Black Hat has announced the Keynote lineup for Black Hat USA 2026 (August 1–6, Mandalay Bay Convention Center, Las Vegas). The Keynotes will address U.S. cyber policy for an AI-driven era, the evolution of offensive and defensive security coordination, and the scientific foundations of vulnerability research, with presentations from White House National Cyber Director Sean Cairncross, senior officials from CISA, FBI, and DoW, David Weston of Microsoft, and Professor Yan Shoshitaishvili of Arizona State University .
Black Hat USA 2026 Keynotes feature White House National Cyber Director Sean Cairncross, CISA, FBI, and DoW officials, plus Microsoft's David Weston and ASU Professor Yan Shoshitaishvili .
Opening Session (Aug 4): "Cyber Power in the Age of AI" with government officials on U.S. cyber policy, offensive coordination, and critical infrastructure defense .
David Weston (Aug 5): "The End of Rare: Defending When Offense Is Cheap" on shifting from reactive patching to proactive strategies like memory-safe languages and formal verification .
Yan Shoshitaishvili (Aug 6): "Vulnerability Research in the Agentic Age" on the scientific foundations of discovering thousands of vulnerabilities across IoT, browsers, kernels, and bootloaders .
The conference features over 100 peer-reviewed Briefings, 100+ Trainings, Summits, Arsenal tool demos, and new forums including the Cyber War Forum and Black Hat(HER) .
Key Briefing topics include AI offense & defense, supply chain security, and hardware/embedded systems exploitation .
Black Hat, the cybersecurity industry's most established and in-depth security event series, today announced the Keynote lineup for Black Hat USA 2026 (August 1–6, Mandalay Bay Convention Center, Las Vegas). These will include the Opening Session fireside chat with White House National Cyber Director Sean Cairncross, followed by a panel discussion with Nick Andersen, Acting Director, Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA); Brett Leatherman, Assistant Director, Cyber Division, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI); and Katherine (Katie) E. Sutton, Assistant Secretary of War for Cyber Policy and Principal Cyber Advisor to the Secretary of War, Department of War (DoW). Additional Keynotes will feature David Weston, Agentic Security, Microsoft; and Yan Shoshitaishvili, Associate Professor, Arizona State University .
Keynotes will address U.S. cyber policy for an AI-driven era, the evolution of offensive and defensive security coordination, and the scientific foundations of vulnerability research. These presentations will take place August 4–6 .
Speakers: Sean Cairncross (National Cyber Director, The White House), Nick Andersen (Acting Director, CISA), Brett Leatherman (Assistant Director, Cyber Division, FBI), and Katherine (Katie) E. Sutton (Assistant Secretary of War for Cyber Policy; Principal Cyber Advisor to the Secretary of War, DoW) .
Topic: Director Cairncross will open the session with a fireside conversation on how the Administration is shaping U.S. cyber policy for an AI-driven era, focusing on strengthening government-industry coordination, the evolving role of offensive cyber operations, and the intersection of AI and cyber policy. Following his fireside conversation, senior U.S. government officials will examine how agencies are translating these priorities into operational action, from disrupting cybercriminal networks and defending critical infrastructure, to coordinating offensive and defensive operations across government .
Speaker: David Weston, Agentic Security, Microsoft .
Topic: Weston will examine how AI-powered vulnerability discovery and exploit generation are forcing defenders at cloud providers, platform vendors, and enterprise security teams to shift from reactive patching and detection toward proactive strategies, including memory-safe languages, formal verification, and automated remediation .
Speaker: Yan Shoshitaishvili, Associate Professor, Arizona State University .
Topic: Shoshitaishvili will explore the scientific underpinnings of what the cyber community has long treated as an art form: vulnerability research. He will discuss his journey in the industry and how his research has uncovered thousands of vulnerabilities in targets ranging from IoT devices to web browsers, kernels, and bootloaders by using dozens of different tools, techniques, and paradigms .
The conference will feature over 100 peer-reviewed Briefings, over 100 Trainings, a full day of Summits, over 120 Sponsored Sessions, over 80 Arsenal tool demos, plus new specialized forums and events including the Cyber War Forum and Black Hat(HER) . Key themes in the programming include AI & Autonomous Threats, Cyber Conflict & Live Operations, Systems Under Stress, and Identity, Trust, & Control .
Notable Briefings include sessions on compiler-introduced vulnerabilities (C and Its Consequences), GPU privilege escalation attacks (GPUBreach), and Unicode-based attack vectors (Beyond Normalization) . Additional Briefings topics include AI-driven exploitation of vulnerabilities in hardware and embedded systems, supply chain security, and practical tooling for defenders such as EDR for code repositories and sandboxing frameworks .
About Black Hat
Black Hat is the cybersecurity industry's most established and in-depth security event series. Founded in 1997, these annual, multi-day events provide attendees with the latest in cybersecurity research, development, and trends. Driven by the needs of the community, Black Hat events showcase content directly from the community through Briefings presentations, Trainings courses, Summits, and more. As the event series where all career levels and academic disciplines convene to collaborate, network, and discuss the cybersecurity topics that matter most to them, attendees can find Black Hat events in the United States, Canada, Europe, Middle East and Africa, and Asia .
