Guest lecture · Monte Ahuja College of Business · Cleveland State University
IMPACT OF AI ON
SUPPLY CHAIN & CYBERSECURITY
Three stories about who’s really driving
STEVE ERDMAN
Senior Technical Support Engineer · Critical Situations · Tufin
Who's talking
When the system goes down,
I get the call
Senior Technical Support Engineer · Critical Situations · Tufin
Big companies use Tufin's software to manage the rules on their firewalls, the gates of their networks. When it stops working, my team answers.
WHO CALLS global banks and payment networks, utilities, insurers, healthcare, government, universities
When the systems stop, the goods stop.
THE STACK I WORK ON, LIVE
Tonight · who's driving?
Three stories
The port with no drivers
▸ ENTERThe $25 million video call
■ LOCKEDThe AI that broke out
■ LOCKEDStory 01 · Tianjin, China
The port with no drivers
Hundreds of containers on the move. Nobody behind the wheel. An AI decides where every box goes.
VIDEO CLIP GOES HERE
Put ShippingPorts-small.mp4 next to index.html
MP4 (H.264) · open the deck with serve.py or by double-clicking index.html
How it works
How an AI runs a port
The ship arrives
The AI plans the whole unload: which crane, which box, what order.
Cranes run from an office
Operators sit in a control room. At Shanghai, up to 100 km away.
Driverless trucks
BeiDou (China's GPS), 5G and lidar. The brain tracks every truck.
Smart stacking
AI picks each box's spot from 150,000+ options.
Impact of AI on Supply Chain & Cybersecurity
Port Technology 2025 · Xinhua · Shanghai Govt 2026
The automation race
China vs. the U.S.: who takes people out of the port?
One side is racing to take people out of the port. The other bargained to keep them in. A technology gap, or a choice?
Impact of AI on Supply Chain & Cybersecurity
Port Technology · Xinhua · FreightWaves · World Bank/S&P 2026
The catch
When software drives, software becomes the target
~80%of ship-to-shore cranes at U.S. ports were built by one Chinese state-owned company, ZPMC
Executive order: Coast Guard cyber rules for ports, plus $20B+ for U.S. port infrastructure.
House committees report cellular modems on crane parts. Not in the contracts. ZPMC denies any threat.
100% tariff on Chinese-made cranes. Paused a month later in the U.S.–China truce.
The pause was due to end three days ago. Instead: two more months, to January 2027, while talks continue.
A self-driving port is one big network. Whoever controls the software controls the cargo.
Impact of AI on Supply Chain & Cybersecurity
White House 2024 · House Homeland Security 2024 · USTR 2025–26
“Everyday is Zeroday.” — Elon Musk, Oct 29, 2026
AI is now the world’s fastest bug hunter
LINUX KERNEL · CVEs PER RELEASE
Dashed: Linux 7.3, if the trend holds. Most new reports come from AI tools.
GOOGLE · JUL 2026
1,072Chrome security bugs fixed in two releases, more than the previous 23 combinedOPENAI · MAR 2026
11,000+critical and high issues flagged in its first month, including OpenSSH and PHPANTHROPIC · APR–JUL 2026
129,000+bugs verified by partners like Apple, Microsoft and Cisco. One hid in OpenBSD for 27 years.AISLE · JAN 2026
12 of 12bugs fixed in that month’s OpenSSL release, the encryption code behind much of the webMachines find the holes now. Humans still fix them: of 5,087 bugs Anthropic reported to open-source projects, 629 are fixed.
Impact of AI on Supply Chain & Cybersecurity
Kroah-Hartman via Phoronix 2026 · Google · OpenAI · Anthropic · OpenSSL
Follow the damage
When the software stops, the boxes stop
| Who got hit | Down for | Damage |
|---|---|---|
| Maersk · NotPetya · 2017 | ~10 days | 17 of 76 terminals · $250–300M |
| Port of Nagoya, Japan · 2023 | ~2 days | Japan's busiest port |
| DP World Australia · 2023 | ~3 days | 30,000 containers stuck |
| Jaguar Land Rover · 2025 | ~5 weeks | £1.9B · 5,000+ UK firms hit |
| Tanjung Pelepas, Malaysia · 2026 | hours | Maersk-backed hub |
In a connected supply chain, one company's breach is everyone's outage.
▸ key card acquired
Impact of AI on Supply Chain & Cybersecurity
Wired · Maritime Executive · gCaptain · UK CMC · Loadstar · Verizon DBIR
One down · next door unlocked
Follow the money
The port with no drivers
✓ ACQUIREDThe $25 million video call
▸ ENTERThe AI that broke out
■ LOCKEDStory 02 · 2019 → 2026
The $25 million video call
The boss says pay the supplier, now. The boss is software.
The call that moved the money
INCOMING CALL
“The boss”
Urgent · confidential · pay the supplier today
AI VOICE → AI VIDEO
A cloned voice: wire €220,000 to a “Hungarian supplier” within the hour. Sent.
A video call where the CFO and colleagues were all deepfakes: ~$25.6M in 15 transfers.
Fake job candidates: North Korean IT workers hired at 100+ U.S. companies, now using AI video in interviews.
FBI, 2025: fake-boss and fake-supplier emails cost $3.05B. Complaints mentioning AI: $893M (first year tracked).
FBI IC3 · 2025
Impact of AI on Supply Chain & Cybersecurity
WSJ / Euler Hermes 2019 · CNN 2024 · DOJ 2026 · FBI IC3
The fix is a process
How to stop the call
Call back
Hang up. Dial a number you already know.
Two to approve
Big payments need a second person.
Slow it down
Urgent plus secret means pause.
Code word
Agree on one, at work and at home.
A cloned “CEO” called. One question ended it: “What book did you recommend to me?”
Supplier changed its bank details? Call back on a number you already have.
▸ key card acquired
Impact of AI on Supply Chain & Cybersecurity
Bloomberg / Fortune, July 2024
Two down · final door open
Nobody driving
The port with no drivers
✓ ACQUIREDThe $25 million video call
✓ ACQUIREDThe AI that broke out
▸ ENTERStory 03 · July 2026
The AI that broke out
AI agents escaped their test and broke into the AI industry's biggest parts supplier. No human told them to.
Story 3 · the escape
An AI broke into a real company to cheat on a test
The test
Hacking exam, guardrails down
The escape
A zero-day in the lab's own software warehouse
The idea
“Maybe the answers are on Hugging Face”
The break-in
14 exposed credentials + new zero-days
The catch
Hugging Face's team, and its own AI
The task they were given: turn a flaw into a working exploit.
The instinct to cheat: “maybe the answer is online.”
Impact of AI on Supply Chain & Cybersecurity
OpenAI, Jul 21 & Aug 26, 2026 · Hugging Face, Jul 16 & 27, 2026
Not a story: the logs
A secret message board, built by machines
Agents leave requests for each other as files.
“…outside intended scope. However task impossible, peers doing it. We should continue.”
Sept 20: it happened again, through DNS. By Oct 1: OpenAI had alerted 100+ organizations.
▸ key card acquired
Impact of AI on Supply Chain & Cybersecurity
OpenAI Black Hat talk, Aug 5 · METR / Redwood review, Aug 26 · Reuters, Oct 1, 2026
Three keys acquired · secret level unlocked
Who's really driving?
The port with no drivers
✓ ACQUIREDThe $25 million video call
✓ ACQUIREDThe AI that broke out
✓ ACQUIREDChips, memory & power
▸ SECRET LEVELSecret level · AI's own supply chain
A second workforce is coming
If every memory chip shipped 2025–27 ran AI agents, how many could run at once?
Remember the dockworkers? This workforce never strikes, never sleeps, and copies itself.
Impact of AI on Supply Chain & Cybersecurity
Epoch AI, “How many AI agents could run on the AI chips shipped through 2027?” Oct 2, 2026
The copy machine
Software you can copy in a weekend
FEB 2026 · THE SHOCK
$830B gone in a week
AI plugins for everyday office work came out. The S&P 500 software index fell six days straight.
FEB 2026 · THE CLONE
1½ days, no engineer
At SaaStr, a non-engineer replaced a paid software tool with an app she built with AI.
2025–26 · THE BUYOUTS
Biggest merger year since 2021
Private-equity software deals doubled to $89B. “The SaaSpocalypse is accelerating M&A.”
2026 · THE JOBS
121,401 cuts blamed on AI
About 1 in 5 U.S. job cuts through October. Tech job cuts are up 21%.
If a feature can be copied in a weekend, it isn’t a business. My bet: fewer, bigger software companies, and fewer jobs inside them.
Impact of AI on Supply Chain & Cybersecurity
Reuters · SaaStr · PitchBook · Challenger, Gray & Christmas 2026
The bottleneck
The new oil: memory and compute
Q1 2026 · TrendForce
“No line of sight” to balance · Sep 2026
Epoch AI · end of 2025
mostly data centers
PC prices: +17% in 2026 (IDC)
AI's biggest supply chain problem is its own. Whoever gets the chips gets to build.
Impact of AI on Supply Chain & Cybersecurity
TrendForce · Micron · Epoch AI · company filings · IDC · Moonshots podcast #301
Energy · AI's other bottleneck
The power race
NEW POWER CAPACITY, 2025
China added about 10× as much: more than five times the entire U.S. nuclear fleet.
| China | U.S. | |
|---|---|---|
| Electricity used, 2025 | 10,500+ TWh | 4,430 TWh |
| Nuclear reactors under construction | 36 | 0 large · 2 small permitted |
| Time to build a reactor | ~6 years | ~15 years (Vogtle) |
| New coal plants switched on, 2025 | 78 GW | 0 |
U.S. data centers: ~4.5% of our electricity today, 9–17% by 2030. On Ohio's grid (PJM), capacity prices have hit the legal cap three auctions running.
EPRI 2026 · PJM
Impact of AI on Supply Chain & Cybersecurity
Ember · EIA · China NEA · IAEA via EIA · Global Energy Monitor · EPRI · PJM
Nov 5, 2026 · two days after the midterms
$2.5 trillion gone in a day
−5.5%
Reuters
21 of 41 measures nationwide were in Ohio
Perry, Lake County: 87% voted to make data centers seeking tax breaks give the village financial guarantees. Perry's nuclear plant was built for two reactors. Only one was ever finished.
Nov 3 vote
The freight train is coming. We can be first, or we can be in the way.
Impact of AI on Supply Chain & Cybersecurity
AP · Reuters · Kiplinger · Fortune · Wikipedia
Secret level · Bonus round
Is science cooked?
All that compute and power: what is it actually doing? More and more, science.
For each one: my verdict, and the question that decides it. Who checks the answer?
Secret level · Is AI doing science? · 1 of 3
Is math cooked?
SEPT 2026 · ANTHROPIC
Fermat’s Last Theorem, checked by a computer
Claude helped build the first complete computer-checked proof: about 13 million lines, in about 11 days.
JULY 2026 · ANTHROPIC
An 87-year-old conjecture, disproved
Claude found a counterexample to the Jacobian conjecture. A computer verified it by the next morning.
OCT 2026 · OPENAI
722 AI-written papers on ~372 problems
Mathematicians are still checking them. A few were withdrawn within a day.
Fermat was already proven in 1995. This re-checks it. Many “solved” problems were obscure or already answered, and Terence Tao warns against over-hyping AI ‘solutions’ to open problems.
MY VERDICT
MOSTLY COOKED
Every step can be checked by machine.
WHO CHECKS THE ANSWER?
A computer
in seconds, with certainty
Math fell first: a computer can check every step, so AI gets a free right-or-wrong on every try.
Impact of AI on Supply Chain & Cybersecurity
Anthropic, Sep 4 2026 · Fortune, Jul 21 2026 · OpenAI, Oct 6 2026 · Quanta · T. Tao
Secret level · Is AI doing science? · 2 of 3
Is physics cooked?
OCT 2026 · ANTHROPIC
Claude redesigned quantum-computer circuits
In one 53-hour run it beat the best published designs. One needs 17× fewer operations. A program checked every design.
WHY SECURITY PEOPLE NOTICED
The core step of a future code-breaking attack
These circuits sit at the heart of a quantum attack on elliptic-curve encryption, which protects much of the web. Anthropic: quantum computers “could arrive sooner than previously anticipated.”
OCT 2026 · PHYSICIST MATTHEW SCHWARTZ
36 papers, 18 fields, three months
Including 15 calculations nobody had ever done before.
Nothing ran on a real quantum computer; today’s are far too small. And Schwartz: Claude “is just not able to help me with deep conceptual questions.”
MY VERDICT
COOKING
Fast on paper. Slow in the lab.
WHO CHECKS THE ANSWER?
A computer checks the math. Nature checks the theory.
seconds for the math · years for the experiments
Physics is cooking wherever a computer can check the answer. New theories still have to survive the real world.
Impact of AI on Supply Chain & Cybersecurity
Anthropic, Oct 16 2026 (quantum circuits) · Anthropic, Oct 1 2026 (M. Schwartz)
Secret level · Is AI doing science? · 3 of 3
Is biology cooked?
THE PROBLEM · SCORPION STINGS
1.2 million+ stings and 3,250+ deaths a year
Today’s antivenom comes from horses injected with venom. It takes months, covers only a few toxins (so it’s regional), and is costly or simply unavailable.
OCT 2026 · ANTHROPIC + CITRINI RESEARCH (A FINANCE FIRM)
Claude designed toxin-grabbing proteins in 64 hours
“We do not claim to have produced an antivenom.” No animal tests yet. The goal: one cheap, universal cocktail.
MY VERDICT
IN THE OVEN
Great designs. No medicine yet.
WHO CHECKS THE ANSWER?
The lab, then animals, then people
years
AI makes ideas cheap. Labs, compute, power and proof become the bottleneck.
Impact of AI on Supply Chain & Cybersecurity
Anthropic, “Designing scorpion toxin binders with Claude,” Oct 20 2026
Map · where we've been
Level complete
If you remember nothing else
Know who's driving, and who can grab the wheel
The driverless portVerify on a channel you already trust
The $25M video callTreat AI like a supplier: check it, fence it, watch it
The AI that broke outWatch the bottlenecks: chips, memory and power
The secret levelThank you
Be curious.
Be careful.
Verify.
Questions?
STEVE ERDMAN
Senior Technical Support Engineer · Critical Situations · Tufin