Building Cyber Defense for the Agentic Era

a16z General Partner David George sits down with Armadin founder and CEO Kevin Mandia to discuss what happens to cybersecurity when attackers can operate at machine speed. After 30 years in security and building Mandiant, Kevin says AI convinced him to get back on the field. He explains how AI changes the economics of cyberattacks, allowing attackers to probe thousands of paths simultaneously, and why that means defense will ultimately need to become autonomous too. They also unpack Armadin’s approach: continuously attacking customers’ systems with AI to find exploitable vulnerabilities before adversaries do, then building toward autonomous defenses that can respond in real time. Kevin shares what Armadin has learned from finding more than 90 zero-days in production environments this year, why humans can’t remain in the detect-and-respond loop, and how the entire security stack could change over the next few years. Timestamps: 00:00 - Intro 01:06 - Why Kevin came back to the field 04:19 - What AI attacks look like today 07:18 - Nation state vs AI drone swarms 14:34 - Why pen testing is dead 18:36 - Autonomous defense explained 21:22 - The future of the SOC 27:04 - Lessons from the Hugging Face incident 35:44 - Building a company at AI speed Resources: Learn more about Kevin Mandia and Armadin: https://www.armadin.com/team-members/kevin-mandia Follow David George on X: https://x.com/DavidGeorge83 Learn more about Armadin: https://www.armadin.com/ Stay Updated: If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to like, subscribe, and share with your friends! Find a16z on X: https://twitter.com/a16z Find a16z on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/a16z Listen to the a16z Show on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5bC65RDvs3oxnLyqqvkUYX Listen to the a16z Show on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/a16z-podcast/id842818711 Follow our host: https://x.com/eriktorenberg Please note that the content here is for informational purposes only; should NOT be taken as legal, business, tax, or investment advice or be used to evaluate any investment or security; and is not directed at any investors or potential investors in any a16z fund. a16z and its affiliates may maintain investments in the companies discussed. For more details please see http://a16z.com/disclosures.

Kevin MandiaguestDavid Georgehost

Oct 6, 202647mWatch on YouTube ↗

EPISODE INFO

Released: October 6, 2026
Duration: 47m
Channel: a16z
Watch on YouTube: ▶ Open ↗

EPISODE DESCRIPTION

a16z General Partner David George sits down with Armadin founder and CEO Kevin Mandia to discuss what happens to cybersecurity when attackers can operate at machine speed. After 30 years in security and building Mandiant, Kevin says AI convinced him to get back on the field. He explains how AI changes the economics of cyberattacks, allowing attackers to probe thousands of paths simultaneously, and why that means defense will ultimately need to become autonomous too. They also unpack Armadin’s approach: continuously attacking customers’ systems with AI to find exploitable vulnerabilities before adversaries do, then building toward autonomous defenses that can respond in real time. Kevin shares what Armadin has learned from finding more than 90 zero-days in production environments this year, why humans can’t remain in the detect-and-respond loop, and how the entire security stack could change over the next few years. Timestamps: 00:00 - Intro 01:06 - Why Kevin came back to the field 04:19 - What AI attacks look like today 07:18 - Nation state vs AI drone swarms 14:34 - Why pen testing is dead 18:36 - Autonomous defense explained 21:22 - The future of the SOC 27:04 - Lessons from the Hugging Face incident 35:44 - Building a company at AI speed Resources: Learn more about Kevin Mandia and Armadin: https://www.armadin.com/team-members/kevin-mandia Follow David George on X: https://x.com/DavidGeorge83 Learn more about Armadin: https://www.armadin.com/ Stay Updated: If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to like, subscribe, and share with your friends! Find a16z on X: https://twitter.com/a16z Find a16z on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/a16z Listen to the a16z Show on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5bC65RDvs3oxnLyqqvkUYX Listen to the a16z Show on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/a16z-podcast/id842818711 Follow our host: https://x.com/eriktorenberg Please note that the content here is for informational purposes only; should NOT be taken as legal, business, tax, or investment advice or be used to evaluate any investment or security; and is not directed at any investors or potential investors in any a16z fund. a16z and its affiliates may maintain investments in the companies discussed. For more details please see http://a16z.com/disclosures.

SPEAKERS

Kevin Mandia
guest
Cybersecurity executive and founder of Mandiant with decades of incident response and security operations experience.
David George
host
a16z investor and podcast host focused on cybersecurity and enterprise technology.

EPISODE SUMMARY

In this episode of a16z, featuring Kevin Mandia and David George, Building Cyber Defense for the Agentic Era explores kevin Mandia on AI swarm attacks and autonomous cyber defense Kevin Mandia explains why he returned from venture investing to help build Armadin, arguing the AI “shift change” will radically reshape cybersecurity faster than traditional teams and tools can adapt.

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