A cybersecurity company that helped repair Viasat's satellite network after Russia knocked out thousands of modems on the day it invaded Ukraine has now released what it calls the first commercial tool of its kind, and the Pentagon wants it to set the standard.
Atalanta, a cybersecurity firm led by CEO and co-founder Anjana Rajan, has released a product called Argo, an AI-assisted system that combines advanced mathematics and artificial intelligence to scan software and internet-connected systems for vulnerabilities. The tool grew directly out of the company's work restoring and hardening Viasat's satellite communications network after Russian hackers crippled it in February 2022, the Associated Press reported.
Atalanta describes the approach as "software understanding", a method that uses complex math and AI together to identify weaknesses across an entire system, rather than relying on older, narrower scanning techniques. The company says Argo is the first commercially available product built on this foundation.
The timing matters. The original Russian attack disabled thousands of satellite modems across Ukraine and multiple other European countries on the same day Moscow launched its full-scale invasion. That single strike disrupted communications at a moment when they were needed most. Four years later, the threat has only expanded: several U.S. government agencies warned this summer that Iranian hackers have been targeting American water and wastewater systems, along with other critical infrastructure.
Emil Michael, the Pentagon's chief technology officer, signaled strong interest in Atalanta's underlying approach well before the commercial launch. In a prerecorded address at a DARPA software conference last year, Michael said he saw the mathematics behind the technology as the future of military cybersecurity and wanted it to "become the DoD's gold standard."
Whether that statement reflects an official Department of Defense policy shift or a personal endorsement from the Pentagon's top technologist remains unclear. But the fact that the comment came at a conference hosted by DARPA, the military's cutting-edge research office, credited with helping pioneer the internet and stealth aircraft, gives it weight.
DARPA's investment in the formal mathematical methods underpinning Argo has been substantial and long-running. Greg Shannon, the chief cybersecurity scientist at Idaho National Laboratory, a government research facility, put the figure in perspective.
"They've probably invested well over $2 billion in various programs to advance formal methods... and we're finally seeing them start to come to fruition."
Shannon told the AP that the kind of technology Atalanta is now selling commercially will likely become routine across the industry within a generation.
"In a decade or two, I would expect it to be just part of the standard development tool kits."
More than $2 billion in taxpayer-funded research over roughly two decades, and the product is only now reaching the commercial market. That timeline says something about how far behind the private sector has been on this front, and how wide the gap remains between what the government knows is possible and what most companies actually use to protect their systems.
Viasat, the satellite communications company whose network Russia targeted in 2022, has been working with Atalanta over the past year to build defenses using the new technology. Nick Saunders, Viasat's chief of cyber strategy, described the collaboration in concrete terms.
"We have built over the past year, working with Atalanta... a capability where we can start to develop an understanding of how our systems are more resilient against attacks."
Saunders said the technology ensures the Viasat network is hardened against future attacks and produces the mathematical proof to back that claim. That distinction matters. Traditional cybersecurity tools flag known vulnerabilities. Atalanta's approach, if its proponents are right, offers something closer to a structural audit, a way to test whether a system can withstand attacks that haven't been invented yet.
Rajan framed the stakes bluntly. Older tools and techniques, she told the AP, simply cannot keep up with the scale of modern threats.
"The tools and techniques of yesterday do not scale for today and 'software understanding' is going to be the path forward for anyone building a system of consequence for the United States."
Atalanta's technology has already moved beyond satellite networks. The Department of Energy has tapped the company's tools for its Genesis Mission, an effort to develop autonomous nuclear reactors. The details of Atalanta's specific role in that program remain undisclosed, but the pairing underscores how seriously federal agencies are treating the underlying technology.
Autonomous nuclear reactors, satellite communications grids, military networks, civilian water systems, the list of targets that hostile nations and their proxies are probing grows longer every year. Russia proved in 2022 that a well-timed cyberattack on satellite infrastructure can knock out communications across an entire country at the worst possible moment. Iranian hackers, per this summer's government warnings, are already poking at the systems that deliver drinking water to American communities.
Several open questions remain. Argo has not been independently tested or verified by parties outside Atalanta and Viasat, at least not publicly. The specific mathematical methods behind "software understanding" have not been detailed for public scrutiny. And the gap between a Pentagon official praising a technology at a conference and the Defense Department formally adopting it as policy is wide.
Still, the trajectory is clear. Billions in DARPA research, a real-world baptism during a wartime cyberattack, endorsement from the Pentagon's chief technologist, and adoption by the Department of Energy for nuclear infrastructure, Argo arrives with a pedigree that few cybersecurity products can match.
The question isn't whether America's adversaries will keep attacking critical infrastructure. They will. The question is whether the people responsible for defending it will adopt the tools fast enough to matter, or whether the next Viasat-style strike will find the same old vulnerabilities still wide open.