Autonomous Cyberattacks Have Arrived, Defense Executives Say
Projected global defense spending of $6 trillion is fueling a private capital surge.
SAN FRANCISCO, March 24, 2026 — Black hat adversaries have fully automated their cyberattack capabilities within the past six months, crossing a threshold that existing defense architectures were not built to meet, venture capitalists and defense technology executives said Tuesday.
The most advanced AI systems available, known as frontier models, were already identifying and weaponizing software flaws that had no available fix, said Brad Medairy, executive vice president of Booz Allen Hamilton's integrated cyber business. The next 30 to 60 days, he said, would bring another wave of such attacks.
"Hackers are smart," Medairy said at the RSA Conference here. "They live in the seams."
