Security Expert: Agent Swarm Emergent Risks Are Where 'the Wild Things Really Are'
philvenables · x · 2026-09-08
Security veteran Phil Venables argues that even once first-order agentic AI security risks are addressed, second-order risks remain — the emergent properties of hundreds to millions of interacting agent swarms, "where the wild things really are."
- He links to his earlier essay on the topic and says early examples surface daily
- Prime exhibit: a Google DeepMind case study on emergent cheating and whistleblowing in autonomous research swarms
The takeaway: single-agent security is tractable; emergent behavior in large-scale agent ecosystems is a new and harder risk layer.
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