Anastasios describes AI-generated fake people applying for engineering roles, passing technical interviews with top engineers, then turning out not to exist. He frames this as widespread, not just at Arena, and a harbinger of an insane era of cyber attacks. ✦ AI generated
Anastasios · 20VC · 2026-08-03 · original ↗
starts at this moment · 34:54
“Do you think we're about to see a generation of like cyber leaks and hacks like we've never seen before?”
It's going to be so [ ] insane what happens with like the cyber attacks because here's what we see at Arena. We see another dude on the other side of the interview. They come in, they're like, 'Hey, I want to be an infrastructure engineer at Arena, which is a great job that we're hiring for you.' ... some guy looks perfectly normal. They're getting, you know, they're passing all of our technical interviews. They're like such an amazing blah blah blah. And then what happens at the end of it? You try to hire them and it's vaporware. Person doesn't [ ] exist. I'm not kidding. I am not kidding you. I don't know whether this is corporate espionage or cyber attacks or, you know, nation states, but people are trying to get into all of the American businesses. And we're not the only ones. This is happening everywhere. fake people applying to companies.
verbatim transcript · starts at 34:54
34:52to do that. They're not technically capable. >> Do you think we're about to see a generation of like cyber leaks and hacks like we've never seen before? Oh, for sure. Oh, for sure. It's going to be so insane. Can I cuss on this show? >> Yeah, >> it's going to be so [ __ ] insane what happens with like the cyber attacks because here's what here's what we see
35:14at Arena. We see another dude on the other side of the interview. They come in, they're like, "Hey, I want to be an infrastructure engineer at Arena, which is a great job that we're hiring for you." But then the other side of it is some guy looks perfectly normal. They're getting, you know, they're passing all of our technical interviews. They're like such an amazing blah blah blah. And
35:36then what happens at the end of it? You try to hire them and it's vaporware. Person doesn't [ __ ] exist. I'm not kidding. I am not kidding you. I don't know whether this is corporate espionage or cyber attacks or, you know, nation states, but people are trying to get into all of the American businesses. And we're not the only ones. This is happening everywhere. fake people
35:59applying to companies. >> I'm sorry. So, you're putting out a job, people are applying, doing the tests that you said, passing them, and then when it comes to the materiality of that person being real or not, gone. >> Yeah. Fake person. And it's not just that we're giving them a test. They're sitting in front of people at our company. People, our engineers who are top worldass engineers are interviewing
36:23this person and and think that they're real. Why? Can you help me understand what is the benefit? They they learn how you interview and hire people. I mean, the CCP are bad, but I don't think they want to steal your hiring technique. >> No, that's not why they do it. Why would they do it? And I'm not saying it's the CCP. It could be anybody. It could be