Security expert: cybercriminals aren't engineer-tier, AI-native crime syndicates will take time
joshua_saxe · x · 2026-10-23
Security practitioner Joshua Saxe pushes back on the common mental model of cybercriminals as mirror images of elite engineers or VC-backed AI pentest startups. Most are less talented, recruited from middle-income countries with weak legal oversight, and struggle with arrests, sanctions, talent retention, and stable AI inference access — which is why ransomware took years to scale and AI-native crime syndicates will too. Nation-states adopt AI quickly for vulnerability research but historically retool military operations slowly, so agentic cyber swarms are a future weapon, not an imminent one.
Related event: Security Expert: Cybercriminals Are Weaker Than You Think(2 posts)→
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