiring privateers, state-sanctioned mercenaries and pirates authorized to attack foreign ships for a cut of the plunder.
By allowing private tech corporations to gather threat information, draft cyber-warfare proposals, and willingly participate in active government disruptions, the federal government is outsourcing its most sensitive, volatile law enforcement and national security duties to private, profit-driven entities. The NSPM even encourages these private companies to enter into data-sharing agreements with other private actors and federal, state, and local agencies.
Let’s apply some logical, street-smart skepticism to this. Private tech companies are not bound by the same constitutional checks, public transparency, or Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) laws as federal agencies. They exist to maximize shareholder value, not to protect your civil liberties. When you hand these corporations the keys to conduct offensive “cyber operations” under the direction of a weaponized Department of Justice, you are creating a recipe for unchecked digital surveillance, corporate espionage, and massive collateral damage. Who monitors these cyber-mercenaries when a “limited operation” goes wrong and accidentally crashes a local hospital network or a public power grid? Once again, the national security state is using the aesthetic of “combating foreign crime” to build a massive, private-public digital surveillance apparatus, and they are doing it with virtually zero public debate.
