Build Secure-by-Design Tech Before the AI Vulnerability Cataclysm Hits
The AI era demands more than speed. It demands resilience.
The next tech bubble will not burst because of weak markets but because of weak security.
In the time it takes your startup to push a code update, an AI system can now find and exploit dozens of vulnerabilities. During DARPA’s AIxCC challenge, automated tools discovered 54 software flaws in just four hours, and those tools are now open source. On HackerOne’s U.S. leaderboard, AI systems already outperform human researchers in identifying bugs. Meanwhile, Russian state-backed group APT28 has been observed using large language models to generate live commands during cyber intrusions.
This is not theoretical. It is the new threat landscape.
Optimism will not shield us from what comes next. As Google’s Heather Adkins and Gadi Evron wrote in The AI Vulnerability Cataclysm Is Coming, “attackers are already in their AI singularity moment, whereas ours has not yet begun.” While developers use AI copilots and auto-code generation to accelerate work, these same tools often produce insecure code at scale. GitHub’s research shows that AI-assisted developers code 55.8 percent faster, but other studies find that generated code introduces critical vulnerabilities when left unchecked.
The Security Debt You Don’t See Until It’s Too Late
Too many early-stage companies treat security as a luxury, something to add later once they grow. Delay does not just create risk; it compounds it.
Every unchecked API, every AI-generated function that bypasses validation, and every ignored dependency update becomes part of an invisible security debt. That debt will come due when your product succeeds, and attackers will be waiting with automated exploit-generation tools capable of scanning and attacking at machine speed.
The recent Tea App data breach, which exposed over one million messages due to misconfigured APIs, shows how speed without discipline can undo years of brand building.
Secure-by-Design Isn’t Slowing Down. It’s Building to Last.
Building secure-by-design technology can sometimes cost more in the short term, but it is the cheapest investment a founder can make. Secure code is maintainable code. Trustworthy systems scale more easily. Customers, regulators, and acquirers all value products that can prove reliability and resilience over raw feature velocity.
Security is not a brake on innovation. It is the foundation of it.
Startups that integrate threat modeling, data provenance, and basic hardening from day one will move faster later, when compliance reviews, customer security questionnaires, and enterprise integrations dominate the sales cycle. It is better to “buy resilience, not features,” as Adkins and Evron advise, because resilience compounds like interest.
A Call to Founders and Funders
Founders: your goal is not only to build the next big product but to contribute to a resilient ecosystem. The startups that thrive in the AI era will be those that design defensively and innovate responsibly.
Venture capital and private equity: you have an equally critical role. Security should be part of due diligence, not an afterthought. Provide portfolio-wide access to security expertise and shared defensive resources. Encourage your companies to prioritize secure architectures the same way you reward strong growth metrics.
The cost of integrating security from the start is marginal compared to the losses from a breach. Investing in secure-by-design systems is an investment in product quality, customer trust, and long-term market stability.
Rebalancing the Scales: From Nodes to Networks, Supporting Every Link
Over the years I have seen how security failures at large, mature organizations often trace back to vulnerabilities in their supply chains or partner networks. Even the most advanced enterprise defense perimeters collapse when a smaller vendor or regional supplier is compromised. A weak link anywhere becomes an entry point that cascades throughout the system.
Small businesses are the backbone of most economies for a reason: they are countless, interconnected, innovative, and indispensable. But too often they are left without the resources, expertise, or incentives to build strong defenses. That makes them attractive targets and dangerous blind spots.
In a hyperconnected world, the security and resilience of each company is inextricably linked to every other. A single compromised node—an upstream SaaS vendor, a regional IT consultant, a logistics firm—can ripple out and threaten dozens, even hundreds, of others. Supply chain cyberattacks have surged by 431 percent between 2021 and 2023, illustrating how these dependencies amplify systemic risk. The World Economic Forum identifies supply-chain interdependencies as the top ecosystem cyber risk, calling them the main barrier to cyber resilience for 54 percent of large organizations. Nearly a third of business leaders report increases in supply chain attacks in just the past six months.
Because of this, large companies cannot treat small businesses as optional or peripheral. They must support them in achieving security goals and, more powerfully, demand that good security be built in from day one. By insisting on secure-by-design practices from partners, enterprise buyers send a clear signal that early investment in security is not optional but fundamental. That creates a market incentive for small and medium firms to adopt stronger development, testing, and hardening practices from the start.
That is a central reason I built CAS Strategies, to intervene across the full ecosystem. I understand both the links and the nodes. I see technology not merely as software or infrastructure but as a sociotechnical system composed of code, culture, incentives, governance, and economics. In previous writings I have emphasized that systems do not exist in isolation: a model’s accuracy is meaningless if users misinterpret its outputs; security controls are futile when people create workarounds; elegant architectures fail when organizational incentives conflict.
The challenge and the opportunity is to look not only at each node but at the network as a whole. Where does friction accumulate? Where do incentives collide or reinforce each other? Where does a fix in one company break processes downstream? Technology does not float above society, it rewires it. To shape impact, you cannot only focus on one object. You must trace the connections.
Resilience must be built at every level. Whether you are a founder building your first product, an enterprise leading a supply chain, or an investor backing the next wave of innovation, your choices are interconnected. Security is not a cost. It is the scaffolding for a healthier, more durable digital economy.
If your organization is ready to strengthen its foundation or support others in doing so, connect with CAS Strategies to explore how we can advance security, resilience, and trust together.
This was originally posted on Command Line with Camille. Follow on Substack for weekly insights from our founder.
