The volunteer internet sleuths hunting down rogue AI agents; The Washington Post, October 2, 2026

 

Gerrit De Vynck

 and 

Miriam Waldvogel

, The Washington Post; The volunteer internet sleuths hunting down rogue AI agents

Their findings revealed the tech industry has a bigger problem than it previously acknowledged.

"Zhang and her colleagues at Transluce are part of an informal network of hackers and researchers hunting rogue AI agents online, exposing new and surprising details about the misbehavior of technology that in some cases initially went undetected by the multibillion-dollar companies that created it.

The people doing that work are mostly young AI-natives who work at small start-ups or nonprofits or who hunt for rogue AI agents in their spare time. Over the past several weeks, the community of researchers has found and exposed dozens of instances of AI agents leapfrogging around the web to probe and hack into a growing list of websites.

The revelations have fueled calls from federal lawmakers for AI companies, especially OpenAI, to more quickly disclose what they know about the actions of their own agents. And they have added momentum to bipartisan discussions on Capitol Hill about implementing greater government oversight of the industry."

The Lost Emails of the I.R.S. Point to a Wider Problem; New York Times, 6/30/14

Derek Willis, New York Times; The Lost Emails of the I.R.S. Point to a Wider Problem:

"Even requiring agencies to store emails as electronic records rather than on paper might not solve the federal government’s problems with record management. Carl Malamud, the founder and president of the nonprofit Public.Resource.Org, which places state and federal government information in the public domain, described a deeper problem: Despite spending billions on information technology, the federal government has not kept pace with advances in technology. It has developed a defensive posture when the public and Congress demand information.

“In my view, one reason people dump so much on the Civil Service is that the Civil Service is forced to work with the most God-awful tools known to modern organizations,” Mr. Malamud said. “We spent $80 billion a year on I.T., and I’ve heard that 75 percent of that is a total waste, the end result being that we paralyze the bureaucracy and they in turn develop a real attitude.”

Mr. Malamud’s own experience with the I.R.S. includes performing audits on publicly available information to ensure that taxpayer data such as Social Security numbers do not get released by the agency. (He found tens of thousands of examples in one I.R.S.-managed database last year). The problem, he said, “is a people problem, not a money problem.”

A 2010 report from the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, agreed. “Technology alone cannot solve the problem without commitment from agencies,” it concluded. Insufficient training and senior officials who did not follow established procedures were among the concerns that the G.A.O. cited, calling email management “especially problematic.”"