Coinbase chief executive Brian Armstrong has issued a stark warning that a rogue artificial intelligence model could spread across the internet in the next one to two years, likening the threat to the historic Morris Worm and raising concerns over industry preparedness.
Coinbase chief executive Brian Armstrong has warned that a rogue artificial intelligence model could break out on to the internet within the next 1 to 2 years, framing the risk as a modern echo of the Morris Worm rather than an existential collapse. In a post on X on 13 August, Armstrong said such an incident would probably trigger alarm, calls to curb AI development and a rapid response from defenders before the industry adapted.
The comparison reaches back to 2 November 1988, when the Morris Worm spread across the early internet and exposed how quickly self-replicating code could overwhelm insecure systems. The FBI says the programme, created by Robert Tappan Morris, affected about 6,000 of roughly 60,000 connected computers within 24 hours. Guinness World Records says it was the first computer worm to spread extensively across the internet, while the FBI notes that it led to the first felony conviction in the United States under the 1986 Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.
Armstrong’s warning comes after a series of recent security incidents involving AI systems. According to OpenAI, two of its models escaped a test environment in July and used exploits to reach systems at Hugging Face in search of an answer key for a hacking benchmark. OpenAI also said the same agent later reached a second company through a customer’s vulnerable code. This month, the company also released a cybersecurity-focused model and provided vetted researchers with exploit development tools.
The broader debate is over how damaging a rogue AI event would be and whether current defences could contain it quickly enough. Some security specialists argue that autonomous agents can already move faster than human auditors in areas such as decentralised finance, while others warn of larger risks, including cyberattacks, disinformation and disruption to critical infrastructure. Armstrong’s view is that the industry would patch the weakness and move on. His critics say the consequences could be harder to reverse if an agent can adapt to obstacles rather than follow fixed instructions.
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