The Abyss!

Boötes Void, aslo known as the “Great Nothing”, via Wikipedia.org

“He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby become a monster. And if thou gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will also gaze into thee.”

Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, Ch IV, Section 146, Via Project Gutenberg

Nietzsche is a very interesting figure, whose work is often admired and/or criticized, but seldom understood. It does not help that he suffered bouts of ill health throughout his life, from a riding injury which affected him for months, to contracting diphtheria and dysentery during the Franco-Prussian War, to migraines and violent indigestion which led to his retirement from his position at the University of Basel. Or that he had a mental breakdown in his forties and suffered serious mental illness for the last decade of his life – speculated causes of which range from syphilis, to vascular dementia, to meningioma, or even mercury poisoning.

And then there was his sister, Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche, who took control of Nietzsche’s writings a few years before his death. Partly because she was was a German nationalist and antisemite (in contrast to Nietzsche, who was not a German nationalist, and does not appear to have been particularly antisemitic), it has been claimed that she altered her brother’s work to make it a better fit to Nazi ideology. More recently, however, scholars have argued that her motives were intended more to protect him from criticism and present herself as having been close to him.

All of this makes it more difficult to truly understand Nietzsche’s philosophy, especially since it is often used by different groups in what seem to be mutually-exclusive ways.

Anarchists praised his hatred of the state, his dislike of the social behaviour of “herds” (“sheeple”?), and his anti-Christianity, even though he condemned egalitarianism. Fascists and Nazis praised his glorification of war, their interpretation of the “Will to Power”, and the idea of the Übermensch, even though he condemned nationalism and antisemitism. Some early Zionists praised his description of breaking with the past, and promoted the idea of self-creating a Hebraic New Man.

And, of course, all of these groups also criticized him for the things they disagreed with.

I think part of the problem is that, aside from being dead and unable to “defend” himself, Nietzsche’s work covers a wide range of ideas, and his opinions changed significantly over the years, not only due to experience, but due to his own suffering, drug use, and mental health challenges. Was he syphilitic? Was he gay? Did he suffer from mental illness?

Historians speculate about these questions, but there is really no way of knowing for sure.

Still, if you dig deeper into his work, there are some very interesting ideas, worthy of consideration, if only to refute them.

His statement that “God is dead” was deliberately provocative, but appears metaphorical rather than literal. His point was that the Christian morality and worldview which had dominated Europe for hundreds of years, was in decline, and “unworthy of belief”. Nietzsche felt that the gap left by the “death” of God, would result either in a form of nihilism which led to indifference, depression, and existential crisis, or to a re-evaluation of one’s morality, leading to another level of human development.

Overall, Nietzsche is worth reading, but only if you are willing to devote the time to go beyond taking specific quotes out of context. He glorified suffering, admired conquerors, and despised love as weakness, but there are kernels of interesting truths embedded in his work, if you are willing to put in the effort of searching them out.

In the introductory quote above, Nietzsche uses the word “Abgrund”, which is generally translated as “abyss”, or “chasm”, but I’d suggest the word “void”, particularly since the fight appears to be a symbolic fight with nihilism due to the loss of the traditional morality, represented by the phrase “God is dead”.

At any rate, that’s how I can drag this over to AI.

I’ve written about AI a number of times lately, most recently regarding the importance of understanding the context of the AI revolution, and how it compares with the Industrial Revolution.

Which brings us to VoidLink.

In December 2025, researchers from Check Point Research identified what appeared to be a sophisticated malware framework designed for Linux systems. On investigation, they found malware samples which appeared to originate from a Chinese-affiliated development environment, complete with debugging information and other artifacts that suggested they had found a product during its development phase.

They discovered that the framework was quite sophisticated, with a broad variety of capabilities and plug-ins, suggesting a large and well-structured team.

So far, so bad, but then it got interesting.

As they continued their research, they discovered that VoidLink was evolving rapidly, and compared the extensive technical documentation and planned schedules to the actual development. After a detailed review, they concluded that the framework, instead of being developed by a large group of developers split into multiple teams, was instead being built mainly by AI, likely under the direction of a single individual.

It appears that this individual guided an AI model to generate a development plan, including processes for building, executing, and testing the framework. Then, using this plan, the AI model was divided into three distinct “teams” for the actual development work.

So, in practice, one person spent about a week to guide an AI model to build a tool estimated as requiring thirty weeks of planned development, across multiple teams.

It should be noted that this is not the first AI-developed malware, but it appears to be the first time AI has been used to build a such a sophisticated framework with such low effort, and using “commodity” AI resources. And, though it appears to have required an operator with skill in malware development, it seems obvious that the game has now changed in a fundamental way.

It is quite fortunate that VoidLink was discovered at such an early stage, as it gave researchers a warning of the current state of the art, but we have to assume that the process will improve, as will the operational security which led to the discovery of VoidLink.

It appears that we are now, truly, entering the age of AI-generated malware, and we should all keep the words of well-known cryptographer Bruce Schneier in mind:

“Attacks always get better, they never get worse.”

Cheers!