In this episode of The New Stack Makers, recorded at KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Europe, Alex Williams speaks with Ville Aikas, Chainguard founder and early Kubernetes contributor. They reflect on the evolution of container security, particularly how early assumptions—like trusting that users would validate container images—proved problematic. Aikas recalls the lack of secure defaults, such as allowing containers to run as root, stemming from the team’s internal Google perspective, which led to unrealistic expectations about external security practices.

The Kubernetes community has since made strides with governance policies, secure defaults, and standard practices like avoiding long-lived credentials and supporting federated authentication. Aikas founded Chainguard to address the need for trusted, minimal, and verifiable container images—offering zero-CVE images, transparent toolchains, and full SBOMs. This security-first philosophy now extends to virtual machines and Java dependencies via Chainguard Libraries.

The discussion also highlights the rising concerns around AI/ML security in Kubernetes, including complex model dependencies, GPU integrations, and potential attack vectors—prompting Chainguard’s move toward locked-down AI images.

Learn more from The New Stack about Container Security and AI

Chainguard Takes Aim At Vulnerable Java Libraries

Clean Container Images: A Supply Chain Security Revolution

Revolutionizing Offensive Security: A New Era With Agentic AI

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Container Security and AI: A Talk with Chainguard's Founder

The New Stack Podcast

Container Security and AI: A Talk with Chainguard's Founder