This week, Las Vegas hosts three cyber conferences, the largest being Black Hat. Each year the local Vegas media generally decries attendees of cyber conferences as "pencil-necked geeks" who generally avoid boosting the local economy through foolishly losing money at the gaming tables. But even the strip's highest rollers must be impressed by the multi-trillion-dollar gamble that the tech industry is making on the rapid rollout of agentic AI.
Given the cybersecurity hairball that agentic AI represents, it is hardly surprising that this year's Black Hat event is focused squarely on AI. A major part of the focus is on installing effective guardrails when creating AI agents to try and ensure they do not go rogue and start hacking into other organisations. A greater challenge being discussed is how to stop cybercriminals, who have become increasingly adept at using AI to scale up their attacks, from corrupting AI agents and even taking entire control of them. This can be surprisingly easy to do, as a single secretly weaponised spreadsheet, for example, is frequently all that is needed to infiltrate an AI agent.
Another hot topic this year is the security challenge posed by companies including those from the US, the EU and the UK increasingly turning to Chinese AI-powered large-language models (LLMs), with the share of tokens used by US firms on Chinese AI models reportedly hitting as high as 46 percent in the first half of 2026. The take-up is reported to be the result of the cost-effectiveness of the open-source Chinese AI models.
Black Hat's opening session, Cyber Power in the Age of AI, boasted some heavy hitters in the persons of Katie E. Sutton, the US assistant secretary for cyber policy, and Brett Leatherman, the assistant director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)'s cyber division. The conference also hosted the world-premiere screening of cyberwar documentary, Midnight in the War Room, on Wednesday.
DEF Con and BSides
The second biggest cyber conference taking place this week in Vegas is DEF CON (August 6-9). Jake Braun, who serves as DEF CON Franklin's Executive Director, will update the hacker community about the Franklin project, which launched at DEF CON in 2024 and which enlists hackers to secure critical infrastructure. Hundreds of volunteers have helped 21 different water utilities in seven states so far. This is especially timely as attacks against US water facilities increase.
The smallest of the three conferences taking place this week is BSides Las Vegas (August 3-5). It offers technical talks and training sessions for practitioners and has a Hire Ground career-focused track centered on job hunting, interviewing, career-building, networking, and using AI to remain relevant as a security professional.