Cybersecurity will be more important in future conflicts than military might: Jay Chaudhry, CEO of Zscaler
Cyber capabilities powered by artificial intelligence will play a decisive role in future conflicts, potentially outweighing traditional military force, according to Jay Chaudhry, founder, chairman and chief executive of cloud security firm Zscaler.
Speaking at an AI summit in New Delhi, Chaudhry said modern warfare is becoming increasingly technology-driven, with cyber strength emerging as a critical factor. He warned that major disruptions to digital infrastructure — such as banking networks or power grids — could determine outcomes without conventional combat.
He noted that as AI systems grow more capable, they will be used both to launch and to defend against cyberattacks. This makes it necessary, he said, to counter AI-enabled threats with equally advanced AI-driven security tools.
Explaining the mechanics of cyber risk, Chaudhry said attacks typically begin with mapping an organisation’s attack surface, which includes all exposed digital entry points such as public IP addresses, firewalls, VPNs, and application portals. The broader the exposure, the higher the vulnerability.
He also cautioned that the rapid rise of AI agents used for software development may introduce new classes of security flaws. In the near term, AI-assisted and agentic coding is expected to increase the number of vulnerabilities as more auto-generated code enters production systems.
Chaudhry advocated a zero-trust security architecture as the most effective defensive approach. Under this model, no user or system is trusted by default, and continuous verification is required across networks and applications.
He added that India is placing increasing emphasis on sovereign AI models and domain-specific systems, particularly in cybersecurity. Models trained on specialised cyber telemetry and global cyber regulations can deliver stronger results at lower cost than broad, general-purpose systems, he said, because they require less training data and more focused optimisation.
