This Week in NET

In this short edition of This Week in NET, host João Tomé joins from the island of Madeira for a quick preview of Cloudflare’s first Agents Week.

João is joined by Ming Lu (Principal Product Manager at Replicate) and Anni Wang (Product Manager) to discuss why AI agents are becoming one of the biggest shifts happening on the Internet right now.

They explore how agents are starting to generate more code than developers, why the Internet is moving toward agents interacting with other agents, and what infrastructure is needed to build and run them securely at scale.

The conversation also previews some of the themes of Agents Week: building and running agents on Cloudflare’s platform, securing agent access to tools and data, managing the large volumes of data agents generate, and how the web itself may change as machines increasingly consume content.

Check our Agents Week site:
cloudflare.com/agents-week 

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Timestamps
01:11 — Meet Ming Lu and Anni Wang
01:55 — What Agents Week is and why Cloudflare launched it
02:44 — Why agents are becoming a major shift for the Internet
04:33 — Why agents need new infrastructure for compute, storage, and security
05:02 — The rise of personal and enterprise agents
06:43 — Running agents on Cloudflare’s platform
07:34 — Security challenges when agents access tools and data
09:13 — How agents may change how the web is consumed
10:23 — Managing the massive data agents generate
11:21 — Working with multiple AI models and switching between them
12:43 — What it’s like launching a Cloudflare Innovation Week
14:07 — The energy and chaos of building announcements
14:52 — Final thoughts and what to expect next week

In this episode of This Week in NET, host João Tomé is joined by Matt “TK” Taylor (Senior Product Manager) and Matt Kane (Senior Principal Systems Engineer) to discuss EmDash, a new CMS launched by Cloudflare as a modern, serverless alternative inspired by WordPress.

Built on Astro and designed for today’s developer workflows, EmDash combines the familiarity of traditional CMS platforms with a modern architecture: serverless deployment, TypeScript throughout, and a plugin system designed to solve one of WordPress’s biggest challenges — security.

The conversation explores why plugin vulnerabilities account for the vast majority of WordPress security issues, and how EmDash addresses that by running plugins in sandboxed Worker isolates with tightly scoped permissions. Matt and Matt also discuss how AI agents were used during development, why the project is MIT licensed, and how the CMS is designed from the ground up to work with AI agents through MCP and structured content.

Later in the episode we see the EmDash playground, how WordPress sites can be imported in minutes, and how developers can start building plugins and extensions today.

More info:
Introducing EmDash — the spiritual successor to WordPress that solves plugin security

Try out the EmDash admin interface here: https://emdashcms.com/playground 

⏱️ Timestamps

00:45 — Intro: EmDash launch and April 1 announcement
02:09 — What EmDash is and why Cloudflare built it
04:07 — Why WordPress architecture struggles on modern infrastructure
06:30 — Scaling storage, media, and modern hosting models
07:00 — The plugin ecosystem: WordPress’s strength and weakness
08:19 — Matt Taylor’s background in CMS and media platforms
09:03 — Matt Kane’s work with Astro and Gatsby
11:21 — How the idea for EmDash started inside the Astro community
13:36 — Building the CMS with AI agents
17:21 — Sandbox plugins with Cloudflare Dynamic Workers
19:17 — Solving the plugin security problem
22:16 — Why EmDash is MIT licensed
25:52 — Early feedback from Yoast and the WordPress ecosystem
27:05 — Designing a CMS for AI agents and MCP workflows
30:43 — Demo: the EmDash playground and dashboard
33:22 — Flexible content types and built-in SEO
35:05 — Editing directly on the live page
37:18 — Early community feedback and plugins already appearing
39:03 — x402 and the future of agent-era monetization
40:17 — SEO architecture and plugin extensibility
41:43 — What’s next for EmDash

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 inference engines and prefix caching, and what the Replicate acquisition means for bring-your-own-model workflows on Workers AI.

Later in the episode, we also hear from Dina Kozlov about Dynamic Workers and Code Mode (now in open beta), followed by another Women of Cloudflare segment with Alexandra Messe Rodriguez.
⏱️ Timestamps

00:00 — Cold open: Kimi finds 40+ security issues
00:30 — Intro and Cloudflare blog highlights
03:06 — Michelle Chen joins the show
05:44 — The rise of open models and Kimi 2.5
07:14 — Finding 40+ security issues with AI
10:40 — The real cost of running AI agents
16:26 — Making inference efficient: caching, kernels, and architecture
19:42 — Replicate and bring-your-own-model on Workers AI
25:08 — Favorite AI use case: fashion e-commerce images
29:05 — Dina Kozlov: Dynamic Workers and Code Mode
33:13 — Women of Cloudflare: Alexandra Messe Rodriguez

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 Cloudflare, and what surprised him about the company’s technical depth.

The conversation explores how AI is changing cybersecurity, from AI agents competing in Capture-the-Flag contests to automated attack chains running around the clock. Chema also discusses the black market for zero-day vulnerabilities, Cloudflare’s role in Europe, and how AI may reshape the economics of the Internet.

We also hear the story behind his famous beanie hat, a Bluetooth exploit that Apple initially called “a feature” until Steve Wozniak got involved and a quick-fire round covering his first computer, favorite hacks, admired researchers, and why Gemini once hallucinated that he went to jail.

⏱️ Timestamps 
01:00 — How SQL injection in 1998 started his career
02:36 — From startup to Microsoft MVP to training Spain's cyber forces
04:36 — Black Hat, Def Con, and the global hacking scene
05:53 — How Telefonica recruited Chema
08:49 — 20 years of daily blogging as "brain gym"
10:27 — The beanie hat origin story
14:34 — Why he left Telefonica to join Cloudflare
17:41 — What customers are most worried about: AI security
22:55 — Cloudflare's role in Europe: sovereignty, resilience, and growth
26:58 — How AI is disrupting the Internet's business model
28:44 — The evolution of hacking: from phreaking to AI agents
37:42 — The Dirty Tooth iPhone Bluetooth exploit and Steve Wozniak
41:39 — Quick-fire round: first computer, favorite hack, Kevin Mitnick
43:58 — Google Gemini hallucinated that Chema went to jail
46:49 — The future of the Internet and Cloudflare

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 Empowerment Month.

Check the Cloudflare Blog:
https://blog.cloudflare.com

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https://ThisWeekinNET.com

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⏱️ Timestamps
00:38 — From banking and startups to Cloudflare
02:21 — Joining Cloudflare right after the IPO
04:16 — Explaining a deeply technical company to investors
06:31 — Communicating Cloudflare’s story to analysts
08:51 — The role of investor relations inside a tech company
11:16 — Being a woman in finance and tech
13:11 — Advice for people starting a career in finance