#32 - How perception itself became an attack surface - Wasim Khaled

#32 - How perception itself became an attack surface - Wasim Khaled

From The Deep View: Conversations by The Deep View

February 22, 2026 · 45 min

About this episode

The episode discusses how perception has become an attack surface in cybersecurity, featuring insights from Wasim Khaled of Blackbird AI.

In this episode of The Deep View Conversations, we talked with Wasim Khaled, CEO of Blackbird AI, to explore a provocative idea: What happens when reality itself becomes hackable? Long before generative AI went mainstream, Wasim and his cofounder launched Blackbird to tackle disinformation and narrative manipulation. Their thesis was bold: that part of modern cybersecurity conflict had shifted from infrastructure to information, from networks to narratives. It turned out to be prescient. As AI supercharges the speed, scale, and realism of malicious content — from deepfakes to coordinated influence campaigns — Blackbird has emerged as the leader in combating narrative attacks. In fact, Gartner recently named Blackbird the company to beat in disinformation narrative intelligence in its report on the AI Vendor Race . In our conversation, we explore: + What “narrative attacks” really are and why they’re so hard to detect + How AI has fundamentally changed the disinformation battlefield + Reactive vs. proactive defense strategies in cybersecurity + How Blackbird evolved from a lab experiment into a national security player + Why leaders relying on chatbots instead of AI agents are…

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Host: The Deep View

Guest: Wasim Khaled

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Organizations: Blackbird AI, Gartner

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