Zainab Majid, co-founder of Asymmetric Security, joins Jacob for a conversation on the intersection between AI Safety and cybersecurity, as well as the future of digital forensics. Drawing from years of incident response work, she explains how cyber attacks actually unfold, why AI is changing both offense and defense, and how her team is building AI-native tools to investigate breaches faster and more effectively. Other topics explored in this episode include trust in the AI/cybersecurity industries, the realities behind cybersecurity hype, and the challenge of keeping humans meaningfully involved as these systems become more capable. Zainab also gives practical, actionable advice on how you can protect yourself.

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Chapters

(00:00) - Intro
(04:34) - Zainab's Background
(08:49) - Jacob & Zainab's History
(16:03) - Founding Asymmetric Security
(24:49) - How to Know Who You Can Trust
(36:31) - The Threats Asymmetric Is Built to Fight
(01:05:54) - What's Asymmetric Tackling Next?
(01:15:33) - Glasswing, Dual Use, and Power Concentration
(01:24:21) - The Relationship Between AI Safety & Cybersecurity
(01:37:01) - Outro

Critical Links
Below are the most important links for this episode. For more, visit the episode page on Kairos.fm.

Asymmetric Security website
EvalEval @ NeurIPS workshop paper - Rethinking CyberSecEval
Meta AI report - Purple Llama CyberSecEval
Anthropic press release - Project Glasswing
Schneier on Security blogpost - What Anthropic’s Mythos Means for the Future of Cybersecurity