Nik Seetharaman has watched the offensive side of cybersecurity adopt AI tools at a pace defenders can't match. So, he built a company to close that gap.

Before founding Wraithwatch, he was the first CIO of Anduril, a defense tech company he joined when it was 100 people and helped scale through hypergrowth. His path (Palantir to SpaceX to building AI-native cyber defense platforms for over a dozen federal agencies) gives him a view most CIOs and CISOs don't have.

In this episode, Nik makes the case that AI has created a forcing function for CIOs and CISOs to finally work together, plus, shares how to run a pilot that actually moves the needle, why blocking AI tools backfires, and what the OpenClaw security drama gets right and wrong.

3 Takeaways:

The CIO-CISO turf war is now a competitive disadvantage. Whoever figures out AI collaboration first wins.
Treat every internal AI rollout like a startup: small cohort, parallel security review, measure the outcome in revenue.
The best investment a new CIO can make isn't a security stack—it's coffee with people.

Chapters:
[01:46] What Wraithwatch Builds
[05:25] AI Forces CIO / CISO Alignment
[07:55] OpenClaw Security Tradeoffs
[09:21] SecOps at Developer Speed
[12:49] Rolling Out Risky Tools
[14:44] Why Leaders Must Use AI
[19:01] How to Reorg for the AI Era
[22:30] Vendor Hunting for Grand Slams
[25:49] $30M Contract and What's Next

About Nik:
Nik Seetharaman is the Founder and CEO of Wraithwatch, a next-generation cyber defense company building AI-native command-and-control platforms for the United States and its allies. He co-founded the company alongside fellow SpaceX alumni Grace Clemente and Carlos Moss. Before starting Wraithwatch, Nik served as the first CIO of Anduril, a defense technology company he joined when it was approximately 100 people, where he built the cybersecurity function from the ground up and saw the company through hypergrowth. His career spans cybersecurity leadership roles at Palantir, SpaceX, and Andel, giving him a rare vantage point across the offense-defense asymmetry that defines today's threat landscape.

Guest Highlights:
"You can't have the attackers operating at the speed of a machine out here, and the defenders operating at the speed of a human in here."

"Any business that's able to figure out this equation and execute it successfully is going to just crush their competition—because they're gonna move at warp speed and their competition will still be moving at human speed."

"If I could rewind my first days at Andel, it's not to deploy more controls, it's not to learn about some new security stack or software—I would've just had more coffee with people. The human capital you build doing that pays off in spades. Because that's the thing that's rare in an age where the machines are taking over."

Get Connected:

Ian Faison: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ianfaison
Nik Seetharaman: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nikseetharaman/

Resources:

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