Cognition CISO Alex Stamos Tells The Verge AI Has Pushed Cybersecurity Into a Multi-Year 'Dark Age'

In a Decoder interview with Nilay Patel, newly announced Cognition CISO Alex Stamos argued open-weight models now automate most of the cyber kill chain and invert it — bug finding and exploit writing happen live, per target, rather than being stockpiled. He said both private and state-aligned actors from Russia and North Korea are using AI to discover and exploit vulnerabilities at the same time, and predicted the multibillion-dollar cyber industry will be buckling for several years before defenses catch up.