For years, the cybersecurity community warned of the impending AI arms race. In 2026, we are in the middle of it. Adversaries are actively leveraging generative AI to automate reconnaissance, dynamically mutate malware, and craft hyper-personalized social engineering campaigns at unprecedented speed. But the defense has a massive structural advantage: scale and intelligence.

In this opening comments, we will reveal how Mandiant consultants are leveraging AI to change the game for defenders and incident responders. We will explore how Mandiant and Google Cloud are turning the tide by integrating hyper-scale AI directly into our tools and methodologies to stay ahead of the Threat Actors and empower our clients with machine speed defense, giving defenders the ultimate high ground.