Amazon's Steve Schmidt on why your AI agents are your biggest security risk (Live at HumanX)
AI may be changing how companies build, but it's also changing how they get attacked, often by their own tools. Amazon Chief Security Officer Steve Schmidt has watched threat actors at every skill level get sharper, faster, and harder to contain. The risk he's most focused on, however, isn't coming from outside the firewall.
On this episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, we're bringing you a conversation Rebecca Bellan had with Schmidt at the HumanX conference in San Francisco. The two dug into what AI is already doing to the threat landscape and how Amazon is rethinking identity, containment, and human oversight to keep agents in check.
Listen to the full episode to hear about:
Why shadow AI inside your own organization may be a bigger liability than the hackers trying to get in
What agentic identity means in practice, and how Amazon traces every agent action back to a human
How startups with five people (and no CISO) can manage their AI security, and why containment is becoming the defining security challenge of the agentic era
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Middle East Messaging, Microsoft's $69B Deal, and Guest Rick Wilson
Kara and Scott discuss whether companies should speak up or stay silent on the Israel-Hamas War. Then, what Microsoft's $69 billion acquisition of video game company Activision Blizzard means for future tech mergers. Plus, Taylor Swift rules the box office and Rite Aid files for bankruptcy. Our Friend of Pivot is Lincoln Project co-founder and former Republican strategist, Rick Wilson, who breaks down the speaker's race and looks ahead to the 2024 election.
Also, Kara has her annual cold.
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Lincoln Project Co-Founder Steve Schmidt: “The Pro-Democracy Side Of This Argument Cannot Be Gentle”
When Steve Schmidt was a senior advisor on John McCain’s campaign in 2008, Twitter was a curiosity. Now, he and a number of former Republican establishment members are using social media deftly to make the case against President Trump with the Lincoln Project. Their anti-Trump ads seem to go viral at least once a week, and may indeed influence the outcome of the election. Schmidt, a Lincoln Project cofounder, joins the Big Technology Podcast to discuss the evolution of the Republican Party since the McCain days, and how social media is changing politics.
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