Opinion
When the user is no longer human: The bot social network is the internet’s watershed moment
A virtual "state" of 35,000 AI agents has emerged. Infrastructure giant Cloudflare responded with a solution that sent its stock soaring by 14%. The Moltbook phenomenon marks the transition from Generative AI to Agentic AI, and Israel’s opportunity is to become the responsible adult, in both infrastructure and governance.
On January 28, 2026, tech entrepreneur Matt Schlicht pressed a button and launched Moltbook. On the surface, it looked like just another social network. In practice, it was the largest experiment in the history of the internet where humans are forbidden to participate. The users are exclusively autonomous AI agents.
As of late last week, the numbers are staggering: over 35,000 agents have registered, established about 13,000 communities ("Submolts"), and even created new religions. Andrej Karpathy, one of the most prominent figures in the AI world, defined it precisely when he tweeted that "What's currently going on at Moltbook is genuinely the most incredible sci-fi takeoff-adjacent thing I have seen recently."
But the real story unfolded on January 29, far from the hype.
The Giant’s Validation: Cloudflare Enters the Picture
Infrastructure giant Cloudflare identified the explosive potential and launched Moltworker. This move serves as dramatic validation for the market: they realized that these agents cannot be left running on personal computers (Localhost) unsupervised. Their solution - a cloud-based "Sandbox" - received warm reception. The market is thirsty for solutions that will allow the adoption of the agent revolution without sacrificing security.
However, for enterprises and critical infrastructure, Cloudflare's cloud solution is just the beginning. The problem runs deeper.
The transition to Agentic AI creates two risk vectors that traditional cyber solutions are ill-equipped to handle:
- The Physical Risk (The Breach): Moltbook agents, mostly based on OpenClaw, run locally on the computer with legitimate permissions. If an agent learns a malicious trick from a virtual friend and decides to run it in Production, no Firewall will stop it, because it is already inside.
- The Behavioral Risk (The Alignment): Even if the agent isn't breached, it might act incorrectly. In sensitive organizations (finance, healthcare), an agent making false promises to a client or deviating from business policy (Hallucination) causes damage no less catastrophic than a cyber breach.
This is exactly where Israeli innovation comes in: the magic solution won't come from a single tool, but from a combination of two new disciplines: Hardware Isolation and Behavioral Governance.
The Israeli Answer: Layers of Trust
While Silicon Valley focuses on accessibility (like Cloudflare's move), the Israeli ecosystem is building the real safety belt for Enterprise Readiness, using a dual-layer approach:
The first layer is hard sec - the physics. To prevent catastrophe, we must stop relying on software to protect software. Companies like ZeroPort lead this approach with a return to bare metal: creating a modern "Air Gap" that physically isolates the agent. It is a hardware containment cell that enables the agent to operate while physically preventing it from leaking into the organization's critical networks.
The second layer is governance - the management. Even a secure agent can be a bad agent. Organizations cannot afford a "black box" in making decisions. This is where companies like Avon AI come in, building the layer of control and visibility. These systems act as the foreman for the bots: they analyze interactions in real-time, ensure the agent does not deviate from protocols, and provide the transparency required to turn a pilot into an operational product.
A Once-in-a-Generation Opportunity
If Moltbook is the Napster of the AI era, creative chaos heralding global change, then we need to build the secure infrastructures that will follow.
The combination of the Muscle (hardware isolation) and the Brain (management systems), alongside cloud infrastructure like Cloudflare’s, is key to mass adoption. Israel, which combines deep cyber expertise with business acumen, is well-positioned to lead the new global standard. The bots are not coming to replace us; they are coming to change the rules of the game. And this game requires new referees.
The writer is a Partner at lool ventures and a Board Member at ZeroPort and Avon AI.
