Keynote: The End of Rare: Defending When Offense Is Cheap
David Weston
Black Hat USA 2026 · Day 2 · Main Stage
In his compelling Black Hat USA keynote, "The End of Rare: Defending When Offense Is Cheap," David Weston, Agentic Security Leader at Microsoft, delivered a stark warning and an optimistic roadmap for the future of cybersecurity. Weston argues that the foundational assumption of scarcity in cyberattacks—that undermining security boundaries is inherently difficult and costly—is rapidly being eroded by the advent of **Agentic AI**. This shift, he contends, is not merely an incremental improvement for attackers but a fundamental change in the economics of offense, making vulnerability discovery, exploit generation, and sophisticated evasion techniques cheaper, faster, and more accessible than ever before.
AI review
Weston makes a compelling case that AI is commoditizing offense faster than most defenders want to admit, and backs it with real internal Microsoft data that's hard to get elsewhere. The strategic framing is solid, the numbers are concrete, and the defensive roadmap is actually actionable rather than hand-wavy. Not a research talk, but a substantive executive keynote that says things most vendor keynotes won't.