“The Hackening” by Zvi

LessWrong (30+ Karma) · Oct 24, 2026 · 50m

Last week at a small conference, there was talk about a future event referred to as The Hackening. As in, within 6 to 12 months, many predicted that due to advanced AIs and AI agents the internet would become a severely hostile place. Some worried that this could rise to the level of ‘assume any phone connected to the internet is rooted’ and several people urged doing general crisis preparations on a personal level, in case of disruptions in supply lines, power, water or internet. It did not take long for things to escalate. The biggest hack is a flaw in PHP, which can be exploited to take…