{
  "id": 19520271,
  "title": "Agents may soon be the main workload, and most of the time they’re doing nothing",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/11/11/agents-may-soon-be-the-main-workload-and-most-of-the-time-theyre",
  "topic": "tech",
  "section": "Tech",
  "published": "2026-11-11T15:59:56.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "SiliconANGLE",
    "slug": "siliconangle",
    "url": "https://siliconangle.com/2026/11/11/agent-sandboxing-how-google-s-substrate-isolates-ai-agents-kubeconna/"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "As AI agents assume more enterprise responsibilities, agent sandboxing has become a fundamental necessity rather than an optional consideration. Google LLC has addressed this issue through its open-source project, Agent Substrate, which it donated to the Cloud Native Computing Foundation alongside its gVisor sandbox. Brandon Royal, a product manager at Google Cloud, emphasized the critical need for fully isolated environments for agents, regardless of whether they require access to tools, computers, or browsers. Agent Substrate achieves this through hardened sandbox runtimes integrated into Kubernetes clusters, ensuring that all traffic undergoes policy enforcement and identity verification, preventing agents from accessing unauthorized resources. Additionally, the project safeguards sensitive information by injecting credentials on the wire, rather than allowing agents to access them directly. This approach helps prevent credential exposure and control over outside resources. Beyond security, Agent Substrate optimizes resource utilization by temporarily suspending idle agents, storing them offline, and restoring them as needed. This technique prevents unnecessary compute expenditure while agents are waiting on tasks like large language model calls or human interactions. Google is further expanding on the Agent Substrate framework, with Gemini Managed Agents now operating on the platform, inheriting the same density, efficiency, and security benefits. Google Cloud has also launched Agent Compute Engine to accommodate AI agents, signaling a significant shift in workload dynamics. Royal anticipates that agents will become the dominant workload in the future, potentially within the next few months or years.",
  "summary": "As AI agents take on more enterprise work, agent sandboxing has become a basic requirement rather than an afterthought. Every agent that writes code, runs tools or drives a browser needs hard walls around it. Those walls also can’t come at the cost of runaway compute bills. Google LLC’s answer is Agent Substrate, an open-source […] The post Agents may soon be the main workload, and most of the…",
  "key_points": [],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 1,
    "also_reported_by": []
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}