“When I hear somebody use swarm, I immediately discount all of their technical opinions by about 80%. It is going to become, it is already, and it will become the most overused term in all of security. … Almost nobody is going to be attacked by a swarm. So if somebody says swarm, they do not actually understand at the bottom technical level what's going on.”
Decoder with Nilay Patel · Tech Strategy & Big Tech · November 2026
Context
Nilay Patel asked whether the answer to AI-powered attackers is to unleash autonomous defensive AI "swarms". Stamos says real attacks like the recent wave run on one or two agents, and that the large multi-agent incidents need hardware no ordinary attacker has.
Transcript
couple of things. One. I
told you I was going to only ask dumb questions. I just want to. No, no, that
is a fantastic question. You have not asked a dumb question yet. I'm honest. You have not asked a dumb question yet. That's a fantastic question. Okay, I'm going to give you a shorthand that you can use going forward. If somebody actually uses the term swarm, then I don't know
if you mean to be clear. I don't know if Nikesh used the word swarm.
Okay. I'm not saying he did. And I have great respect for Nikesh. He is one of the best businessmen in all of security. So this is not on him, but swarm is used all the time. But when I hear somebody use swarm, I immediately discount all of their technical opinions by about 80%. It is going to…
the way, I was the person who said swarm, just to be clear in this one.
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