I’ve lived through more than a few supposed “cyber apocalypses.” From the early days of worms and botnets to Y2K, each one was framed as the big one. And yet, the sun still rose the next day, the internet survived, and good people pulled together to patch, rebuild and move on.

But today, some of the smartest people I know in cybersecurity are warning that we may be closer than ever to something qualitatively different — a true AI-driven vulnerability cataclysm. And this time, the speed and scale of the threat could push defenders into uncharted territory.

The Warning From Gadi Evron and Heather Adkins

At DEFCON, longtime security leader Gadi Evron, together with Heather Adkins of Google, raised the alarm in a series of LinkedIn posts and co-authored essays. Their argument: AI is no longer just a tool for defenders or a research curiosity — it is rapidly becoming an autonomous exploit engine.

They outline a sequence already in motion:

• Automated vulnerability discovery that outpaces human researchers. 
• Automated exploitation closing in fast. 
• Attack execution at machine speed, adaptive to each target. 
• Weaponization on-demand — no need to pre-build exploits. 

Evron and Adkins warn that this could all reach scale within six months (an arbitrary but urgent marker). As they wrote in The AI Vulnerability Cataclysm is Coming:

“Within six months, AI could make exploitation so fast that it breaks cyber defense. Attackers are already in their AI singularity moment, whereas ours has not yet begun.”

They stress they are not alarmists by nature. In fact, Evron recalls being told two decades ago: “The internet will still be here Gadi. And if for some reason it falls, good people will come together to bring it back up. The Sun will rise again tomorrow.” That optimism remains. But optimism alone, they argue, is no longer enough.

Evidence Piling Up

This isn’t theory. There are concrete data points that suggest the ground is shifting beneath our feet:

• AI dominance on bug bounty boards: An AI system, XBOW, recently topped HackerOne’s U.S. leaderboard. 
• DARPA’s AIxCC challenge: AI cyber reasoning tools uncovered 54 vulnerabilities in just four hours, and those tools are now open-sourced. 
• Google’s “Big Sleep”: A Gemini-based AI discovered 20 vulnerabilities in short order. 
• Developer productivity vs. insecurity: GitHub’s own study showed Copilot can boost productivity by nearly 56%. But a separate study found Copilot’s generated code frequently insecure. The tradeoff: More code, written faster, but riddled with flaws ripe for exploitation. 
• Offensive AI operations: Evron cites reports of APT28 already using LLMs to supercharge “living-off-the-land” tactics. 

Add to this new research from Anthropic on autonomous attacks and even AI-written CFPs submitted to DEFCON, and the picture becomes clearer: The attackers are not waiting.

Not Just a Researcher’s Concern

This isn’t just a conversation among security wonks. Even mainstream outlets like NBC News are covering the risk of AI-driven cyberattacks. When you see Bruce Schneier, Gadi Evron, Heather Adkins, and Chris Wysopal (@WeldPond, Veracode CTO and one of the original L0pht hackers) all warning about the same thing, you pay attention.

As Schneier wrote back in 2022, the seeds of this problem were visible years ago. The difference now is acceleration. The curve is steeper. The gap between attackers and defenders is widening.

Preparing for the Storm

If this all sounds dire, it is. But it is not hopeless. Evron and Adkins themselves emphasize action over despair. Their prescriptions are practical:

• Shrink the attack surface: Retire legacy systems, disable unused features, accelerate zero-trust adoption. 
• Buy resilience, not features: Demand vendors prove hot-patching, reliability, and security as part of procurement. 
• Invest inward: Expand bug bounties, fund open-source security, and find vulnerabilities before adversaries do. 
• Strengthen alliances: Form coalitions across vendors and industries to push security forward. 
• Experiment with deception: Develop defenses that don’t depend on predicting specific attack tools. 
• Close the AI literacy gap: Educate teams and leaders about AI’s capabilities and risks (they even recommend Prompt||GTFO on YouTube as a starting point). 

These steps won’t stop the tide of AI-driven exploits, but they can blunt the impact. They can buy defenders the one resource they need most: time.

Shimmy’s Take

I’ve been around long enough to know that predictions of doom come and go. The internet is still here. The sun still rises. But I also know that when multiple veterans of our field — Schneier, Evron, Adkins, Wysopal — are all waving the red flag, we’d be fools not to listen.

We may not be able to stop this storm, but we can prepare. And if we act fast, smart, and together, we just might prove — once again — that resilience is the real hallmark of cybersecurity.

The AI vulnerability cataclysm may be coming. But it doesn’t have to be the end of the story.