I'm really hoping that if it comes to pass, millions of AI-based hacking agents running amok on the internet, exploiting every single thing they can find, will at long last finally cause companies to get their shit together and secure their systems.

Imagine if your neighborhood had a million autonomous door-opening drones randomly flying around identifying doors and entering them. It wouldn't take long for everyone to lock their doors.

I don't disagree with you. But let's expand.. Imagine every neighborhood had autonomous brick throwing drones randomly smashing windows. Imagine every neighborhood had autonomous flame throwing drones randomly setting fires. Imagine every neighborhood and autonomous gun shooting drones randomly killing. Imagine every neighborhood and autonomous grenade lobbing drones randomly blowing up walls.

You can not defend everything. At some point you have to realize the world works because not every exploitable thing is exploited and we live in a civil society (most of us anyway).

I get it, the internet makes things different. But your analogy doesn't work You can not build a building that can not be destroyed.

My hope and what I see happening is that the major players in the software space are frantically patching as many bugs as they can right now to keep ahead of attackers, and we come out the other end with incredibly robust software.

All the unsupported iot stuff will be obliterated by malicious bots, but the next generation of iot will be both more robust and less directly exposed to the internet. Like how Matter devices sit behind a hub rather than directly connecting to the internet.