Democratizing Security for the Agentic Web with Cloudflare CTO Dane Knecht

Ais become the tool that's causing this kind of security apocalypse is also the tool that can help us solve it faster as well. It went from how do you get everyone just using AI? Now, all of a sudden, everyone's racing to figure out what AI security needs.

I've heard serious technical people say things like, air gap, everything important, and we're like, not gonna be able to trust the internet for a while. And we just assume all the critical infrastructure and government services fall down at some point. Is that your expectation for what happens? Dane, I'm so excited to do this with you.

Yeah, thank you. Thanks for coming here too.

I'm sure I'm not the first person to make this joke, but your last name connect, that's pretty good, yeah, for the cloudflare value prop.

Yeah, yeah, uh, there's been some jokes about, uh, renaming the show next year. So

Uh, so, uh, with everything that Cloudflare is doing, what are your top few priorities as CTO right now?

well, I mean, this past year, uh, it, it, it feels like ten years compacted into one. Uh, so tho- those priorities are, uh, constantly shifting. But, you know, it all goes back to our mission of helping build a better internet. And, uh, that really hasn't changed over the last fifteen years, uh, where we wanna make sure that, uh, uh, the internet's secure, uh, that everyone has access to, uh, be able to, uh, get their content online easily and, uh, scale it up.

Uh, and, uh, just, you know, over the arc of, uh, the AI, um, changes in the past year, you know, I, it went from, you know, how do you get everyone just using AI? How do you make it easy for them to deploy and their agents to deploy? Uh, to, like most technical transitions, uh, security is kind of an afterthought. And, uh, now, all of a sudden, uh, everyone's racing to figure out what AI security means.

And, uh, it means, uh, things for you know, different sides, uh, uh, view it kind of differently. Uh, you know, well, one side is, you know, as a, as a company, is h- how do you keep your data safe from, uh, uh, ai leaking the data out? Uh, but it's also, how do you keep people from getting in as well, too? And, you know, o- over the last, uh, I would say three to six months, uh, just the number of vulnerabilities, uh, that, uh, uh, are getting reported in CVEs, uh, has has just gone up exponentially.

Um, you know, previously on the internet, we would see these log for j moments, uh, or these shell shock or, uh, uh, type of, uh, incidents, maybe once a year, you know, it would be all hands on deck internally at Cloudflare to make sure how we protect not just, uh, um, you know, uh, our, our enterprise customers, but also all of our free customers. Cause we, you know, view it as, uh, kind of, there's a a a public good in making sure that the internet stays safe.

Uh, to these things are now happening weekly. Uh, not all of them are publicly reported on, uh, but there are things that, uh, uh, uh, you know, are as serious as, like, the log for j type things, but, uh, uh, just happening at a a greater frequency. Um, you know, and I expect that, you know, through the rest of this year, uh, and into next year, by the next eighteen months, uh, majority of, uh, uh, teams time is gonna be spent on security.

You know, uh, you, I think there was a stat that was put up, uh, earlier today that, uh, during one of our keynotes, uh, uh, where it was showing that, I think, uh, over 50% of, uh, um, uh, engineering time is gonna be spent just spent, uh, on, uh, securing. And I don't think that will last forever. I think that will be a, uh, a short transition. Uh, you know, uh, at some point, the AI will have, uh, surveyed majority of the code and found most of the bugs, uh, or found most the shortcuts.

Um, you know, there, there's a, uh, uh, one that's kind of, uh, coming out today and has been started to, uh, be, uh, blogged about and tweeted about, uh, where, uh, one of the keys, uh, on the internet, uh, is, uh, uh, that protects, uh, all TLS and web PKI web web PKI, uh, which secures all your connections, uh, was, uh, um, was secured by the number four. Uh, literally, uh, the num- they basically, uh, used, uh, uh, you know about cryptography, uh, uh, I mean, uh, it's all about randomness, right?

Uh, you know, that's why Cloudflare has our lava lamps, is so that, uh, uh, you can get good randomness. Uh, and when a, a, a key out there is, uh, they use the seed, they use the initial, uh, uh, thing to, uh, uh, kind of create it, uh, with a single number four. Uh, uh, it's, it's gonna be, uh, uh, reverse engineered, um, you know, uh, and AI can just do all these things, uh, you know, that doesn't sleep.

It's not like the one engineer you had that was, uh, red teaming things, um, you know, uh, last week, I, uh, I think OpenAI, uh, found the seeds, uh, for, uh, the nis, the the nist curves, uh, that were, uh, back in 2,000, uh, that were released. Um, so just, you know, these things are just moving so fast, uh, and, uh, the bar is going up and, uh, the models are just getting so good at, uh, you know, uh, uh, uh, cybersecurity.

You know, Midsouth was just kind of the, uh, tip of the iceberg there, uh, where, you know, I, i in. And since then, it's, uh, not just been the the model's getting better, it's the harnesses. It's, uh, how people know how to how humans know how to use them and use those frontier models, uh, in order to, uh, find those exploits.

Given your, you know, visibility, what do you know about the humans behind, you know, these attacks and harnessing it, these models? A and taking the volume of vulnerability discovery up so quickly? Like, are they, you know, nation state actors? Are they script kiddies? Like, what? What can you say about, um, uh, how the, uh, how the attack or landscape has changed?

Uh, well, I actually think for some of these, uh, um, it's s some of these large vulnerabilities that have come out more recently, actually, uh, haven't been nation states, they've, they've been, uh, um, you know, high school kids, even, uh, that are, uh,

We're gonna call them agent kiddies now. yeah, yeah, that Yeah,

that are that are just, uh, spending their time, you know, like they used to do, kinda capture the flag security contest. Uh, they're, uh, pointing their agents at a, uh, an area and, uh, uh, doing that, uh, you know, uh, there's also, you know, and there's financial reward for them. There's, uh, bug bounties that, uh, they get paid, uh, out, uh, you know, sizable amounts. Um, yeah, but, uh, it's it's given the tools that honestly, the nation states have had in some forms, uh, for much longer, uh, um, either through agents or just through, you know, sheer number of people that were working on the problems, uh, giving it to the masses.

this is the first time in fifteen years I've heard serious technical people say things like, well, we should just like air gap everything important. And we're like, you know, not gonna be able to trust the internet for a while. And we just assume all the critical infrastructure and and and government services fall down at some point. Um, is that your expectation for what happens?

Humans, uh, we, we are pretty adaptable and we, uh, can move fast when we need to. Um, uh, and, uh, you know, uh, I've seen the industry, uh, uh, kind of partner together. When things like this happen, uh, uh, people that you usually think of competitors, just are no longer competitors. We are just literally protecting critical infrastructure, as you said, um, and, uh, I I think when those kind of critical moments happen, uh, uh, uh, people and, uh, will, will rise to to that challenge.

Uh, um, so on a little less doomsday, I I do think that, uh, a lot of the things that we've done over the past, you know, five or ten years, uh, moving away from a kind of a castle and moat infrastructure to for security to moving to more of a zero trust, uh, does put a lot of companies in a better position. Where, uh, you know, you, you're not saying this office is completely air gapped, you're saying, you know, these devices, these, these these flows are, uh, secured in a in a different way.

Um, uh, and and everything's gonna be tightened.

What is it going to take for organizations to do what you're describing? Like, fifty of engineers do not work on security right now. I had a, uh, Greg Brockman from OpenAI on the UM, No Priors podcast last week, and he said that he thought in 2027, people were gonna spend as much money on tokens for security as engineering. Like, you're saying, very s re- related idea, uh, what is gonna drive that shift?

This emergency, right? So you're gonna move forward all your security spend, uh, over the next eighteen months, uh, both from, uh, uh, the red team side, uh, which is, uh, more the offensive, uh, uh, trying to actively try to exploit things, uh, as well as, uh, the defensive side, uh, uh, uh, how you prepare things. Um, but I I don't think that's gonna last forever. Uh, you know, I, I see a world in, like, eighteen months, uh, where, uh, you know, uh, new software productivity goes way up, cause, you know, all those resources are back, uh, focused on that.

Uh, but there's there's definitely this, you know, this period, uh, uh, where, uh, security is is needs to be on everybody's mind.

What do you? What are some of the key elements of getting to, you know, a better place in terms of overall software and internet security? Um, uh, I think people discover, of course, like that, there are, uh, libraries and services everyone uses use that, uh, had vulnerabilities that took effort to discover and now do not. And I think we'll hit some of those. What, what else is important there? Because part of the concern that I have is the rate of software production is also going up a great deal, right?

So, to some degree, we gotta go like patch everything that we have already made and then keep up and get ahead of the pace of delivery.

Yeah, um, well, so I mean, for one, w- we're we're right now, we are patching seventy years of of, uh, software, uh, a out there. So so some of it, it, it is just catch up, uh, and then on a go forward basis, you know, uh, uh, I think this, you know, the software development life cycle, the agent development life cycle is gonna need to change. Uh, uh, and you know, uh, luckily, the s the same way that we're can use security right now, uh, for red teaming things like that, it'll just be built into the process every step of the way.

Um, uh, and and I think, you know, the software will just get more secure o- over time.

What have you learned about building secure production software internally already that you think people can learn from? Like, what does that mean? Like, shift left and like, can we? And and there, there are. There are many theories of how to do this, including, you know, broader use of formal verification, using agents for security in the development process. Like, what, what do you think is going to, uh, create better software from, uh, first delivery?

I, I'm gonna go back to first principles. There is you wanna reduce your, uh, uh, sort of attack surface area. The easiest thing you can do is to give, uh, uh, less im- uh, places for there to be vulnerabilities. So, you know, looking at all your software and saying, how can I simplify this? how can I, uh, uh, re reduce, uh, this, you know, the the footprint, the code, um, uh. And and and then, you know, beyond that, I mean, things like formal verification, like, and, uh, I think things that, uh, you know, safer programming languages and things that are kind of built into the runtimes that, uh, make everything safer.

Will come, but, you know, I think it just starts with, uh, uh. And you know, AI, at least, you know, uh, for the, uh, the early AI is is, uh, very verbose. It likes to create complexity. So, you know, uh, a ai, in in a sense of, uh, what we've been dealing with is actually, uh, uh, not been kind of, uh, helping build, uh, uh, a more secure stuff right now. But I I think it will get there, and I think, uh, uh, the, you know, that that's where humans still come in, and human judgment comes in, and, uh, making sure that we design the software in in a way that, uh, uh, c- can stand on, you know, its

own securely.

Uh, that was actually gonna be my reaction. When you say, um, we wanna reduce the surface area, I'm like, Oh, yes, of course, in principle, and that's not the natural inclination of today's, uh, models, right? And like, you know, I ask you to do something, and I'm like, well, like, with one tenth the complexity, please try again. Um, i is, is that the role of engineering and security engineering today? Is that something that's gonna be solved at the model level?

the the way the humans did it before agents, it's it needs to be solved kind of at at all levels. You need to train, uh, the, uh, engineers that are writing the the code, the product engineers, uh, you need to. The security teams still need to be involved in making sure that, uh, they're getting, uh, you know, checks and balances, a second set of eyes on things. You need to build in processes. Uh, we've gone to, uh, uh, um, uh, defining things a lot more internally on on how we built at Cloudflare, uh, writing down our principles.

Uh, we have a, uh, a document called the Codex, which is kind of like, uh uh, you know, a buildup of a lot of RFCs that the teams have built for it. Here's how you build secure software, Cloudflare, here's how you build available software, Cloudflare, here's our best practices. And then it kind of gets boiled up into some team commandments that, uh, the, uh, agents know how to follow and, uh, uh, get use it every part of the review process, uh, that can help in in in enforce those things.

So, you know, you, you have agents out there that are, you know, just writing a lot of the the slop. And then you have deeper down the factory, you have, uh, uh, people that are, you know, doing the performance runs and the secure security runs. And just like how the company operated before, you, I think you need those ad adversarial, uh, uh, uh, re reviews.

Oh, when you zoom out a little bit and just look at overall traffic on the internet and how much of it has become, uh, agent driven over the last year, um, it, I I think it's outpaced most people's expectations. What has updated in your worldview of like, what the web a year from now looks like? Either from an economic model perspective or a, um, security or requisite infrastructure perspective?

Yeah, um, I mean, I kind of think of it as we're in the messy middle right now, where, uh, humans and agents are, uh, uh, riding the same rails, uh, uh, on the internet, uh, where, you know, uh, agents are trying to, uh, parse a, uh, a human web, uh, when that's just, you know, one, it's just inefficient, uh, you know, and, uh, was d designed for humans, like, to do things at different speeds. Uh, you know, going to a website and being able to, uh, read and, uh, uh, you know, uh, see the ads and, uh, participate in more of the econo- full economic model versus an agent.

Then now it can go to a thousand web pages in in the same period of time, uh, which is, which is, which is great. It just you need to find a a new economic model, uh, to support that.

Do you mean parallel webs? Is there like a human web and a machine web, like everybody's trying to do? Uh, what's it called? Uh, AEO now, you know?

Yeah, uh, I mean, yes, I I think we do. I think, I think, uh, um, we we find ways to deliver the content, uh, and and and meet and meet agents and humans where they are, as opposed to trying to meet them in the same place. Um, and uh, uh, uh, right now there's like translation layers, you know, there's a lot of companies that, like, you know, help you, uh, uh, uh, you know, an agent view a web page.

Uh, these are just all extra, you know, burning of tokens for things that probably don't need to be, need, need to happen. You know, the the website usually knows what data and and you know, we've had things like this, called, you know, we've had APIs, uh, you know, ways that computers talk to each other for years. Uh, it's just, you know, API has only covered a small fraction of the information on the internet. Uh, and uh, agents, uh, have a thirst to to, you know, understand everything, uh, and so they're going out and trying to explore the the human internet.

Um, and you know, we need to make it, uh, easier for them, uh, we need to make it, you know, less costly for the the site owners, and we need to find a a way for, uh, um, uh, them to get compensated. You know, uh, you know, uh, I think I think it's in a world where it can get very simple, you know, uh, uh, you know, most, like, let's say, like, a content website like a Substack, the, you know, they know what their CPM, uh, is for how much money they should be making on ads, uh, uh, um, for that site.

And so, uh, if, if an agent's reading the site, uh, I I think there is a world where you get to the point where, uh, uh, an agent can decide whether or not they wanna read the content. And then they can decide, uh, if they wanna pay, the the CPM rate, right? And you know, that's where you need to then get new payment rails for the internet, uh, that, uh, can do, you know, millions of transactions a second, uh, for, uh, these, all these little micropayments, uh, all these things that we've been talking about for years, uh, you know, uh, micropayments, you know, always are two years, two years away, and, uh, um, uh, uh, you know, uh, I, I,

I think agents will will actually push that forward, and actually, I think we will see a world where where actually there is a new economic model for content creators.

What? Who do you think the players are, or what are the variations of that infrastructure, right? Like, I I think, obviously, um, Cloudflare has an important role to play here, but the the rise of personal agents like Instinct and use have also made this like an immediate question from a transactional perspective.

I don't think, uh, everyone knows on, you know, on the other side, what the business outcome is gonna look like. You know, everyone's been through these transformations where the internet, you know, it's always gonna kill main street, it, it didn't kill main street. There's, you know, small businesses that are still, uh, uh, thriving, um, uh, but you know, there were people that were displaced, and so there, there's always kind of some skepticism there. And so, you know, there's some natu- natural inclination, uh, to, like, just block them out, right?

Uh, you know, you saw Amazon just say, uh, no, no, no personal, no personal shopping there, uh, from an agent. Um, uh, I I mean, I think these are all people that, uh, are are, you know, this, that messy middle. Where they're trying to figure out, uh, what, what that path forward is, and, uh, trying to keep some of their, you know, negotiation, uh, uh, leverage there. Um, I I think we will get to a place where, uh, uh, uh, news and, uh, dots and, uh, all those personal agents, uh, will be able to, uh, accomplish tasks, uh, seamlessly as you, as a human could do, I mean, even even easier.

But, uh, I, I don't know if the technology is quite, quite caught up to that yet, and the, uh, business models either.

Is there anything you're personally excited about on the roadmap, or just from a techno exploration, um, perspective on the Cloudflare front that you like, feel like, is gonna enable this ecosystem in the future?

Um, well, yeah, I mean, a absolutely on on the, uh, uh, content side, you know, w- we've released, uh, uh, uh, a conference monetization gateway where we make it easy for people to put their sites behind us and, uh, uh, uh, take micropayments, uh, uh, for their content. Uh, we, uh, um, uh, including, uh, providing, uh, uh, wallets for agents to use, um, uh, uh, and uh, and and and a stablecoin that's gonna be able to help kind of, uh, facilitate that transaction as well.

Um, you know, we're also doing things, uh, with OpenAI, uh, uh, a a project called signals, where, uh, we're making it easier for, uh, um, agents to actually discover content instead of having to crawl the entire internet and, uh, continually go back to pages. We're making it easier for them to, uh, uh, know what's new content and actually kind of more proactively do that. So, you know, it, it's a, it's a win for the, uh, AI labs, as as well as a win for, uh, uh, the site owners, not having to get, uh, constantly crawled and pay, pay for that infrastructure.

Um, so, the, you know, there's a whole set of, uh, kind of new laws of the internet, uh, that I I think, uh, really excited to see, uh, those, uh, uh, kind of grow to see. Uh, you know, the, uh, you know, x four o two from, uh, when Stripe came out with it, I loved it because, uh, it went back to, uh, the four o two, uh, uh, error, uh, HTP code, uh, which was, uh, uh, you know, uh, uh, Tim Berners-Lee created, uh, you know, twenty plus years ago, thirty plus years ago, uh, for payments.

So, like, you know, kind of always knew that you needed a payments, a better payments rail on the internet, uh, but we haven't been able to, you know, kind of figure it out. And, uh, uh, I I think agents will lead us to that as well.

When you think about these, um, initial products that you've released, like, is there? What? What would success for a content creator or somebody who ostensibly had a website on the internet that they were monetizing with ads before? Like, what's the what's the killer success case? You guys need to see or show the world where it just becomes like a default to do this.

Uh, well, I mean, I think we're in instead of, uh, them paying us, we, we're paying them, right? You know, uh, uh, where it's? It's covering their infrastructure costs, it's providing, uh, uh, money that, uh, uh, uh, that, uh, uh, supports their livelihood. Um, uh, you know, if, you know, if we can actually increase the number of content creators out there, which, uh, you know, the l- the last generation of of the internet has done very well, like with YouTube and TikTok and, uh, X, uh, um, uh, I, I, I think we can actually make it even exponentially larger.

And when you look at the workspace, um, OS like release and ecosystem work that you guys have been doing, what is, uh, what are you hoping are the like biggest use cases of it coming up?

This is kind of transitioning a little to a we released something called Cloudflare OS, uh, and Cloudflare OS was, uh, is our internal, uh, um, platform for, uh, how our employees, uh, use AI every day, uh, where, uh, we, you know, and it, it actually goes back to security roots, where, uh, you know, uh, uh. We were very worried about, uh, customer data, internal data leaking out, and we wanted to make sure that our employees, uh, could, you know, uh, use all the new AI, uh, tools and models, uh, but have a way to, uh, safely, uh, uh, deploy them internally, uh, to understand, uh, uh, how that data is being used and flowing, um, and, uh, uh, have have,

you know, kind of good governance, o- over that, uh, in addition, uh, the reason why company called Cloudflare OS is, uh, um, we, we started to, uh, realize that, uh, you know, as we have more and more agents, uh, you know, uh, we needed to be able to teach them, uh, what makes Cloudflare special, how we build at Cloudflare, um, you know, and for humans, we did that through, like, Cloudflare University and, uh, the onboarding process, and, you know, meeting your colleagues and working with them, uh, but we needed to kind of more clearly define that and document that, uh, for agents.

And so Cloudflare OS is both this, the platform where our employees can build anything that they want, uh, in a secure way, without having to, you know, security, it's not something you have to think about. Um, you know, the B- the BR that's trying to create a call list, uh, they don't have to worry about, uh, security, um, it, it, it's just built in there, um, for them, uh. But they also know that it's being done in a way that is, uh, consistent with, uh, the themes and values of, uh, how Cloudflare works.

And and why release? I think of this as like somewhat different from the other products that Cloudflare offers today. Uh, in that it is not infrastructure, it's like an end user facing, um, uh, product for managing, um, AI use within within the organization, like, why release it? Or do you think of it as a departure?

well, yeah, I mean, uh, um, for one, it was, uh, it, it, it's kind of a reference architecture, really. Uh, it's, uh, you know, we over the past ten years, we've built some, uh, uh, our developer platform where we started with just a simple, uh, serverless compute primitive, uh, and and now, you know, over a hundred different, uh, uh, uh, developer platform tools, uh, from storage to databases to durable objects. Um, uh, we wanted to show someone show how you can build it completely on on Cloudflare, um, and how we build things internally.

And kind of, uh, uh, uh, give people the option to, uh, you know, fork it and build, uh, their own, uh, version of, uh, their own company OS on top of.

Um, and and what is a way in which it is helping your people and your organization that you think is like clear success?

Uh, it's actually used more by, uh, uh, our go to market teams and our GNA teams, uh, uh, than it is even used by our engineering teams. Uh, you know, uh, uh, it, it, it's, you know, giving them a a a very fast, uh, you know, early on, I thought, you know, we, we saw training was the biggest gap for people using, uh, AI. And when you just kind of point them at a a chat interface, um, or, uh, uh, ano- another byproducting tool, uh, it's too much of a blank slate for them.

Uh, and so, uh, you know, this is a platform that's design, you know, you, you design everything for it for how your business works, and you. They immediately can go there and, you know, get access to all the data that they need. Uh, they can, uh, get guided and taken, taken through, uh, uh, where they quickly realize, oh, this is not, you know, trying to re replace me, this is trying to make me better at my job.

Uh, and and that's been really exciting to see, uh, just, uh, just all the different ways, uh, uh, people at the company have, uh, have done that. Uh, you know, a lot of the the uh, uh, how this the conference got put together by the marketing team, uh, I mean, built hundreds of internal tools where previously, you know, they would have they would had to go out and, uh, uh, work with different agencies. But they can, you know, the speed that they can move with the smaller team now is just amazing.

Assuming this is a continuation of, you know, starting in May, you guys did this restructuring to be an, uh, like a sort of AI first organization. Um, what, what else reflecting on, you know, the last number of months, uh, has worked or not work that you would recommend to others?

Yeah, I mean, so, uh, you know, the the, uh, the restructuring was hard. Uh, you know, saying goodbye to some of our colleagues, uh, it was the first time Cloudflare ever did it. Um, you know, uh, we had we had always been very, uh, careful not to overhire, and, uh, um, uh, well, this was for different reasons. Uh, this is cause we we saw the, uh, the the way AI was transforming some teams and how they work.

Um, and, you know, we kind of thought of it as like a factory floor, where you needed to re actually rebuild, rethink how things happen. You know, uh, the there, there were some processes, there's some, you know, the way a product manager would send an email before to customers. It involved three teams, you know, it involved a team where, uh, you know, uh, you, you went to b bi to go get a cohort of, uh, uh, the people that you wanted to send an email to.

You went to the marketing team to help you design the email and and get the voice right. Uh, you went to the marketing operations team to get the email out. Uh, where, you know it, you're never going to be able to, uh, actually redesign that process unless you kind of, kind of make some hard changes and, uh, uh, force people to kind of rethink. Well, what actually is the right way to do that? Uh, and it, and it might not involve those three teams at all, it might just involve, uh, a a, a new way of doing things.

And, you know, so what came out of that was a a tool where a product manager now goes in and describes the cohort. Uh, they write an email, it rewrites it in Cloudflare's voice, it sends it to their manager, uh, um, and the manager can click approve if they like it, and it it goes out. Uh, where, you know, we didn't go from three teams getting faster at, uh, doing that, we went to, you know, uh, one tool that can kind of, uh, uh, let, uh, pro product manager now, like, have a superpower that they didn't have before.

When you think of all of the different workflows and tasks within an organization that's got about 5,000 people like Cloudflare's, like, how do you decide who the owner is of rethinking that process? And and like, was it bottoms up from one of those teams in this case, like, is it an organizational leader? Like, when you have so many of these things that could change to be faster and make more sense, as you described,

Yeah, I mean, Cloudflare's always had a thousand more things that we could we could ever do, uh, whether it was, you know, products and features or things like this. And so, uh, we we always look for people that, uh, uh, are gonna take initiative and ownership. Um, and so, you know, it doesn't really matter if you're ordering it, you know, one to a hundred and try and prioritize it. Any one of those hundred things, uh, are are probably, uh, safe if someone's passionate about it.

So, you know, w- we we kind of gave people at the end of last year the, uh, the tools and started seeing how they were experimenting. And, you know, uh, people quickly kind of, uh, broke out in different cohorts of people that were really leaning in, and, uh, um, you know, just naturally doing those things and taking ownership of them. Uh, so, you know, I I think it was very, uh, bottoms up from the uh, h- how we're going to, uh, uh, do those things.

uh, it's been a major topic of conversation for organizations as to how they should think about, um, token budgeting, right? Like, you know, what's a reasonable amount to spend? How do I think about this versus human capital? Who should get tokens, even within our organization? Like, what is your philosophy on this now?

It's definitely changed, uh, you know, uh, uh, and each model kind of m makes you re rethink it as the the the cost dynamics change. But, uh, um, you know, I in in general, uh, um, uh, you know, I think it's kind of silly that we're actually asking humans to decide which model to do each task. Um,

Like it should be intelligently routed,

yeah, e- e- exactly like h- humans just aren't, aren't gonna ever be good at that, right? Like, uh, um, you know, uh, uh, um, but, you know, early on, you do it kind of, uh, brute force, and you, you know, people, you get people to experiment, and you say, hey, well, you know, let's try for the, uh, planning part, let's use the, uh, you know, the, uh, the top frontier models for that. Um, and then, uh, you know, once the plan's written out and agreed upon and iterated on, then, you know, uh, potentially some of the open source models, uh, can go do that.

And then you go back and you have a, uh, one of the frontier models do the re the reviews and the red teaming and and things like that. Um, now, all of that today is, you know, fairly manual. Um, uh, but I th- I think, you know, as we start to learn and experiment, I think it will become intelligent. Uh, and, uh, you know, uh, uh, uh. And then, you know, over time, there'll be more governance on that, you know, Cloudflare l- uh, has been in a place where, uh, uh, you know, l- largely, we've let people, uh, use the the models and tools that, uh, they, they, they see fit, um, for the job.

Uh, you know, we, we don't have, we don't have a token, uh, leaderboard, uh, we don't encourage it, we encourage people to focus on the output. Um, the, uh, uh, uh, you know, they're not graded on, you know, if they used it, they're graded on, you know, what they've shipped and what they've built. Um, but then, uh, uh, you know, we do have some kind of, uh, we found, like, just kind of, like, giving people notices, like, you know, i if you happen to use 300 hours a day, you'll just get an email, right?

Like it says, Hey, did you know? And and cause most of the time, people didn't realize they were doing it. And, uh, they're like, oh, huh, uh. And then I think it gets to, like, 500, uh, it goes to your manager, and if it goes to a thousand, it goes to a VP in a day. But it it's, it's, uh, you know, it, it, those things rarely happen, and and usually it's, it's p- it's, uh, people are actually happy to s get those notices.

Where do you think you are in your overall evolution of like, take things just for the current level of capabilities of of models? Assume no new development of, you know, rethinking the way different things at Cloudflare are done, from go to market to engineering to be

Oh, I, I, I think we're touched. still so early. Uh, um, you know, uh, uh, Cloudflare did something, uh, you know, two years ago, we had about 200 interns, and, uh, what we saw was those interns, uh, I think were, you know, uh, really, the first, you know, fully kind of AI native, uh, you know, work. That if you took AI away from them, I don't think they would be able to work. Um, and, and, uh, uh,

is that good?

I actually, I think it is. I, I think they know how to use the tools better than us. It's just like you took Google away from me, you know, over the last ten years, uh, you know, like, uh, like, you know, how would I learn anything, right? Like, uh, uh, that's just that's where they reach to first, um, and and and we actually saw the managers that had interns that from that, uh, that that summer, uh, actually adopt AI faster.

So then this past summer, uh, this past year, uh, we decided we were gonna hire a thousand interns. So that's, you know, uh,

For 5,000 person company? Wow,

uh, over the course of the year. Uh, yeah, still, that's no, yeah, and uh, i it's it's just been amazing, cause, you know, uh, one, uh, uh, just the number of ideas that come from the interns, uh, you, you know, that's something that, you know, with AI, lets people experiment faster, and so having more ideas, uh, getting more people in there. But also, uh, just seeing the the way that they, uh, uh, use AI, like, uh, you know, um, i, if they need to fill out a form, uh, they, they, they reach for AI, um, and and I and I still find myself, you know, there's so many things where I'm like, Oh, wait, I've just been doing this manually

still, uh, and and then I'm like, Yeah, wait, actually, I should, I should be using AI, and and I, I don't think that that's unnatural. Uh, um, uh, natural for most of us yet. Um, uh, and I think that will, that will take time. And, uh, so, yeah, I think we're still very early, uh, in in our AI journeys.

I love it, though, the mass intern strategy. Uh, I run a very small um partnership, and we always have a, uh, you know, an intern or two floating around a team of about a dozen. For, you know, ideas and intern energy and all of that. But we just converted one of our, um, you know, in college interns to full time and, uh, and Jed and had him drop out and everything. And I, I, I think that you're right where maybe, like, the dial should be turned up on the amount of DNA that is really, really native to these tools.

yeah, and I think it's great for them as well, too. I mean, you see these schools like, uh, what, Waterloo and Northeastern, like with these, uh, these co op programs, uh, um, and and you know, from what we've seen is, uh, uh, people that get that type of real world experience, uh, that just, you know, uh, are, are some of our, our best employees, uh, uh, many years in and go on to do, you know, uh, great things.

It is interesting, uh, or encouraging, though, that in instead of it being like, hey, here's a master plan. We're gonna map out every department and subdepartment at Cloudflare and be like, here are the key workflows. We wanna try to reengineer the workflows. It is instead a strategy of like, assume people are rational about their tokens, if given information about their usage, hire a bunch of interns and assume high agency. People we have here are gonna go like, you know, shift sh- shift those workflows to something more intelligent over time.

yeah, and then and then brute force and just try things. Uh, you know, early on, uh, um, uh, we, uh, had an email, uh, alias called agents at Cloudflare, where we, uh, this back in January of last, uh, of this year, where we, uh, just told people to, uh, uh, you know, if you're curious, can I use AI for this? You know, email in your jobs to be done, you know, uh, and uh, uh, that email would, this would reply back to the skill file.

Um, uh, and for a while, people thought it was, uh, actually, you know, thought it was all AI and automated. It was actually, uh, a bunch of interns that were, uh, uh, you know, uh, uh, help helping people write skill files, uh, uh. But that let us kind of get to see, uh, uh, you know, in in in a way that's not going out and like, you know, uh, hiring a consulting firm to come out and like, catalog every single thing to be done.

It's, you know, people that, uh, are recognizing, hey, this seems harder than it needs to be. I wonder if an agent can help me here.

Is there anything else about the last year that's changed, um, uh, beyond the intern level, like your hiring philosophy, what you look for in people to bring on?

Um, well, I mean, one of the biggest things we've always looked for is curiosity. And so, you know, if if people aren't using AI at home in their personal life and all that, I mean, that's a pretty big red flag. Like, I mean, just, uh, how, how can you not, uh, uh, be e- embracing AI if you have, you know, a level of curiosity out there? So, uh, um, you know, uh, I think just double down, i d d doubling down on some of those, uh, uh, uh, kind of, uh, key characteristics of, you know, drive and curiosity, and empathy, uh, um, uh, uh, play even better for, uh, uh, this next set of, uh, people.

Uh, well, I, I'm, I mean, I, uh, I am a, uh, alpha user of all products and technology forever. So, but I I think the answer is like, fear and skepticism, right? Um, and and so I, I, I guess, implicit in this, um, claim about, like, curiosity, including in experimentation, uh, with, uh, with frontier tools, is, uh, like, that needs to, uh, that needs to be a core principle for people who work at Cloudflare.

Yeah, I mean, I mean, a lot of things that we're doing, we're not, you know, uh, uh, w- we're, we're inventing new ways of doing things. I mean, the scale that we operate at, uh, uh, for the, uh, number of sites behind us, uh, um, and the the amount of, uh, free, uh, services we give away, it's just not possible with off the shelf technology. Uh, um, so you, you need people that can come in and literally invent new things, and and, uh, that, I mean, that that starts with curiosity.

I have a couple questions for you to to close out, and it's, uh, mainly about security, both, uh, and how to do that in a new way, both at, um, at Cloudflare and then how you think it's gonna work in the in the broader ecosystem. Um, what do you think is the like process by which, if, if half the engineering team is gonna go work on security and just like, fix seventy years of vulnerability, um, how do you attack that problem internally?

Assuming that not all software is perfect, even amazing production internet scale software, and then, you know, we'll talk about the ecosystem.

Yeah, I mean, I, I, I think largely, uh, you know, we're, you know, today we have one red team. I I think by the end of the, you know, the end of the year next year, we will probably have four or five red teams. Uh, so, uh, you know, break people out into, uh, groups that are actually, um, uh, you know, being more adversarial and actually, like, uh, uh, going out and actively trying to find, uh, uh, vulnerabilities.

Uh, I

Why is that the approach? When instead of like, oh, we're finally gonna get like our patching systems right, our processes right.

I mean, processes and those things could always be better. Uh, I mean, we have a vuln process, we have a patching process. Uh, really perfect, no, uh, but, uh, uh, you know, the best way I found for those types of things to get better is to out out of crisis, kinda comes, uh uh, that that has, that's how you get those things fixed. You know, when the vulns get too big for, uh, the engineering team to just do them on using their normal processes, you know, uh, engi- you know, engineers are inherently lazy in a good way, uh, and so they, they will, they will automate, uh, away those those things as they as they

as they need to, as they kind of realize that there's no other way way, way to do that. Um, so, you know, uh, you know, I think the focus needs to be on the discovery side, uh, and, uh, uh, uh, you know, people will do the right thing and figure out how to patch it in a in a scalable way over time.

do you express a philosophy on just prioritization of this versus, like, shipping new features? Uh, because, uh, I guess my understanding of it's. It's not as if we didn't have a backlog of like vulnerabilities in every large piece of software to go fix. It was just like whether or not that was a priority for engineering teams previously, uh, as one common state.

I, I, I mean, I I think, uh, you, you need to figure out how to do both. Um, you know, it, it, it might come at the expense of, uh, cost optimization or other things, but I mean, uh, a companies, uh, if if you're not shipping, you're dying, and and is is how we think about it. So, uh,

so it's not gonna be freeze and not do this.

oh, no, a, absolutely not, you know, uh, you need to be, you, you need to be able to continue, uh, um, building and shipping new things, um, but you need to be able to, uh, uh, make sure that you're doing it, you know, uh, securely and patching and and fixing bugs. And, uh, um, uh, I, I I think if we do it right, we'll actually be able to do them both faster. Uh, with AI, I mean, while, while AI has become the, uh, the the tool that's causing this kind of security apocalypse, uh, uh, vulnerability apocalypse, uh, to happen, uh, it it is also the tool that, uh, can help us, uh, solve it faster as well, right?

So, so it's, so it's on both sides of it.

Oh, where do you fall on this debate of, um, the role, uh, like, good and bad of open and closed models on the cyber front, right? Um, because the the the argument, the broad argument is well, having defensive and offensive cyber vulner- um, uh, cyber capabilities, you know, they're parallel in the same model, um, uh, despite, uh, safety and guardrails being being built into them. And so you can't have open defensive models without them also being offensive.

And then the argument, um, sort of, uh, that, or the concern around only having security capabilities in, um, a a set of frontier closed models is well, how are you gonna release them? And you can't possibly get them out to the distributed set of actors that need to defend, like, what, what do you think, or did I characterize that correctly?

Yeah, I mean, uh, I think every over time, it all has to be open because everyone's gonna get access to it anyways. And, uh, um, uh, you know, the

That's how open source tends to work.

yeah, the the bad guys, the bad guys are are are gonna find a way to get it. Um, so all you are is, uh, and and the, you know, the the top companies will have a way of getting it as well. So, uh, I I think, y- you're, you're just, uh, excluding, uh, a a mass population that just, uh, doesn't have have the access that that probably needs it.

Hm, and um, and then, so so, final question, just because, you know, Cloudflare, uh, very, uh, mission oriented, does carry, uh, uh, the weight of some, you know, uh, internet, uh, resilience on on its back. What about all of the people who can't afford to have four red teams, or, like, never had a red team to begin with that run important systems? Like, how do they, how do they protect themselves?

so, uh, you know, uh, uh, I, I would say, put your sites behind Cloudflare, uh, put your protection behind Cloudflare, build on Cloudflare. Uh, you know, uh, when these major vulnerabilities come out, uh, like the React one, uh, uh, last year, uh. We don't just give it to our paid customers, uh, who have, like, the advanced firewall and WAF capabilities, we we give to everyone. Uh, we view those kind of things as, uh, um, a part of the utility that we offer.

Um, and, uh, you know, uh, uh, um, uh, we wanna provide that, just like, you know, uh, we wanna provide performance for everyone. You know, when, before Cloudflare started, uh, you know, uh, there were probably 3,000 sites in the world that had a large scale CDN, uh, to cache their stuff at the edge. You know, now there's, uh, uh, hundreds of millions of sites that do, uh, so, uh, you know, Cloudflare's always viewed our, uh, our, our goal is providing, uh, democratizing those security and performance for everyone.

awesome, thanks so much for doing this, Dane, and and Thank you you guys

so much.

heard it first. Uh, we have the the agent kitties and the vuln pocal- vuln apocalypse. Am I pronouncing that right? Yeah, uh, but but it's resolvable. All right, thanks so much, guys. Thanks. Find us on Twitter at No Priors Pod. Subscribe to our YouTube channel if you wanna see our faces. Follow the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen. That way, you get a new episode every week. And sign up for emails or find transcripts for every episode at no dash priors dot com.