Cryptographer Matthew Green: AI bug hunting will make law enforcement go dark again

Everything is about to "go dark"

After Usenix Security, Johns Hopkins cryptographer Matthew Green argues that AI-driven vulnerability discovery will make software too secure. He traces the 2010s Going Dark debate, where commercial exploit vendors broke the Apple–FBI deadlock. Now Anthropic's Mythos and OpenAI's cyber models can automate bug hunting; a brief US export block was mostly theater. Green warns that when AI exhausts exploitable bugs, law enforcement loses surveillance capability again—which could provoke more aggressive backdoor legislation, bad news for privacy.

Why it matters: Matthew Green (JHU cryptographer) connects AI-driven vulnerability discovery to the 'Going Dark' legislative debate with historical depth and a concrete case. Downside: it's a speculative essay, not empirical research, and the post doesn't quantify AI's bug-finding capability.