Anne Neuberger

National Security & Technology Leader | General Partner and Head of Global Affairs, @a16z | Lecturer @Stanford | Board Member @CNASdc | Fellow @RUSI_org

[Anne Neuberger @AnneNeuberger]

Conversations on AI risk frequently overlook how vulnerable the status quo is and how much AI can help defenders.

Yesterday, I shared a plan to protect America’s critical infrastructure.

The opportunity is global: a flaw found and fixed in one country should strengthen every country using the same technology.

A serious AI safety agenda must explain how we will use AI to make an already dangerous world safer—and how soon.

Read more in @theeconomist: https://t.co/PpjsixoblA

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[Anne Neuberger @AnneNeuberger]

We cannot defend America’s infrastructure at human speed against attacks moving at machine speed.

In today’s WSJ, I make the case for using AI to protect the systems that keep our water flowing, hospitals operating and lights on.

Here’s the action plan: https://t.co/KsLLstiwFL

- Start with the few hundred operators and shared suppliers whose failure could cascade nationally.
-The White House must set outcome-based goals, like ensuring control systems aren't exposed to the Internet.
- Use AI to find and fix flaws. Contain what cannot be patched. Test whether essential services can keep running under attack.
- CEOs of critical infrastructure firms should be accountable for these outcome-based results.
- The White House, infrastructure operators, AI labs and technology providers each have a role. AI labs, for example, should work with critical infrastructure operators to build digital replicas so high risk patches can be tested offline.

AI can give defenders an advantage. We need to organize to use it.
https://t.co/anGftvo9Dm

[Anne Neuberger @AnneNeuberger]

AI can help cyber defenders more than attackers—IF we put it to work. Defenders can use their own code and network data to find and fix weaknesses faster.
That opportunity was central to my perspective at today’s B20 discussion on trusted AI.
Safety must account for the risks of delay.

[Anne Neuberger @AnneNeuberger]

Well said. The last point is particularly critical for operational systems that haven’t been patched/rebooted in a long time.

[Nikesh Arora @nikesharora]

What people don't know is that - frontier LLMs are not "defending customers”, they are exposing vulnerabilities - defense means - no false positives, comprehensive coverage, and a cost efficient solution. Any defense involves, sensors, inline inspection and enforcment, this can only come with a collaborative approach.

It's time for frontier LLMs to take a responsible approach to Cyber. I have been watching them consistently tout their abilities on finding vulnerabilities and daisy chaining them to be able to attack enterprises. I have also recently learnt about their efforts to create synthetic data to enhance their capabilities. I am all for it. But don't use this as a tactic to require each enterprise to scan for vulnerabilities again.

The narrative needs to change - we already know that we are in a cycle where all enterprises need to remediate their vulnerabilities. It is important to understand:

1. Vulnerability discovery is existential, because bad actors will - patching it is even more so. Expending efforts at more vulnerability discovery needs to be balanced with a solve.
2. LLMs are capable of recommending patches, but before a patch is developed, and deployed, it needs to be tested in its environment to ensure continued functioning of the application, and even now the solve has high false positives. No enterprise can do it all at speed.
3. Despite their enhanced capability, there is still significant difference in what vulnerabiities are found across all their Frontier LLM's, so customers will need to test across a multi-model harness. One LLM isn't the solution.
4. Most organizations do not have capacity to patch at the speed needed, especially the smaller ones.
5. We don't talk about operational technology enough, most critical infrastructure relies on OT and we need a solve for them in addition to Open Source.

The most obvious solution is virtual patching. This is a time tested technology that is currently available with cyber vendors for endpoints, WAF, cloud, network use cases. It also is not comprehensive enough currently, we need to scale this fast. We need a vulnerability clearing house and fast signature development for all these vulnerabilites to respond at speed across our industry.

[Anne Neuberger @AnneNeuberger]

I’m pleased to welcome Andy Baker as an advisor to a16z Global Affairs. I’ve valued Andy’s perspective on national security and look forward to working together to help our founders build partnerships that strengthen America and our allies.

[Anne Neuberger @AnneNeuberger]

https://t.co/OvYqdW7Yks

[Anne Neuberger @AnneNeuberger]

https://t.co/OvYqdW7Yks

[Anne Neuberger @AnneNeuberger]

Small cities, school districts and rural hospitals guard our most sensitive data with the fewest resources to defend it.

Today we’re launching Securing America’s Infrastructure Foundation, a new nonprofit, bringing AI-powered cyber defense to them at no cost.

SAIF starts with focused goals for on the ground impact and $25M in committed funding by a16z's founders. I’m joined by a founding board of Brian Barrios, @GoldsmithOnGov, Bob Lord, @vishalmisra and @philvenables.

If you lead a small city, rural school district or hospital system or want to join our team, please reach out: [email protected]

Read our full announcement here: https://t.co/Vb1WlpuQYV

[Anne Neuberger @AnneNeuberger]

https://t.co/3jwetsOMiw

[Anne Neuberger @AnneNeuberger]

https://t.co/3jwetsOMiw

[Anne Neuberger @AnneNeuberger]

a16z’s Japan office is open! Thank you to Governor Koike-san for the thoughtful remarks earlier today.

Japan is a world leader in technology and shows increasing innovation in sectors like AI, cybersecurity, robotics, and defense. Under a16z’s new Japan lead, Hitoshi Yoshida’s, we’re excited to do more work in Japan as we spend more time in markets that want to build together.

[Raghu Raghuram @RaghuRaghuram]

a16z is officially in Japan, led by Hitoshi Yoshida as Head of Japan, with the opening of our Japan office.

It was an honor welcoming Governor Koike at the opening earlier today. Japan combines world-class industrial capabilities with growing innovation in AI, cybersecurity, robotics, and defense. By bringing our portfolio companies and the Japanese ecosystem together, we aim to accelerate Japan’s AI-native economy and strengthen the ties between Silicon Valley and Japan.

As the former President of Microsoft Japan and Hewlett-Packard Japan, Hitoshi brings decades of technology leadership and deep relationships across business, industry, and government. We’re thrilled to have him lead our efforts in Japan and look forward to doing great work in partnership with the Japanese technology community.

日本代表として吉田仁志を迎え、日本オフィスを開設できたことを大変心強く光栄に思います。日本は、世界有数の産業基盤と、AI・サイバーセキュリティ・ロボティクス・防衛などの分野における目覚ましいイノベーションを兼ね備えています。
我々はこれまでになかった機会を、日本の若い世代に提供していくことを目指します。日本のテクノロジーコミュニティの皆様と共に、日本の市場やエコシステムの発展に貢献していけることを楽しみにしています。

[Anne Neuberger @AnneNeuberger]

Exactly !

[Alex Stamos @alexstamos]

This is reductive and does not assume best intent. I think what you are hearing in the discourse is the hope that:

1) Individuals with defensive cybersecurity and DFIR expertise will be included in post-mortems, alongside the young, very intelligent but also very AI-pilled individuals who happen to publicly espouse a narrow band of beliefs on AI harms. My suggestion, which I have made privately to your colleagues, would be to form tiger teams drawn from both DFIR firms and security teams at other AI companies to help investigate these incidents and publish the results under the auspices of the FMF.

2) We will start to hear from the well-respected security professionals at the Big-L Labs and not just the AI researchers, who live in a bit of a personal and professional bubble and have a tendency to dramatically quit instead of working the problem.

3) The big-L Labs will publish self-regulatory rules and follow them. The best way to regulate is just to do it. I would start with draft Level 1, 2 and 3 security architectures for RL/eval environments. This would create targets for NeoClouds and other providers. (1: normal runs, proxied internet access and monitoring. 3: cyber-tuned models, air gapped). Happy to contribute.

[Anne Neuberger @AnneNeuberger]

You can’t stop a rogue system just by asking it nicely. Cybersecurity learned this decades ago: true safety requires hardware-level enforcement, not just software rules.

Excited to see @JensenHuang and @nvidia launch the Open Agent Safety Platform.

In encryption, we rely on hardware "roots of trust"—a physical foundation that verifies who you are and guarantees actions down the line are legitimate. AI agents need that same hardware-backed chain of custody. Prompts influence what an AI wants to do, but silicon dictates what it can do.

It’s time for frontier AI labs to embed these agentic safety controls directly into their deployment pipelines.

[Jensen Huang @JensenHuang]

Today, with over 100 industry partners, we introduced the NVIDIA Open Agent Safety Platform, bringing together OpenShell and Sentry.

Artificial intelligence is extraordinary technology that will advance discovery, productivity, security, health, and prosperity for generations to come.

But its full promise can only be realized when people have confidence that AI is being built to be safe and deployed with wisdom and responsibility.

This is bigger than a single product. It's the beginning of an open ecosystem to build the trust layer for safe agent systems.

Together, we are building the foundation of the AI economy.

Trust and innovation are not in conflict. Safety is how trust is earned. We must build not only the most capable AI, but the most trusted AI, so that this extraordinary technology can realize its enormous promise for the world. https://t.co/ugYWQ1MyRi

[Anne Neuberger @AnneNeuberger]

Ahead of the Trump-Xi summit, I joined @NPR’s @npratc on the U.S. - China tech race.

The common ground is thin, but real. While Xi rejects American technology restrictions, he also acknowledges shared concerns, including misuse of models to accelerate development of bio or chemical weapons or accidental escalation. That narrow space is where summit discussions can actually build future joint efforts.

https://t.co/INVixI2Xl8

[Anne Neuberger @AnneNeuberger]

Taiwan is a critical technology partner - one committed to building with U.S. beyond chips, from AI to recycling critical minerals, from electronics and chip production. Productive meetings with @bikhim, Defense Minister Koo, @josephwutw, and leaders across industry and R&D. I was also honored to deliver the closing keynote at the second annual Whole of Society Resilience Conference.

[Anne Neuberger @AnneNeuberger]

Our current approach to cyber defense isn't keeping pace with how adversaries use AI to attack critical systems. In my latest @ForeignAffairs article, "The New Chinese Way of Cyberwar: How Beijing Will Weaponize Digital Chokepoints", I outline a new approach. Read it below - eager for your thoughts.
https://t.co/5Dzbt1JsVa

[Anne Neuberger @AnneNeuberger]

Defense tech is changing the pace and scale of innovation for America's military and militaries around the world. Not every ally brings the same thing to the table — some are diplomatic partners, some have got real game. Being strategic about how we leverage tech and allies matters more than ever in a world that's geopolitically unstable.

I unpacked this with @NGirishankar for @CSISEST's Betting on America.

[CSIS Economic Security and Technology Department @CSISEST]

🔴 Live now on Betting on America: Technology Is Security

@AnneNeuberger, General Partner and Head of Global Affairs at @a16z and former Deputy National Security Advisor for Cyber and Emerging Technology, joins Betting on America with @NGirishankar to make the case that technology leadership is security. She argues that sustaining leadership has become increasingly challenging as acceleration technologies like AI, robotics, quantum, and cyber converge, creating significant upsides for innovation but also downside risks. These technology disruptions will require policymakers, investors, and our alliances to adapt rapidly.

Watch here: https://t.co/U0EGcAP6om