Last month, I attended Blackhat and Def Con, Def Con is one of the biggest hacking conferences, many interesting new hacks were discussed and the conference learnings are worthy of much entertaining and interesting discourse. However, the headline is DARPA held the Cyber Grand Challenge, the world’s first all machine automated hacking competition just before the official start of Def Con. Three years in the making with a 2 million dollar prize for first place and a cost of over 50 million dollars for Darpa, it proved that machines, at machine-speed, can provide scalable cyber defense including the ability to identify existing and new vulnerabilities, patch and defend the system in real time, while keeping the system available and fully functioning. Mayhem, the machine that won, was invited to participate in the capture the flag competition with the best hacker teams at Def Con, and beat them. This is an extraordinary and news worthy event, and I cannot overstate the significance to the future of Cyber warfare.  I also expect to see more rapid advances than I previously expected in areas where automation plus specialized “AI” can make a difference.