A little-known cybersecurity company founded by veterans of Israel’s Unit 8200 now helps manage and monitor devices across more than 70 U.S. federal agencies, including the Pentagon and Homeland Security. As Washington leans ever harder on private tech with foreign military roots, communities like Dearborn — deeply invested in both digital freedom and Palestinian human rights — have urgent questions to ask about who holds the keys to government networks, and what that means for democracy.
A new kind of “special relationship”
In early December 2025, the independent newsletter ¡Do Not Panic!, republished by The Grayzone, published an investigation with a blunt thesis: former Israeli military intelligence officers now sit at the heart of U.S. federal cybersecurity.[1]Substack+3The Grayzone+3donotpanic.news+3
The focus is Axonius, a cybersecurity “asset management” company whose founders served in Israel’s elite signals intelligence unit, Unit 8200. According to the reporting, Axonius software is now deployed in more than 70 U.S. federal organizations, including four of the five major Department of Defense (DoD) service branches and agencies like the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the Department of Energy, Transportation, Treasury, Agriculture, and Health and Human Services.[1][3]Substack+3Axonius+3Axonius+3
For people in Dearborn — home to one of the largest Arab and Muslim communities in the United States, and a leading voice for Palestinian liberation — this is not an abstract tech story. This is about who has visibility into massive troves of federal data, including information on workers, contractors, and potentially even activists and communities who already live under a heavy cloud of surveillance.
Key snapshot: how deep does Axonius go?
<div class=”db-highlight-box” style=”border:1px solid #ccc;padding:1rem;margin:1.5rem 0;background:#f7f7f7;font-size:0.95em;”> <strong>At a glance</strong><br> • Founded in 2017 by three Israeli Unit 8200 veterans.<sup>[2]</sup><br> • Seed funding from Israeli and U.S. venture firms closely tied to Israeli cyber units.<sup>[1][2]</sup><br> • Advertises deployment in “more than 70 federal organizations,” including multiple cabinet-level departments and four major DoD service agencies.<sup>[1][3]</sup><br> • Selected in 2024 to modernize the Pentagon’s Continuous Monitoring and Risk Scoring (CMRS) program.<sup>[5]</sup><br> • Achieved FedRAMP Moderate authorization in 2025, clearing the way for broad federal cloud use.<sup>[5]</sup> </div>
Who is Axonius — and why does its origin story matter?
Axonius was founded by Dean Sysman, Ofri Shur, and Avidor Bartov after they worked together in Unit 8200, Israel’s signals intelligence and cyber operations hub, often compared in scope and mission to a hybrid of the U.S. NSA and Cyber Command.[1][2]CyberScoop+2The Grayzone+2
Public reporting and investor profiles describe all three founders as former Israeli intelligence officers who specialized in offensive and defensive cyber operations. A 2017 report on the company’s seed funding notes that:
the three founders had previously served as researchers and leaders within the Israel Defense Forces’ intelligence corps, including Unit 8200. [2]CyberScoop
After leaving the military, they quickly attracted millions in venture capital from firms deeply embedded in the Israeli cyber ecosystem. Early backers included YL Ventures and Vertex Ventures, both of which prominently market their focus on Israeli cybersecurity start-ups, many spun out of Unit 8200 and other IDF intelligence units.[1]The Grayzone+1
As Axonius grew, it added major U.S. firms such as Accel, Bessemer Venture Partners, and Lightspeed. Several partners and board members at these funds are themselves former Israeli intelligence officers or have long-standing ties to the Israeli security establishment.[1]The Grayzone+1
None of this is illegal. Israel openly promotes Unit 8200 as a pipeline from military intelligence into tech entrepreneurship. But when that pipeline flows straight into the central nervous system of the U.S. federal government, the stakes change.
How Axonius embedded itself in Washington
Axonius markets itself as an “asset intelligence” or “cyber asset management” platform: a tool that connects to dozens or hundreds of existing IT and security systems, inventories every device, user, application, and cloud workload, and then lets administrators see gaps, misconfigurations, and vulnerabilities in one dashboard.[3]Axonius+1
From a defender’s point of view, that’s gold. If you can’t see every server, laptop, mobile device, and SaaS app, you can’t secure them. That promise — total visibility — is exactly what made Axonius attractive to the Pentagon and other agencies.
Some key milestones:
- DoD prototypes and approval. In 2023, Axonius Federal Systems LLC (its U.S. federal subsidiary) completed two Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) prototypes and was then approved for use within the Department of Defense, after proving it could integrate data across the DoD enterprise to track deployed assets and their configurations.[4]Axonius+1
- Continuous monitoring for the Pentagon. In December 2024, Axonius announced that DoD had selected its platform to modernize the Continuous Monitoring and Risk Scoring (CMRS) program — essentially the 24/7 system that watches DoD networks and scores cyber risk across millions of devices.[5]GlobeNewswire
- FedRAMP Moderate authorization. In April 2025, Axonius Federal Systems achieved FedRAMP Moderate authorization, meaning its cloud platform is now pre-cleared for use by a wide range of federal agencies that rely on FedRAMP to vet the security of cloud services.[5]Axonius+2ExecutiveBiz+2
- 70+ federal organizations. Axonius’ own federal marketing page now lists an array of cabinet-level departments — Defense, Homeland Security, Energy, Transportation, Agriculture, Education, Health and Human Services, Treasury, and others — as customers or target users, and says the platform is “deployed in more than 70 federal organizations.”[1][3]Substack+3Axonius+3Axonius+3
Public contract data backs up at least part of this picture: federal award databases show line items for licenses to the “Axonius platform” and “Axonius security asset management software” purchased through resellers for DoD components, the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA), and health-related agencies since 2021.[6]USAspending+3USAspending+3USAspending+3
Axonius Federal Systems emphasizes that it is a “FOCI-mitigated” company (FOCI stands for Foreign Ownership, Control, or Influence) operating under a Special Security Agreement — the mechanism the U.S. government uses to allow foreign-owned firms to work on sensitive contracts under U.S.-only governance structures.[3]Axonius
Axonius Federal Systems LLC is a FOCI-mitigated company operating under a Special Security Agreement (SSA). [3]Axonius
In theory, that means U.S. citizens vetted by the government control classified work and sensitive decisions. In practice, the software that gives “visibility and control over all types and number of devices” was built by a company whose core engineering muscle is still based in Tel Aviv and heavily staffed with former Israeli intelligence personnel.[1][3]The Grayzone+2The Grayzone+2
Why critics see a structural conflict of interest
The Do Not Panic / Grayzone investigation is explicit about its concern: that Axonius functions as an “Israeli intelligence cut-out,” giving a foreign state’s security apparatus deep potential insight into U.S. federal networks.[1]
That’s an allegation, not a proven fact. There is no public evidence that Axonius has abused access to federal systems or acted unlawfully. But critics are not starting from a blank slate. They are looking at three overlapping realities:
- The founders’ and engineers’ direct background in Unit 8200 and IDF intelligence;
- The company’s extraordinarily broad deployment in U.S. federal networks; and
- Israel’s established track record of aggressive espionage and offensive cyber operations, including against the United States.
From that combination, they argue, you don’t need a Hollywood-style spy plot to have a problem. The structural risk — the fact that a foreign military-intelligence ecosystem helped build and still staffs the platform that inventories U.S. government devices — is itself a policy failure.
Israel’s history of spying on the U.S.
Israel is regularly described as a close U.S. ally and “friend,” but the security relationship has always had a sharper edge. Publicly documented cases include:
- Jonathan Pollard, a U.S. Navy intelligence analyst who spied for Israel and was described by U.S. officials as one of the most damaging spies in modern U.S. history.[7]Wikipedia
- The PROMIS software affair, in which Israel allegedly modified a case-management program with a secret backdoor and sold it to foreign governments — and even U.S. nuclear labs — as a Trojan horse.[7][8]Wikipedia+2Wikipedia+2
- The growth of Israeli offensive cyber firms like NSO Group, whose Pegasus spyware has been used by multiple governments to target journalists, human rights defenders, and political opponents around the world.[9]Wikipedia+1
- A 2019 incident in which U.S. intelligence concluded that Israel was “most likely” responsible for planting StingRay cell-site simulators — devices that mimic cell towers to capture phone data — near the White House and other sensitive locations in Washington, D.C., an accusation Israel has strongly denied.[8]Axios+4Wikipedia+4The Guardian+4
In each of these episodes, the pattern is similar: Israel pushes the boundaries of espionage and surveillance, leveraging its technological edge, and Washington eventually decides the relationship is “too important” to seriously challenge.
Against that backdrop, handing a former Unit 8200–founded company a central role in continuous monitoring of federal systems looks less like an unfortunate oversight and more like a predictable outcome of a lopsided alliance.
U.S. taxpayers fund Israeli military technologies, which are then repackaged and sold back into U.S. government systems, sometimes with minimal transparency and oversight. [1][7][9]
“Asset management” as a chokepoint
To understand why this matters, you have to appreciate what Axonius actually does inside a network.
Asset management platforms sit at a chokepoint: they connect to Active Directory, endpoint protection tools, vulnerability scanners, cloud providers, mobile device managers, and more. They see:
- Which devices exist,
- Who uses them,
- What software and firmware they run,
- Where they connect from, and
- Whether they are compliant with security policies.
An Axonius operator can — by design — trigger actions such as disabling an account, quarantining a device, or removing a user from a group.[1][3]
Used properly, this is essential defensive plumbing. In the wrong hands, it is an extremely powerful map of the digital lives of millions of federal workers — including military personnel, intelligence analysts, public-health officials, and people processing everything from asylum applications to sanctions enforcement.
For communities that have already experienced over-policing, mass data collection, and political repression — including Palestinian, Arab, Muslim, and Black activists in places like Dearborn and Detroit — the idea that this visibility is provided by a company built from the same system that runs surveillance over occupied Palestinians is, at minimum, deeply unsettling.
What the government says it’s doing to manage the risk
To be fair, U.S. officials are not entirely asleep at the wheel. Axonius Federal Systems emphasizes that it is:
- Operated under a Special Security Agreement as a FOCI-mitigated entity;
- Subject to FedRAMP security controls and continuous auditing;
- Listed on CISA’s Continuous Diagnostics and Mitigation (CDM) Approved Products List; and
- Certified under various U.S. and international assurance regimes.[3][5]Axonius+3Axonius+3Axonius+3
These mechanisms are real. They aim to ensure that foreign-owned firms cannot unilaterally decide how their tools are used in sensitive U.S. environments, and that U.S. citizens with clearances control classified operations.
But they do not change the facts that:
- The core codebase was developed under a very different legal and ethical regime;
- Vulnerabilities, intentional or otherwise, are almost impossible for outsiders to fully verify in a complex, closed-source product; and
- The broader geopolitical relationship gives Israel unique leverage, even when formal structures say otherwise.
In other words, the safeguards exist — but they are political choices, not laws of nature. They can be weakened, waived, or simply overwhelmed by real-world power dynamics.
A Green alternative: security without empire
From a Green Party perspective, the Axonius story isn’t just about one company. It is a symptom of a deeper problem:
- A federal government that increasingly outsources core functions to private vendors;
- A security culture that treats surveillance and centralization as unquestioned goods; and
- An alliance with Israel that often overrides concerns about human rights, civil liberties, and democratic accountability.
A Green approach would push in the opposite direction:
- Demilitarize digital infrastructure. Prioritize public-interest technology built under transparent, democratic control, not opaque “solutions” coming out of foreign military units.
- Localize and open up security tools. Expand funding for open-source asset management and monitoring tools whose code can be inspected, audited, and forked — making it harder to hide backdoors and easier to build shared defenses.
- Center human rights. Tie technology procurement to concrete human-rights benchmarks, including a halt to the use of cyber tools in occupation, apartheid, or mass surveillance of civilians — whether in Gaza, the West Bank, or U.S. cities.
- Protect whistleblowers and watchdogs. Support those inside and outside government who raise alarms about conflicts of interest in security contracting.
For Dearborn, where residents know both how it feels to be targeted and how it feels to organize, these ideas are not abstract. They’re survival strategies.
Why this matters for Dearborn and beyond
Dearborn sits at a crossroads of many of the forces running through this story:
- Thousands of local residents work in or around federal agencies, contractors, and auto and tech industries that are themselves bound up in U.S. defense and surveillance ecosystems.
- The city has become a national symbol of organized resistance to the U.S.-Israeli war on Gaza and to the political establishment that enables it.
- Community organizations, mosques, unions, and student groups here have long memories of FBI visits, informant programs, and post-9/11 dragnets.
In that context, the idea that a company rooted in the same ecosystem that runs high-tech occupation in Palestine is now literally mapping and managing vast swaths of U.S. government networks is not just a curiosity. It’s a warning sign.
The same architecture that lets a security team see every laptop in the Pentagon can, under the wrong conditions, become part of an architecture of repression — from Gaza to Detroit.
Dearborn voices have consistently said: our safety does not come from more opaque security tools; it comes from ending wars, demilitarizing our institutions, and respecting the rights and dignity of all people, including Palestinians.
Where do we go from here?
The Axonius case should spark a few concrete demands, from Dearborn’s city hall to Congress:
- Full transparency on foreign-linked vendors in federal security architectures, including detailed public reports on ownership, engineering locations, and prior military-intelligence connections.
- Independent technical audits of any tool that centralizes visibility into federal systems, with findings — not the sensitive details, but the big picture — made public.
- A clear firewall between U.S. public infrastructure and companies profiting from occupation, apartheid, or documented human-rights abuses.
- Investment in public-interest cybersecurity, including partnerships with universities and community colleges in cities like Dearborn to build the next generation of open, accountable tools.
For Dearborn, this is another front in the same struggle: saying no to structures that treat our communities as data to be watched rather than people to be served — whether the watcher sits in Langley, Tel Aviv, or a glossy venture-backed office in Manhattan.
The question is not just, “Is Axonius doing something bad right now?” The deeper question is, why did we build a system where a foreign military’s alumni can become the gatekeepers of U.S. federal networks in the first place?
And what would it look like if communities like Dearborn helped redesign that system — from the ground up, in the direction of peace, justice, and real digital freedom?
Sources
[1] ¡Do Not Panic! / The Grayzone, “Former Israeli spies now overseeing US government cybersecurity,” December 3, 2025.Substack+3The Grayzone+3donotpanic.news+3
[2] Cyberscoop, “Israeli startup Axonius gets $4 million in seed funding,” September 6, 2017.CyberScoop
[3] Axonius, “Federal Systems – Government Cybersecurity” (federal customer list, certifications, and FOCI/SSA statement).Axonius+1
[4] Axonius, “Axonius Federal Systems Approved for Use Within the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) after Completion of Two Successful Prototypes,” March 23, 2023; and RAND Corporation, Strengthening the Defense Innovation Ecosystem (discussion of Axonius DIU prototype).Axonius+1
[5] GlobeNewswire, “Department of Defense Selects Axonius Federal Systems to Modernize Continuous Monitoring and Risk Scoring Program,” December 17, 2024; Axonius, “Axonius Achieves FedRAMP Moderate Authorization,” April 10, 2025; ExecutiveBiz, “Axonius Federal Systems FedRAMP Moderate Authorization,” April 11, 2025; Axonius blog, “Axonius FedRAMP Moderate Authorization: A Milestone,” August 11, 2025.Axonius+3GlobeNewswire+3Axonius+3
[6] USAspending.gov contract records referencing “Axonius platform licenses” and “Axonius security asset management software” for DoD components, Defense Logistics Agency, and health-related agencies, 2021–2024.USAspending+3USAspending+3USAspending+3
[7] “Israeli espionage in the United States,” historical overview including Jonathan Pollard and PROMIS, various sources compiled.Wikipedia+1
[8] Politico reporting (as summarized by later coverage) and follow-up reporting on cell-site simulators (“StingRays”) allegedly planted near the White House and other sensitive locations in Washington, D.C., with U.S. intelligence officials concluding Israel was likely responsible; including coverage by The Guardian, Axios, and others.Axios+4Wikipedia+4The Guardian+4
[9] “Pegasus (spyware)” and “Pegasus Project” investigations documenting misuse of NSO Group’s Pegasus spyware against journalists, activists, and political figures worldwide, and legal action by WhatsApp/Meta.Wikipedia+1
[10] Background on U.S.–Israel intelligence and security relations, including concerns about Israeli spying networks raised in leaked NSA documents and subsequent analysis.Wikipedia
Disclaimer
This article is based on publicly available information from news reports, official company statements, government contract databases, and historical sources as of December 4, 2025. While care has been taken to verify facts, some claims — especially those concerning intelligence activities and covert operations — involve allegations that cannot be fully confirmed from open sources.
Nothing in this article is intended to allege or prove illegal conduct by any individual or organization; references to espionage, surveillance, or human-rights abuses are drawn from cited sources and are presented for public-interest discussion and critique. Readers are encouraged to consult the original materials and form their own conclusions.
Dearborn Blog does not accept any legal responsibility for actions taken or not taken on the basis of this article. For corrections, clarifications, or comments you would like reflected in the piece, please email info@dearbornblog.com.
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