There are strong reasons to be optimistic about the long-run security future: a world where AI continuously audits every line of code, hardens systems autonomously, and patches vulnerabilities faster than attackers can weaponize them is a real possibility. But the long-run equilibrium is not the same as what we will encounter in the next few years.
Irregular CEO Dan Lahav’s essay, The End-State Fallacy: Where Is AI Security Headed?, is about that distinction. Treating the transition as though it will resemble the end state obscures the more urgent problem: AI is currently scaling offensive capability faster than defensive capacity. The essay traces the trajectory and sets out what a strategy of Differential Defensive Cyber Acceleration (DDCA) would require.