The US government, too, is unhappy that Pegasus has been found on the devices of its officials. It has already gone to great lengths to make an example of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, seeking to lock him up indefinitely after he published leaks of embarrassing diplomatic cables and exposed US war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan.
It is public knowledge that NSO spyware was recently identified on the phones of US diplomats serving in Uganda. The likely suspects include Uganda and Rwanda, both NSO clients.
But given the hard-world realities of state relations, it is likely that in private, the US has found Pegasus software on the phones of many more of its officials. NSO's client states have an incentive to eavesdrop on the world's only superpower to understand what it plans for them.
Back in 2015, another Israeli firm, Black Cube, spied on US officials involved in negotiating a nuclear deal with Iran that Israel deeply opposed. Washington knows it cannot stop the development of spyware - and, in any case, it has no interest in undermining this burgeoning industry. After all, it wants these tools for its own spying operations, both against rival states and for internal repression of dissidents.
But what it can do is take greater control of the cyber weapons industry so that the US gets to decide who has access to the best spyware, and build in technological safeguards to prevent offensive software from being turned against the US itself.
Professions of concern about human rights violations and invasions of privacy will keep dominating headlines. But the real battle will be for who emerges as the global spymaster.
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