This Week in NET

In this episode of This Week in NET, host João Tomé is joined by Michelle Chen from Cloudflare’s AI product team to discuss the rise of open models, the launch of Kimi 2.5 on Workers AI, and why enterprises are rethinking the cost of proprietary AI.

Michelle explains how Cloudflare’s security team used Kimi to scan internal codebases and found more than 40 confirmed security issues — at a fraction of the cost of proprietary models. The conversation explores why open models are rapidly becoming competitive with closed alternatives, how Cloudflare builds efficiency with custom i...

In this episode of This Week in NET, host João Tomé is joined by Chema Alonso, Vice President and Head of International Development at Cloudflare.

Chema shares how a 1998 paper on SQL injection launched his career in hacking, his path from running a startup in Madrid to becoming a Microsoft MVP for 14 years, and how he ended up leading cybersecurity at Telefónica for more than a decade — after telling them “you don’t have enough money to make me work for you.” He also explains why he left Telefónica in 2025 to join Cloudfl...

In this episode of This Week in NET, Heather Orsi, Director of Strategic Finance & Investor Relations at Cloudflare, shares her unusual career path across finance, startups, and tech, and what it means to communicate Cloudflare’s story to investors and analysts.

Heather talks about her first days at Cloudflare just after the IPO, what it takes to explain a highly technical company to Wall Street, and how finance, strategy, and storytelling come together in investor relations.

This conversation is part of the Women of Cloudflare series for Women’s Empo...

In this episode of This Week in NET, host João Tomé is joined by Cloudflare’s new Chief Marketing Officer, Jeff Samuels, to explore how marketing is evolving in the age of AI.

We discuss why brand still wins, how marketers are becoming “context engineers,” and how Cloudflare connects deep technical products to clear narratives that resonate with customers.

We also touch on the role of real-world events like RSA Conference, where Cloudflare will be present, and why in-person moments still matter in an increasingly AI-driven, digital-first world.

In this Women at Cloudflare segment for Women’s Empowerment Month, Sofia Cardita, Systems Engineer at Cloudflare, shares her journey from clinical psychology to engineering.

Sofia explains how she transitioned into tech through self-learning and hands-on building, and how AI is changing the way engineers work today. She also reflects on observability, teamwork, and finding balance as an engineer.

⏱️ Timestamps

00:12 — Sofia Cardita: background and role at Cloudflare  

00:49 — From psychology to engineering

02:02 — Self-learning and building from scratch

03:03 — What she enjoys about engineering (proudest projects...

In this episode of This Week in NET, host João Tomé is joined by Warnessa Weaver (Senior Product Manager) and Yumna Moazzam (Senior Product Marketing Manager) to break down Cloudflare’s SASE blog takeover week and what it means for enterprise security.

Cloudflare One is evolving into an agile, composable, and programmable SASE platform, built natively on Cloudflare’s global network spanning 300+ cities. The conversation explores how organizations can modernize remote access, secure AI adoption, and replace legacy architectures that often take 18 months to deploy with migrations completed in 4–6 weeks.

The...

In this episode of This Week in NET, host João Tomé is joined by Cloudflare threat intelligence experts Brian Carter and Chris Peacey to break down the 2026 Cloudflare Threat Report and what it reveals about today’s cyber threat landscape.

We discuss how threat intelligence helps organizations prioritize risks, how attackers are increasingly leveraging automation and AI tools, and why botnets, supply-chain attacks, and credential-theft campaigns continue to evolve.

The conversation explores how attackers gain initial access, how criminal ecosystems operate across infrastructure providers and services, and how AI i...

In this episode of This Week in NET (the second this week focused on building with AI), host João Tomé is joined by Steve Faulkner, Engineering Director at Cloudflare, to discuss how he rebuilt a Next.js-compatible framework in just one week using AI. The project, called vinext, began as an experiment and evolved into a working proof of concept.

We explore what AI-first development looks like in practice, how coding agents were used to rewrite and test large API surfaces, and what happens when you treat dependencies as something you can regenerate ra...

In this episode of This Week in NET, host João Tomé is joined by Matt Curry to break down Code Mode: a way to give AI agents access to the entire Cloudflare API (2,500+ endpoints) using two tools and roughly ~1,000 tokens of context.  

Instead of exposing thousands of individual tools (which quickly becomes expensive and brittle), Code Mode lets the model write JavaScript to search and execute against a compact API context. The result is massive compression, lower cost, and better performance.

We also include demos showing how agents can q...

In this episode, host João Tomé is joined by Celso Martinho, VP of Engineering at Cloudflare, to discuss two major launches: Markdown for Agents and Moltworker (for OpenClaw) — and what they signal about the future of AI agents on the Internet.

Celso explains how Markdown for Agents was conceived, built, and shipped in just one week, why AI systems prefer markdown over HTML, and how converting a typical blog post from 16,000 HTML tokens to roughly 3,000 markdown tokens can reduce cost, improve speed, and increase accuracy for AI models. We also explore Moltworker, a proo...

In this episode of This Week in NET, host João Tomé is joined by Emily Hancock, Cloudflare’s Chief Privacy Officer and Data Protection Officer, for a wide-ranging conversation about privacy in 2026 and how the role has evolved in the age of AI.

Emily explains how privacy officers shifted from GDPR compliance to broader data governance, responsible AI practices, cybersecurity collaboration, and cross-border data frameworks. We explore privacy by design, data minimization, vendor risk, government requests, warrant canaries, digital sovereignty, insider threats, and how AI is reshaping both attacker and defender capabilities.

In this episode, David Belson — Cloudflare’s Head of Data Insights — joins us to walk through the biggest Internet disruptions of late 2025 and early 2026.

At the start, we also highlight several new posts on the Cloudflare Blog: Moltworker, a self-hosted personal AI agent built with OpenClaw (former MoltBot and ClawdBot) and Cloudflare’s Developer Platform; Post-Quantum Matrix Homeserver, a proof-of-concept encrypted messaging server running entirely on Cloudflare Workers; Route Leak Incident (Jan 22), what happened in Miami and how routing policy safeguards are being improved; Google’s AI Advantage, why crawler separation is needed for fair compe...

In this first 2026 edition of This Week in NET, João Tomé is joined by Patrick Day from Cloudflare’s Impact & Policy team to break down the recently released Cloudflare Impact Report — including how Cloudflare supports elections, protects journalists, advances Internet standards, and expands access to secure AI infrastructure.

At the start, we also go over some of our recent blog posts:

• Acquisitions: Astro and Human Native join the Cloudflare ecosystem.

• Technical Deep Dive: How a small DNS optimization in 1.1.1.1 exposed a decades-old ambiguity in early Internet standards.

• Global Trend...

In this end-of-year episode of This Week in NET, host João Tomé is joined by Omer Yoachimik, Senior Product Manager for DDoS Protection at Cloudflare, to break down the realities of the 2025 DDoS threat landscape — and what’s coming next.

They discuss how DDoS attacks reached previously “theoretical” scales in 2025, including record-breaking 31 Tbps attacks, the rise of massive botnets like Aisuru, and how geopolitical events increasingly shape cyber activity. Omer explains why traditional scrubbing-center defenses are becoming obsolete, how Cloudflare’s autonomous, globally distributed mitigation works, and why automation and real-time intelligence are now essentia...

In this special Year in Review episode of This Week in NET, host João Tomé is joined by David Belson to break down the Cloudflare Radar 2025 Year in Review.

Together, they explore what Cloudflare’s global network reveals about how the Internet evolved over the past year — from the rapid rise of AI crawlers and agent traffic, to record-breaking DDoS attacks, the spread of post-quantum encryption, and the growing impact of government-directed shutdowns and outages.

The conversation looks at Internet resilience, security trends, and performance across countries, as well as what changed in Internet servic...

In this short episode of This Week in NET, Craig Dennis, Senior Developer Educator for AI at Cloudflare, explains why Replicate is joining Cloudflare, and what that means for developers building with AI.

Replicate is widely known for making it easy to run thousands of high-quality AI models, from image generation and video to audio and language models, all through a simple, developer-friendly API. Craig breaks down why Replicate became such an important part of the AI ecosystem, and how bringing it into Cloudflare helps make Workers the best place to build and deploy AI and agentic...

In this episode of This Week in NET, we talk with Daniele Molteni, Director of Product Management for Cloudflare’s WAF, about how Cloudflare responded within hours to a newly disclosed React Server Components vulnerability — deploying global protection before the public advisory was even released.

That speed matters. In just the first 11 days after disclosure, Cloudflare observed more than 1 billion exploitation attempts related to React2Shell, with sustained pressure averaging over 4 million hits per hour, and peaks far higher. Threat actors quickly integrated the vulnerability into large-scale scanning and reconnaissance, targeting even critical infrastructure. If y...

In this episode of This Week in NET, host João Tomé sits down with Stephanie Cohen, Cloudflare’s Chief Strategy Officer, for a candid conversation about AI, content creators, financial services, partnerships, and the future of the Internet.

Stephanie shares how Cloudflare is helping keep the Internet open and resilient — from giving creators transparency and control over AI scraping, to enabling new models of agentic commerce through partnerships with Visa and Mastercard, to empowering organizations of all sizes through Cloudflare’s global network.

The conversation also explores the rise of...

In this episode of This Week in NET, we talk with Daniele Molteni, Director of Product Management for Cloudflare’s WAF, about how Cloudflare responded within hours to a newly disclosed React Server Components vulnerability, deploying global protection before the public advisory was even released — and how updates are necessary and urgent.

Daniele explains how WAF rules are created, what “payload logging” improvements mean for customers, and what’s coming next in 2026, including Firewall for AI, fraud detection, and gradual rule rollout.

At the end of the episode, Systems Engineer S...

Cloudflare Principal Network Engineer Tom Strickx joins This Week in NET to explain what really keeps the Internet running. From anchors cutting submarine cables to automation detecting bad Internet weather, Tom shares an inside look at how one of the world’s largest networks operates — and why human trust still matters in keeping the Internet alive.

We talk about:

Subscribe...

In this second part of our previous episode, host João Tomé talks with André Jesus, Systems Engineer at Cloudflare and front-end engineer on the Radar team. They discuss the latest updates to Cloudflare Radar, the platform that turns Internet data into accessible insights.

André, who joined Cloudflare as an intern in Lisbon, Portugal, in 2024, explains how radar.cloudflare.com showcases trends in Internet traffic, protocol adoption, and security. He walks us through Radar’s new Top-Level Domain (TLD) insights, how the team uses DNS magnitude to measure domain popularity, and why certificate transparency is cru...

In this episode, host João Tomé talks with Marwan Fayed, Principal Scientist and Research Lead at Cloudflare, about the science behind understanding and improving the Internet.

They explore the Research Week blog takeover on Measurement, Resilience, and Transparency, discussing the tricky science of Internet measurement — including a traffic spike in Ukraine that revealed how complex it is to explain data at scale. Marwan shares how Cloudflare is building a framework for Internet resilience, preparing for a post-quantum future with Merkle tree certificates, and tackling the “store now, decrypt later” risk. They also cover Cloudfla...

In this special episode, host João Tomé reports from Cloudflare Connect Las Vegas (October 13-16) — the company’s first-ever global event, bringing together customers, partners, and developers from over 60 countries.

In the intro, we also share what’s coming next week on the Cloudflare blog — a special five-day series focused on Internet Measurement, Resilience, and Transparency: the foundations of a faster, safer, and more reliable web for everyone.

The episode covers major announcements, including Cloudflare’s partnership with Mastercard and Visa to secure automated commerce with AI agents through the new Trusted Agent Protocol and Agent Pa...

In this episode of This Week in NET, host João Tomé is joined by Leslie Hasvold, Senior Director of Corporate Events, Programs & Customer Advocacy, and Craig Dennis, Senior Developer Educator for AI, to talk about Cloudflare’s first global Connect conference in Las Vegas and the launch of AI Avenue, a new documentary series exploring how people around the world are learning, experimenting, and building with AI.

We cover what to expect from Connect Las Vegas, from 100+ breakout sessions to keynotes focused on AI, innovation, and the future of the Internet — and we go behind the scenes...

In this episode of This Week in NET, host João Tomé is joined by Cloudflare Senior Product Managers Korinne Alpers and Nikita Cano to recap all the announcements from Cloudflare’s 15th Birthday Week.

We cover AI, developer tools, security, performance, and how Cloudflare continues to give back to the Internet.

Highlights include:

 • AI & Security: Firewall for AI, Shadow AI protection, and Content Signals Policy.

 • For Creators & Nonprofits: Project Galileo expansion and new tools to control how AI uses content.

 • New Economy: NET Dollar an...

In this special 15th-anniversary episode of This Week in NET, we sit down with Cloudflare co-founders Michelle Zatlyn and Matthew Prince to revisit the early days — from a Harvard Business School project to launching at TechCrunch Disrupt in 2010.

We talk about how culture takes shape, the technical vision of Lee Holloway, and pivotal moments that defined Cloudflare’s journey, as well as where the Internet is headed next. At the end, don’t miss a special easter egg from the journalist who first covered Cloudflare’s launch.

Follow all Birthday Week 2025 announcements: cloudflare.com/birthday-week

Birthday Week is Cloudflare’s biggest innovation week — and this year is extra special as we celebrate our 15th birthday. Each year, we pause to reflect on our journey, celebrate the progress we’ve made, and look ahead to what’s next, all while staying true to our mission of helping build a better Internet.

In this episode of This Week in NET, João Tomé is joined by Nikita Cano to preview what’s coming in Birthday Week 2025: democratizing development, building a smarter and more open web, securing the future by default, the future of development on Cloudflar...

In this episode, host João Tomé is joined by Kenny Johnson (Principal Product Manager) to review everything announced during the week — across Cloudflare One, Application Security, Workers AI, AI Gateway, and Radar.

Full list of blog posts at: cloudflare.com/ai-week

In this episode, host João Tomé is joined by Inanna Malick, Systems Engineer at Cloudflare, to talk about how she built a serverless version of a real-time social app that connects to the ATProto ecosystem — the protocol powering platforms like Bluesky.

Inanna walks us through her blog post and technical journey, showing how she used Cloudflare Workers, Durable Objects, and the free tier of our Developer Platform to deploy an open, identity-owned, cryptographically verified social experience — all without running a server.

They discuss what makes ATProto different, how Statusphere works (the “Hello World” of open socia...

We continue our 100th episode celebration of This Week in NET with a special look back at memorable moments from past guests and a quick rundown of the latest Cloudflare blog stories.

From Internet pioneers like Geoff Huston, to Cloudflare co-founders Matthew Prince and Michelle Zatlyn, and leaders like Nicholas Thompson (The Atlantic) and Chris Anderson (TED), many Cloudflare experts, and John Graham-Cumming, that started this podcast with João Tomé in 2022. We revisit highlights from some of the most insightful conversations we’ve had over the past 3 years.

We also cover what’s new on the...

In this special conversation, João Tomé sits down with John Graham-Cumming, Cloudflare’s former CTO and current board member, to look back at Cloudflare’s journey — from Universal SSL and Heartbleed to Workers, Radar, and what’s next for the Internet.

Topics & Timecodes: 00:58 – Favorite Cloudflare Moments: Universal SSL & Heartbleed Impact 04:36 – The Philosophy of Offering Free Services 09:20 – Evolution and Impact of the Cloudflare Blog 14:23 – Unique Cloudflare Teams: Crypto/Research Team 17:37 – The Lava Lamp Wall Story 20:41 – Key Moments for Zero Trust and Workers 22:50 – The Origin of Workers and Culture of Freedom 25:36 – The 1.1.1.1 Public Resolver Story 27:51 – The Legacy and Importance of the Cloudflare...

In this episode, host João Tomé is joined by Will Allen, Cloudflare’s VP of Product Management, to discuss Pay-Per-Crawl and our new permission-based model for AI bots. These updates, launched on July 1, 2025 — what we call Content Independence Day — aim to reshape how AI models access and reward content, shifting from an opt-out to an opt-in approach. Cloudflare’s CEO, Matthew Prince, also appears in a video at the start, reflecting on Content Independence Day.

We explore how AI Overviews are changing the old “traffic for content” model and how Cloudflare is helping creators take control through tools...

In this episode, host João Tomé is joined by Kenton Varda, Principal Engineer at Cloudflare, for a wide-ranging conversation about AI, code, and the evolution of Internet development.

Kenton shares how a real-world project shifted his view from AI skepticism to seeing the promise of AI-assisted coding, while emphasizing the need for strong human review, especially for security. The episode also dives into the architecture of Cloudflare Workers and its first months, Durable Objects, and the vision of the Internet as one programmable computer: “the network is the computer”.

Looking ahead, Kenton predicts a new er...

In this episode, host João Tomé is joined in Cloudflare’s Lisbon office by Scott Tomtania, a seasoned recruiting leader at Cloudflare, to discuss the company's incredible growth, its unique hiring philosophy, and how AI is shaping the future of recruitment.

Scott shares insights on how Cloudflare maintains its unique culture amidst rapid expansion, the rigorous selection process (including C-level interviews for every candidate!), and the evolving role of AI in talent acquisition. Discover what it takes to join one of the Internet's most impactful companies.

We also have Jocelyn Woolbright talk about how our...

In this episode, host João Tomé is joined in Cloudflare’s Lisbon office by Cloudflare Senior Research Engineer Thibault Meunier to explore a new proposal that could reshape how bots interact with the web in the age of AI.

We go into Cloudflare’s proposal of using cryptographic signatures for bots, enabling websites to verify their identity. Why is this important? As AI systems rely increasingly on online content, this standard could help build a better relationship between content creators and AI platforms.

To wrap up, Principal Engineer Kevin Guthrie walks us through the blog p...

In this episode, host João Tomé is joined by Cloudflare Product Managers Nevi Shah and Dina Kozlov to go into the world of MCP (Model Context Protocol), and why it’s gaining traction fast.

We explore what MCP is, why it matters now, and how developers can easily spin up their own MCP servers on Cloudflare. The episode includes live demos, practical use cases, and a look at how companies like Stripe, PayPal, and Anthropic are getting involved.

We also cover the latest from the AI and agent ecosystem, including announcements from Microsoft Build, Goog...

In this episode of This Week in NET, we sit down at Cloudflare’s Lisbon office in Portugal with one of the Internet’s original architects: Geoff Huston, Chief Scientist at APNIC (the Asia-Pacific Internet registry).

From helping build Australia’s first Internet backbone to now shaping global conversations on resilience, routing security, and cryptography, Geoff shares a rare, unfiltered view of how the Internet grew, and where it’s struggling.

We dive into the critical topics shaping the next decade: Internet resilience, RPKI, the evolution of DNS, QUIC, post-quantum cryptography, and the rise of AI-drive...

In this week’s episode, we talk about DDoS attacks and their sharp rise in recent months. We also start with a quick look at some Internet trends tied to the announcement of the new pope.

To guide us through the world of distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, host João Tomé is joined by our DDoS expert, Omer Yoachimik.

We go into the latest data from our Q1 2025 DDoS Threat Report, which reveals a 358% year-over-year increase in DDoS attacks — and explore what’s driving that surge. The report also includes late-breaking data from a hyper-volumetric campaign...

In this week's episode, we talk about Internet disruptions — focusing on the recent major power and Internet blackout, while also reviewing the broader Internet disruptions of Q1 2025.

Host João Tomé shares his firsthand experience during the blackout in Lisbon, Portugal, and how an old battery-powered FM radio came to the rescue. He’s joined by David Belson, Head of Data Insights at Cloudflare.

In Q1 2025, Internet disruptions were driven by cyberattacks, cable cuts, and natural disasters like the Myanmar earthquake and California wildfires. There were no government-directed shutdowns, making Q1 a rare quarter.

Ment...

In this week's episode, we continue exploring AI, agents, developers, and how AI is helping developers, and turning more people into developers. For that, host João Tomé chats in the library of our London office with Sunil Pai, Principal Systems Engineer, who’s building AI agents at Cloudflare.

Next, recorded two weeks ago at our Connect event in London, we talk with Ashley Peacock, a British engineer and Cloudflare Dev Expert who also wrote the book “Serverless Apps on Cloudflare”. We discuss building with Cloudflare, the challenges that come with AI, and whether making things too easy for...