The biggest AI threat still comes from humans | E31

This Week In Startups is made possible by:

PayPal: paypal.launch.co

Today’s show:

Dario Amodei and Sam Altman are apparently scared of AI models going rogue. Swarms of agents spontaneously deciding to copy themselves over to thousands of computer systems and plot world domination.

Our panelists this week — Kevin Mandia (Armadin) and Soups Ranjan (Sardine AI) — investigate real AI-based attacks every single day, and they suggest we’re hyping the wrong concerns. The actual danger isn’t coming from an AI system that turns hostile. It’s human beings, like criminals, using AI to drain your bank account.

Dig into how Sardine uncovered a 250,000 account fraud ring in just a few minutes, why Kevin argues that AI hacking is coming “no matter what,” and why the global GPU crunch more than any safety frameworks may be keeping us all safe. For now.

Guests:

Soups Ranjan on X: https://x.com/soupsranjan Sardine AI: https://www.sardine.ai/

Kevin Mandia on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevin-mandia-0a07173/ Armadin: https://www.armadin.com/

Relevant Links:

"We Must Pace the Frontier" — Dario Amodei's Sept 12 essay

Axios: Anthropic and OpenAI CEOs call for a slowdown

Trump and the White House push back

Forbes: what the essay actually proposes

2026 OpenAI agent cyberattacks

GLM-5.3 — Z.ai's open-weight model

Hermes Agent — the agent framework Ranjan runs in a local harness

Timestamps:

0:00 Dario Amodei's "We Must Pace the Frontier" essay

1:51 Kevin Mandia: how scared should we be of agentic attack swarms?

6:53 Rogue agents vs. humans pointing AI at a target

9:52 250,000 fraudulent account signups in two days

16:59 Sam Altman's two ways AI fails

19:41 Open-weight models are catching up

21:39 Why proprietary data is the new moat

27:51 Mixing frontier models with open models

35:37 Bloomberg: Chinese hackers lean on DeepSeek because it's cheap

37:05 How much in-house expertise it takes to use AI well

42:56 Armadin's Palo Alto office and the Palantir playbook

1:02:54 AI and jobs: normal churn or something bigger?

1:07:19 What founders are actually saying in the group chats

1:08:49 Every meeting recorded, every meeting summarized

Subscribe to TWiAI on Substack: https://thisweekinai.ai

Follow Lon:

X: https://x.com/lons

Follow Jason:

X: https://twitter.com/Jason

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasoncalacanis

Thank you to our partners:

Check out all our partner offers: https://partners.launch.co/

Great TWIST interviews: Will Guidara, Eoghan McCabe, Steve Huffman, Brian Chesky, Bob Moesta, Aaron Levie, Sophia Amoruso, Reid Hoffman, Frank Slootman, Billy McFarland

Check out Jason’s suite of newsletters: https://substack.com/@calacanis

Follow TWiST:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/TWiStartups

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/thisweekin

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thisweekinstartups

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@thisweekinstartups

Substack: https://twistartups.substack.com