Saxe proposes hybrid inference botnet strategy: purchased APIs, stolen cloud keys, and local models
joshua_saxe · x · 2026-09-14
In the debate with Halvar Flake, Joshua Saxe argues an AI worm need not rely on local inference: the botnet could buy inference from open and closed providers, spin up its own inference with stolen cloud keys, and leverage increasingly capable local models. Halvar maintains the threat only becomes scary if frontier capabilities run in a 1MB executable at hundreds of tokens/s on a few CPU cores—about six orders of magnitude of efficiency improvement away.
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