The agentic cyber arms race is becoming a cost war, and defenders are getting priced out.
Models are good enough now to find vulnerabilities if you throw enough tokens at them. Problem is, defenders using frontier closed models for pen-testing burn cash on expensive tokens. Attackers? They run swarms of cheap model agents 24/7 until something breaks.
It's drones vs aircraft carriers. When cheap drones force you to fire expensive missiles, defense becomes economically unsustainable.
The winners will be cyber companies that own their data. Every customer audit becomes training data. Post-train on open weights, get near-frontier performance at a fraction of the cost. Lower cost means you can search longer, defend longer, without bleeding capital.
In the age of agents, whoever can afford to keep looking wins. Defense is now a cost game, not just a tech game.
Models are good enough now to find vulnerabilities if you throw enough tokens at them. Problem is, defenders using frontier closed models for pen-testing burn cash on expensive tokens. Attackers? They run swarms of cheap model agents 24/7 until something breaks.
It's drones vs aircraft carriers. When cheap drones force you to fire expensive missiles, defense becomes economically unsustainable.
The winners will be cyber companies that own their data. Every customer audit becomes training data. Post-train on open weights, get near-frontier performance at a fraction of the cost. Lower cost means you can search longer, defend longer, without bleeding capital.
In the age of agents, whoever can afford to keep looking wins. Defense is now a cost game, not just a tech game.