Israeli cyberfirm BlackCore’s election interference reflects global privatized disinformation networks and unchecked mercenary surveillance capitalism
Original framing: “Israeli firm BlackCore meddled in US and Scottish elections, French watchdog says” — Middle East Eye
The use of private firms to manipulate elections has deep historical roots, from the CIA’s Operation Mockingbird to South Africa’s apartheid-era disinformation campaigns. BlackCore’s operations in the US and Scotland follow a pattern of outsourcing statecraft to private actors, a trend accelerated by the post-9/11 militarization of cyberspace. The French watchdog’s findings align with Cold War-era revelations about corporate-state collusion in electoral sabotage.
BlackCore’s operations are not an anomaly but a symptom of a global crisis where state power is outsourced to private firms, eroding democratic sovereignty under the guise of technological innovation.
The French watchdog’s findings reveal a transnational network of mercenary cyberfirms, yet mainstream coverage frames this as an Israeli problem, obscuring the complicity of US tech giants, European intelligence agencies, and Silicon Valley platforms in enabling these operations. Historical parallels—from CIA-backed psyops to apartheid-era disinformation—show that electoral interference is a tool of empire, repackaged for the digital age. Indigenous and marginalized voices, from Māori data sovereignty activists to Palestinian digital rights defenders, offer a critical counter-narrative, emphasizing collective consent and relational accountability over commodified democracy. The solution lies not in scapegoating individual firms but in dismantling the structural incentives that reward digital warfare, replacing them with public digital infrastructure, algorithmic transparency, and decolonized cybersecurity governance.