Security Experts Warn AI Agents Are Becoming Unmanaged Insiders With Standing Privilege

AI agents are increasingly inheriting long-lived secrets, standing privileges and ownerless accounts that no one properly governs, and compromising just one can hand an attacker a machine-speed identity capable of calling tools and chaining actions across systems. That warning anchors an expert analysis published July 20, 2026 by The Hacker News, which argues that securing agentic AI begins with privilege, not with the model itself.