Last fall, a group of former military hackers and cybersecurity professionals made a bet that the Pentagon would ramp up its hacking operations against adversaries, shifting its approach from defense to offense.
They formed a company called Twenty, or XX, named after a British counter-espionage operation during World War II, the Double-Cross System, which historians have credited with giving the UK a strategic edge. Twenty’s goal is to use technologies including artificial intelligence to help military hackers automate and expedite ways to break into targeted computer networks.
Twenty’s bet paid off this summer when it signed contracts worth as much as $12.6 million to help US ...