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Original: Simon Willison · 08/02/2026

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Summary

[Axios: Anthropic’s Claude Opus 4.6 uncovers 500 ze

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Key Insights

“People on the orange site are laughing at this, assuming it’s just an ad and that there’s nothing to it.” — The skepticism surrounding LLMs’ capabilities in vulnerability research.
“I think vulnerability research might be THE MOST LLM-amenable software engineering problem.” — The potential of LLMs in revolutionizing vulnerability research.
“Money buys vuln research outcomes.” — The influence of funding on vulnerability research advancements.

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Topics

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Full Article

# Quoting Thomas Ptacek
Author: Simon Willison
Published: 2026-02-08
Source: https://simonwillison.net/2026/Feb/8/thomas-ptacek/#atom-everything
People on the orange site are laughing at this, assuming it’s just an ad and that there’s nothing to it. Vulnerability researchers I talk to do not think this is a joke. As an erstwhile vuln researcher myself: do not bet against LLMs on this. Axios: Anthropic’s Claude Opus 4.6 uncovers 500 zero-day flaws in open-source I think vulnerability research might be THE MOST LLM-amenable software engineering problem. Pattern-driven. Huge corpus of operational public patterns. Closed loops. Forward progress from stimulus/response tooling. Search problems. Vulnerability research outcomes are in THE MODEL CARDS for frontier labs. Those companies have so much money they’re literally distorting the economy. Money buys vuln research outcomes. Why would you think they were faking any of this?
— Thomas Ptacek

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Key Takeaways

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Notable Quotes

People on the orange site are laughing at this, assuming it’s just an ad and that there’s nothing to it.
Context: The skepticism surrounding LLMs’ capabilities in vulnerability research.
I think vulnerability research might be THE MOST LLM-amenable software engineering problem.
Context: The potential of LLMs in revolutionizing vulnerability research.
Money buys vuln research outcomes.
Context: The influence of funding on vulnerability research advancements.
  • [[topics/anthropic-api]]
  • [[topics/ai-agents]]
  • [[topics/vulnerability-research]]

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Originally published at https://simonwillison.net/2026/Feb/8/thomas-ptacek/#atom-everything.