Summary
On No Priors, CrowdStrike founder and CEO George Kurtz explains how AI is changing both sides of cybersecurity. He argues the new apex predator is the “agent state” rather than the nation state: because unguarded models have flattened the traditional pyramid of adversaries, a hacktivist today can wield capabilities that once belonged to nation-state actors.
Kurtz describes a threat landscape defined by prompts rather than malware, with more vulnerabilities found and faster, more relentless attacks. On the defender side, he points to the rise of shadow AI inside enterprises, where agents such as Claude Code and Codex appear without security teams knowing where they run or which identity they operate under. CrowdStrike’s response includes tracing the full chain of events for each agent, from sub-agents to tool calls and MCP servers, and applying policy and blocking rules around them.
The conversation also covers CrowdStrike’s internal research effort, a superintelligence lab building security-focused models on top of open-weight Nemotron-class models, and why a purpose-built harness can deliver better results at lower cost. Kurtz makes the case that the only way to fight AI is with better AI.
📺 Source: No Priors: AI, Machine Learning, Tech, & Startups · Published October 22, 2026
🏷️ Format: Interview
