Ex-OpenAI futurist Joshua Achiam warns AI hacks could trigger internet lockdowns within months
jachiam0 · x · 2026-10-23
Former OpenAI chief futurist Joshua Achiam says this week's cyber incidents feel like "March 1, 2020 for cybersecurity" and floats the possibility of internet lockdowns within months.
Key points:
- Shopify's Tobi Lütke called it the "craziest day in cybersecurity in a long time"; another researcher sees "the early stages of a global cybersecurity incident"
- Achiam argues the holes were always there — AI just makes them easier to find, and defenders have more money to fix them
- His "moderately bad" scenario: stock markets closing for days, or China using the chaos to move on Taiwan
- Defense needs more compute than attackers, possibly via "national compute reserves allocated to cyber defense"
- Only 4 of this week's 16 big incidents actually happened this week; the rest were disclosed now after earlier discovery
More from AGI Musings
- Only 4% of CIOs have plans for human-agent workforce, report finds — rseroter · 2026-10-23
- Anil Seth wins Berggruen Prize: consciousness is of life, not computation — anilkseth · 2026-10-23
- New 'bottleneck pressure' measure shows AI reshapes jobs task by task — soumitrashukla9 · 2026-10-23
- Tübingen called the best AI academia bet outside top US schools, Dec 13 deadline — maksym_andr · 2026-10-23
- Genome language models and AI agents mine the genome's 'dark matter' for noncoding RNA discovery — BrianHie · 2026-10-23
- A 1972 feminist essay 'I Want a Wife' doubles as the perfect personal AI product roadmap — mickeyxfriedman · 2026-10-23