AI lets attackers automate and scale threats like phishing and deepfakes at unprecedented volume. Anthropic's research showed how AI floods the ecosystem with attacks, yet security stocks fell. As more business moves online, companies need new defenses built for AI-enhanced threats.
Chapters
There was an old saying my CTO told me back in the day. The only reason we've been hacked is no one cares about us. And that has resonated in my ears for years. You don't wanna be hacked. With AI, you can hack anybody you want. I think Jason, you're exactly right. 'Cause I think, you know, in general, you know, security purchases tend to, you know, new stuff gets deployed. People should think about security upfront. They tend not to. They deploy, bad stuff happens, and then they panic and think about security. That's the way it's always been in every cycle. I think we're just about to hit that stage of it now. And I think there's kind of two separate vectors. There's first of all, the AI apps themselves have security needs that are different than pre-AI apps. You know, get the whole prompt injection kind of issues. But I think the bigger issue is Jason's point, which is everything else. AI can now, using AI, the bad guys can just automate attacks, automate phishing, you know, automate, you know, duplication of voice, all that kind of stuff. I think Anthropic referenced this and, You know, and it's the Red Army quote that I often use, that quantity has a quality all its own. And with AI, you can make quantity of fake people, you can make quantity of attacks, you can do this thing. So I think it's not so much going to be you getting attacked 'cause of your AI apps, it's much more going to be AI apps are going to attack you. A lot of the AI doomerism I kind of discard, but this is a legitimate and big issue, I think, right? The ability of AI to escalate the velocity and ferocity of attacks. Right. So, which is why, by the way, I think the whole, the response of security stocks going down to the Anthropic announcement was absurd. I think anyone who's cutting back on their security budget in 2026 is missing the point, right? Because not only are the attacks more ferocious, but thinking again, Hari, to your point, this again, the second statement is really Captain Obvious, but it's worth saying, these stuff get more important every year because more and more of our stuff's online. The percentage of things that we do that are done online just continues to escalate. It's like all the stuff in your house, all the stuff in your financial life. There's nothing that matters that isn't done online at this point, which means that attacks there can attack more and more of what counts. So I think absolutely you're going to see— you should be seeing a real acceleration of investment in a different class of security to cope with a different class of threat. Because look, it's a fatal error if you don't. There's only really two things that can destroy one of these companies. The app goes down for a long period of time, or the app gets hacked grievously. Those are the two kind of red card fatal errors. And that's where you're going to have to put the money.
