Cybercriminals Aren't Evil Geniuses: Why AI-Native Crime Syndicates Will Take Years
joshua_saxe · x · 2026-10-23
Joshua Saxe pushes back on the mental model of cybercriminals as mirror images of elite engineers: they're generally less talented, recruited from middle-income countries with weak legal oversight, and struggle with arrests, sanctions, talent retention, and stable AI inference access. Ransomware took years to scale under these constraints, so AI-native crime syndicates will too.
Nation-states adopt AI quickly for vulnerability research and exploit development, but historically retool military operations slowly — devastating agentic cyber swarms may join their arsenals eventually, but not overnight.
Related event: Security Expert: Cybercriminals Are Weaker Than You Think(2 posts)→
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