{"title":"Amazon's Steve Schmidt on AI agents gone rogue (Live at HumanX) | Equity Podcast","description":"AI may be changing how companies build, but it's also changing how they get attacked, often by their own tools. Amazon Chief Security Officer Steve Schmidt has watched threat actors at every skill level get sharper, faster, and harder to contain. The risk he's most focused on, however, isn't coming from outside the firewall.\n\nOn this episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, we're bringing you a conversation Rebecca Bellan had with Schmidt at the HumanX conference in San Francisco. The two dug into what AI is already doing to the threat landscape and how Amazon is rethinking identity, containment, and human oversight to keep agents in check.\n\nSubscribe to Equity on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod.\n\nChapters:\n00:00 Intro\n01:05 How AI is leveling up threat actors at every skill level\n02:16 The internal risk: shadow AI and the \"open Claude on your laptop\" problem\n04:44 Agentic identity and why Amazon traces every action back to a human\n07:18 Guardrails as an attack surface\n09:50 Containment architecture: why agents should never run free\n12:42 Human-in-the-loop and contingent authorization at Amazon\n14:58 Security advice for startups: know what you have, label it early\n18:35 Do startups actually need a CISO?\n19:29 Outro","kind":"Single Item","siteid":"MRgIYcoC","playlist":[{"title":"Amazon's Steve Schmidt on AI agents gone rogue (Live at HumanX) | Equity Podcast","mediaid":"FQVja2BQ","link":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/previews/FQVja2BQ","image":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/FQVja2BQ/poster.jpg?width=720","images":[{"src":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/FQVja2BQ/poster.jpg?width=320","width":320,"type":"image/jpeg"},{"src":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/FQVja2BQ/poster.jpg?width=480","width":480,"type":"image/jpeg"},{"src":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/FQVja2BQ/poster.jpg?width=640","width":640,"type":"image/jpeg"},{"src":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/FQVja2BQ/poster.jpg?width=720","width":720,"type":"image/jpeg"},{"src":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/FQVja2BQ/poster.jpg?width=1280","width":1280,"type":"image/jpeg"},{"src":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/FQVja2BQ/poster.jpg?width=1920","width":1920,"type":"image/jpeg"}],"siteid":"MRgIYcoC","duration":1171,"content_source_type":"file","pubdate":1778693167,"updated":"","description":"AI may be changing how companies build, but it's also changing how they get attacked, often by their own tools. Amazon Chief Security Officer Steve Schmidt has watched threat actors at every skill level get sharper, faster, and harder to contain. The risk he's most focused on, however, isn't coming from outside the firewall.\n\nOn this episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, we're bringing you a conversation Rebecca Bellan had with Schmidt at the HumanX conference in San Francisco. The two dug into what AI is already doing to the threat landscape and how Amazon is rethinking identity, containment, and human oversight to keep agents in check.\n\nSubscribe to Equity on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod.\n\nChapters:\n00:00 Intro\n01:05 How AI is leveling up threat actors at every skill level\n02:16 The internal risk: shadow AI and the \"open Claude on your laptop\" problem\n04:44 Agentic identity and why Amazon traces every action back to a human\n07:18 Guardrails as an attack surface\n09:50 Containment architecture: why agents should never run free\n12:42 Human-in-the-loop and contingent authorization at Amazon\n14:58 Security advice for startups: know what you have, label it early\n18:35 Do startups actually need a CISO?\n19:29 Outro","tags":"equity,agentic AI,Equity Podcast,amazon,AI security,AWS,HumanX,cybersecurity","sources":[{"file":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/FQVja2BQ.m3u8","type":"application/vnd.apple.mpegurl"},{"file":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/videos/FQVja2BQ-A4a4avGx.m4a","type":"audio/mp4","label":"AAC Audio","bitrate":113445,"filesize":16605575},{"file":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/videos/FQVja2BQ-ILP3TxNb.mp4","type":"video/mp4","height":180,"width":320,"label":"180p","bitrate":260349,"filesize":38108634,"framerate":25.0},{"file":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/videos/FQVja2BQ-ObltmdYF.mp4","type":"video/mp4","height":270,"width":480,"label":"270p","bitrate":395578,"filesize":57902863,"framerate":25.0},{"file":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/videos/FQVja2BQ-AKHpU3QI.mp4","type":"video/mp4","height":360,"width":640,"label":"360p","bitrate":484928,"filesize":70981338,"framerate":25.0},{"file":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/videos/FQVja2BQ-N26QHIgL.mp4","type":"video/mp4","height":406,"width":720,"label":"406p","bitrate":571326,"filesize":83627853,"framerate":25.0},{"file":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/videos/FQVja2BQ-Cm3xYLF4.mp4","type":"video/mp4","height":540,"width":960,"label":"540p","bitrate":862343,"filesize":126225535,"framerate":25.0},{"file":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/videos/FQVja2BQ-lF2gWf1A.mp4","type":"video/mp4","height":720,"width":1280,"label":"720p","bitrate":1324056,"filesize":193808716,"framerate":25.0},{"file":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/videos/FQVja2BQ-VdyLbzBg.mp4","type":"video/mp4","height":1080,"width":1920,"label":"1080p","bitrate":2574553,"filesize":376850327,"framerate":25.0}],"tracks":[{"file":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/strips/FQVja2BQ-120.vtt","kind":"thumbnails"}],"variations":{}}],"feed_instance_id":"1e923195-4a2a-4775-a235-b42ee4faf3f3"}