The consensus among government IT leaders in 2026 is that AI is both a blessing and a curse: It can help identify gaps in your cybersecurity systems, but the bad actors can use that same AI to get in more quickly and with devastating effect.
As Utah Director of AI Christian Napier put it at the National Association of State CIOs Midyear Conference in April, “It’s an arms race.” It’s not a new idea, but the introduction of AI has only exacerbated the problem.
Napier pointed to Anthropic’s Claude Mythos, which has the ability to both find and exploit vulnerabilities, as a real and present risk for governments. And industry leaders say similar AI tools are sure to emerge in short order, necessitating large-scale automation on the part of government IT leaders.
He also said that given the sheer volume of what the people working on the frontlines of cybersecurity have to wade through, there’s no way any organization can effectively do cyber in this moment without artificial intelligence. He said that, in addition to software developers, cybersecurity staff should be the “heaviest users of AI.”
Video transcript:
It’s an arms race. It’s been an arms race for decades, and the arms race is just accelerating, and I’m sure everybody’s heard in the news about Claude Mythos, and you know, its ability to both exploit, or identify vulnerabilities and exploit those vulnerabilities. You cannot manage cybersecurity, you cannot deliver cybersecurity without AI anymore. It’s just impossible. You know, we use technologies that are looking at, you know, a trillion parameters of traffic on a daily basis. There’s no way a human being can do this. You have to use AI. Your cybersecurity team should be at the forefront of using these technologies. They should be the heaviest users of AI, along with your software developers, because it’s an absolute must now. You cannot protect from your vulnerabilities without using these technologies.
Lauren Kinkade is the managing editor for Government Technology magazine. She has a degree in English from the University of California, Berkeley, and more than 15 years’ experience in book and magazine publishing.
Noelle Knell is the executive editor for e.Republic, responsible for setting the overall direction for e.Republic’s editorial platforms, including Government Technology, Governing, Industry Insider, Emergency Management and the Center for Digital Education. She has been with e.Republic since 2011, and has decades of writing, editing and leadership experience. A California native, Noelle has worked in both state and local government, and is a graduate of the University of California, Davis, with majors in political science and American history.
