Future Proof from Semafor Technology
Oct 7, 2026 · 1 hr 6 min · 13 segments
In the debut episode of *Future Proof from Semafor Technology*, Cognition CISO and former Facebook security chief Alex Stamos goes off on the “nihilism” ripping through Silicon Valley. He joins…
Alex StamosGuest
Reed AlbergottiHost
I think it'll be last week when this airs, but you have a new job as chief information security officer at Cognition, which is one of the hot Silicon Valley startups, and I think one of the first ones that, that really sort of pioneered the harness around these, you know, AI models to create agents, uh, for coding.
And, and that has become a, a big topic of discussion, especially since the Hugging Face attack.
You know, so the security aspect of this whole harness, you know, revolution, if you wanna call it, over the last year has become really interesting.
Um, congrats on the new job, but my guess is, correct me if I'm wrong, this is not, like, a, your traditional CISO job.
Well, I'm, I'm not sure there are any traditional CISO jobs anymore, to be, to be honest.
I just, uh, started the week, uh, hanging out with a bunch of Cognition's customers, which are, uh, you know, one of the reasons I was interested in Cognition.
Uh, and one of the things that's interesting is, you know, these customers are these huge industrials, these big banks, big European companies that actually make physical stuff.
But CISOs of these companies that are 100 years old, 150 years old, their jobs are completely overturned as well.
Well, what are you gonna be doing at Cognition? Give us a, a glimpse into the, the next, uh, few years for you.
I think it'll be last week when this airs, but you have a new job as chief information security officer at Cognition, which is one of the hot Silicon Valley startups, and I think one of the first ones that, that really sort of pioneered the harness around these, you know, AI models to create agents, uh, for coding.
And, and that has become a, a big topic of discussion, especially since the Hugging Face attack.
You know, so the security aspect of this whole harness, you know, revolution, if you wanna call it, over the last year has become really interesting.
Um, congrats on the new job, but my guess is, correct me if I'm wrong, this is not, like, a, your traditional CISO job.
Well, I'm, I'm not sure there are any traditional CISO jobs anymore, to be, to be honest.
I just, uh, started the week, uh, hanging out with a bunch of Cognition's customers, which are, uh, you know, one of the reasons I was interested in Cognition.
Uh, and one of the things that's interesting is, you know, these customers are these huge industrials, these big banks, big European companies that actually make physical stuff.
But CISOs of these companies that are 100 years old, 150 years old, their jobs are completely overturned as well.
Well, what are you gonna be doing at Cognition? Give us a, a glimpse into the, the next, uh, few years for you.
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