Security Veteran's Essay: AI Is Killing the Scarcity of Hacker Craft
joshua_saxe · x · 2026-09-30
Security old-timer Joshua Saxe — popping remote roots since 1996, named in CERT advisories — argues in a long essay that the scarcity value built on pointer-juggling exploitation virtuosity is rapidly evaporating under AI, and that the defensive practices ex-hackers built over 30 years are being radically repriced.
He sees two camps: those leaning into AI tools, some rediscovering the old thrill when agents pull off complicated feats, and those making "we just need to do the basics" videos — even though, he argues, the basics can't be done at scale without an AI security revolution. He likens the latter to John Henry facing the bitter-lesson-powered steam drill, and contrasts them with Mudge and l0pht telling Congress that zero-days could crash the Internet: hackers once dared to say the world had changed; today's skeptics insist nothing has. He concedes they're partly right — the organizations driving AI don't care about your job.
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