Cyberwarfare in the AI Age: A Conversation With Jen Easterly

量子计算将破解所有密码?

The Foreign Affairs Interview

2026-08-06

58 分钟
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It’s been nearly 15 years since Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta warned of a “cyber–Pearl Harbor.” Since then, most people have become fairly inured to such a risk. That’s true even as there’s been a steady clip of cyberattacks on the United States and other countries, some of them quite alarming, and even as a new, more powerful AI model is released by an American or Chinese lab seemingly every week. Jen Easterly has spent much of the past 20 years defending U.S. cyberspace against such threats. She has been both a military officer and a top civilian official, most recently running the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. Now, she warns, the danger is about to get much worse. For all the talk of AI-enabled cyberattacks, and the attention on scarily powerful models from American labs like Anthropic and OpenAI and from their Chinese counterparts, Easterly worries that the world still fails to appreciate both the magnitude of the threat and the speed with which a true crisis could be approaching. Dan Kurtz-Phelan spoke to Easterly on Thursday, July 30. You can find sources, transcripts, and more episodes of The Foreign Affairs Interview at https://www.foreignaffairs.com/podcasts/foreign-affairs-interview.
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  • I’m Dan Kurtz-Phelan and this is the Foreign Affairs Interview.

  • The velocity of information and the velocity of technology

  • are just coming at us so quickly

  • that I worry the greatest danger is not the failure of technology,

  • it's the failure to imagine how this technology can be weaponized.

  • It's been nearly 15 years since Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta

  • warned of a quote "cyber Pearl Harbor."

  • Since then, most of us have become fairly inured to such a risk.

  • That's true even as there's been a steady clip of cyber attacks

  • on the United States and other countries, some of them quite alarming,

  • and even as a new, more powerful AI model is released

  • by an American or Chinese lab seemingly every week.

  • Jen Easterly has spent much of the past 20 years

  • defending American cyberspace against such threats.

  • She has been both a military officer and a top civilian official,

  • most recently running CISA, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.

  • Now, Easterly warns the danger is about to get much worse.

  • For all the talk of AI-enabled cyber attacks

  • and all the attention on scary powerful models from American labs

  • like Anthropic and OpenAI and from their Chinese counterparts,