Sam Borhani, founding president of Cyber Saclay-Team, during “Minds & Leaders,” an evening held on June 3, 2026, at Village by CA Paris. Credits: Ekaterina Bykova and Louis Harel / Cyber Saclay-Team. Ecostylia Media montage with assistance from DALL-E and the Cyber Saclay-Team logo.
At Village by CA Paris, 55 rue La Boétie, on June 3, 2026, the question went beyond protecting computer systems. It was broader, more political, almost industrial. What is French and European scientific excellence worth if it does not become solutions that are used, sold, and deployed at scale? In Europe’s first startup accelerator, the setting served as the agenda. Here, the promise was scaling up, from the lab to the market.
[Note: article by Yoann Pantic, interview by Pierre-Antoine Tsady.]
The Minds & Leaders evening, organized by Cyber Saclay-Team in partnership with Le Village by CA and Orange Cyberdefense, brought together an accelerator. It also brought together entrepreneurs, researchers, a major cyber company, and around twenty selected students from Paris-Saclay University. Several players in technological sovereignty were also present. The format was more like an ecosystem meetup than a standard conference. On the agenda: three one-on-one interviews, a roundtable, a demonstration, and then a cocktail reception. The event’s interest did not lie in a flashy announcement. It lay in the clarity of the problems raised. It also lay in something rarer. At age 20, Sam Borhani had managed to get around twenty students talking with research, startup acceleration, and cybersecurity leaders, including the founder of Orange Cyberdefense and a vice president of Paris-Saclay University.
What emerged was a familiar French tension. There is a lot of research, a lot of engineers, and a lot of talk about sovereignty. And yet there is still a lack of strong bridges between the lab, the market, public procurement, business, and cybersecurity awareness. At a time when AI is accelerating both defense tools and attackers’ capabilities, this issue goes far beyond specialists. It also reveals a quieter difficulty. Leading scientific players still struggle to make their expertise legible, credible, and heard outside their own circle.
The Lab Is No Longer Enough
The evening’s first thread was the move from research to business. Emmanuel Papadacci-Stephanopoli, CEO of Village by CA Paris, recalled a simple idea. The technological value of the future in Île-de-France will come largely from laboratories. It is no longer just about supporting classic digital applications. Deeptech projects also need help. They take longer to mature, cost more, and depend on a successful match between science, funding, and market.
“The future of value creation in Tech goes through research.”
Emmanuel Papadacci-Stephanopoli, CEO of Village by CA Paris
In this story, Paris-Saclay has a special place. Frédéric Pascal, vice president for AI at Paris-Saclay University, also heads the DataIA Paris-Saclay Institute. He emphasized the territory’s scientific density. Mathematics, AI, semiconductors, quantum, health, research organizations, and grandes écoles make up a rare ecosystem there. But even in a favorable setting, the verdict remains harsh. France has scientific “gems” without always turning that lead into powerful companies. You do not deploy a breakthrough technology like a consumer app. It takes time, certifications, reference customers. It also takes a patience the market rarely rewards.
So the problem is not only technical. It is cultural, administrative, commercial. A researcher may remove a scientific bottleneck without knowing how to find a market. A startup may have credible technology without managing to pass certifications, convince major accounts, or protect its intellectual property. A large company may want to cooperate with the ecosystem without finding the right level of risk to accept. Between all these worlds, the vocabulary itself is not always shared. That shared vocabulary is exactly what an evening like this tries to create.
That point ran through several talks. Émilie Bonnefoy, CEO of OpenSezam, described a core challenge. You have to make research rigor, product constraints, and the need to sell coexist. Her message was not anti-science—quite the opposite. Research is essential. But it is not enough if the goal is to provide an effective service to exposed customers. Selling early, she basically said, is not betraying science. It is exposing it to reality, and therefore improving it.
Sovereignty, Between Choice and Dependence
The word “sovereignty” is often used as if it were self-evident. The evening showed that it is really a series of trade-offs. Michel Van Den Berghe founded Orange Cyberdefense and the Campus Cyber. He now leads Seclab. He brought the debate back to a less comfortable question. How do you grow European players able to compete with major American groups?
“Raising funds is good; selling is better.”
Michel Van Den Berghe, founder of Campus Cyber and CEO of Seclab
His remarks were among the evening’s most direct. France, he reminded the audience, knows how to produce good engineers and good technologies. His own bet, Seclab, is based on “purely electronic” cybersecurity. It works without code, so there is no software flaw to exploit. It targets the most critical infrastructure. But an overly fragmented sector remains vulnerable. As soon as a company becomes visible, a foreign player can buy it. Sometimes that happens because no European investor puts the same check on the table. Sovereignty is then not just a matter of economic patriotism. It becomes a question of critical mass, sales, consolidation, and industrial choices.
This debate also exposed a recurring contradiction. Europe protects, regulates, certifies. But it can make growth harder for the very players it wants to bring up. Standards are not useless. They protect data, infrastructure, and users. But for a young company, their cost can become a market barrier. So the issue is not whether to eliminate regulation. It is whether it helps European companies stand out. Or whether it slows them down at the decisive moment.
Émilie Bonnefoy framed the other side of the issue: no sovereignty is perfect. In cloud, components, AI models, patents, or hosting, dependencies already exist. The first step is knowing them. The second is choosing which are acceptable and which are not. It is a less flashy approach than sovereignist slogans, but more operational.
This picture should be cross-checked with two findings outside the evening. On scaling up, the General Directorate for Enterprises estimates the need at 30 billion euros by 2030. That is the remaining funding required for the French deeptech ecosystem to cross this threshold. So the problem goes beyond the goodwill of the players present that evening. The DGE says so in Breakthrough Innovation Facing the Challenge of Scaling Up, published in March 2025. On sovereignty, France’s Cour des comptes reached another conclusion in October 2025. France’s ambition “struggles to be met,” notably because of the preeminent position of American companies. Their applicable legislation also weighs in the equation. This finding comes from an independent institution. It does not come from an actor with an interest in defending national consolidation against a foreign takeover.
AI Gives Attackers the Edge
The most concrete part of the debate focused on AI applied to cybersecurity. Louis-Alexis Brenac heads expertise at Orange Cyberdefense. He summed up a shared concern. Artificial intelligence does not necessarily create entirely new attacks. But it makes existing attacks faster, more convincing, and more accessible.
Phishing can become more personalized. Vulnerability research can be automated. Tools once reserved for skilled actors can be used by less experienced profiles. The attacker chooses the time, target, and method; the defender has to watch everywhere. In this already unfavorable balance, AI speeds things up on the side that needed it least.
Defense is also organizing itself with AI. Security operations centers, or SOCs, are increasingly integrating tools capable of sorting, correlating, and pre-analyzing signals. But human intervention remains central. Decisions have to be made, incidents classified, crises understood, responsibilities organized. In other words, machines can filter some of the noise, but they do not replace governance.
Christophe Remillet, founder of OneVisage, argued for a complementary approach. It consists of reducing the number of security steps required from the end user. His example of continuous biometric authentication starts from a simple observation. A large share of incidents comes from humans. Not because individuals are incapable, but because organizations ask them to be constantly vigilant. On a train, an open laptop, an authentication key left plugged in, a few minutes’ absence can be enough. That is when cybersecurity stops being abstract. OpenSezam, for its part, applies the same logic to detection. The goal is to analyze weak signals and abnormal behavior in real time. The aim is to spot fraud before it succeeds, rather than adding another burden to the user.
These solutions are still promoted by their own creators. So they obviously have a commercial interest in highlighting their strengths. The CNIL points out a major limitation: a compromised biometric data set can never be changed, unlike a password. The authority also recommends limiting the centralization of biometric templates on a single server. No CNIL representative was present to make that reservation that evening.
Around The Table: Six Paths
What stands out in the lineup brought together by Cyber Saclay-Team is less the prestige of the titles than the diversity of viewpoints. There was an accelerator, a research institute, a pioneer of French cyber, and two digital trust entrepreneurs. A major company completed the picture. Together, these six trajectories sketch the chain from science to market quite well.
- Emmanuel Papadacci-Stephanopoli — CEO of Village by CA Paris, Europe’s first startup accelerator. He is also vice president of the Fintech Observatory. He stands by one conviction: the next wave of technological value will come from labs. The challenge is knowing how to connect them to the market.
- Frédéric Pascal — Vice president for artificial intelligence at Paris-Saclay University, director of the DataIA Paris-Saclay Institute, and professor at CentraleSupélec. He represents one of Europe’s densest scientific ecosystems. He advocates AI acculturation, from students to executives.
- Michel Van Den Berghe — A towering figure in French cyber. He founded Orange Cyberdefense and Campus Cyber. He now leads Seclab, whose “purely electronic” technology secures critical infrastructure without a single line of code. His obsession: growing European champions.
- Émilie Bonnefoy — CEO of OpenSezam, which develops strong authentication through multimodal biometrics and an AI component dedicated to behavioral fraud detection. She has a background in the armed forces’ general staff, and a credo: sell early to test technology in the real world.
- Christophe Remillet — Founder and CEO of OneVisage, a specialist in 3D facial biometric authentication. His solution is meant to be “privacy by design,” with no central biometric database and resistance to identity theft. He advocates security that fades into the background instead of wearing users down.
- Louis-Alexis Brenac — Head of expertise at Orange Cyberdefense, Europe’s leading cybersecurity player. He brings real-world perspective. He describes the shifting nature of threats. He also shows how AI is changing the game, for attackers and defenders alike.
A Collective Matter Before It Is A Technical One
For society, the most important message may be this: cybersecurity can no longer be thought of only as a specialty. It touches business, research, the state, schools, families, media, election campaigns, hospitals, and infrastructure. It falls under digital law and engineering. It also falls under training, software, citizen vigilance, and industrial strategy.
That is the context in which Sam Borhani’s remarks make sense. Founding president of Cyber Saclay-Team, he moderated the evening. Interviewed after the event, he first emphasizes his perspective as a lawyer. Behind system protection, he sees questions of responsibility, trust, proof, and sometimes democracy.
A cyberattack is not just an outage. It can become a crisis of responsibility, a crisis of proof, a crisis of trust. When an organization loses data, individuals are exposed. When a fabricated rumor spreads, citizens begin to doubt. When infrastructure is hit, essential services can falter.
Borhani talks about a “risk culture” rather than simple digital fear. The goal is not to turn every user into an expert. Nor is it to make cyber a restricted language. The issue is simpler: bring a few reflexes into everyday life. Recognize a scam. Verify information. Protect your data. Understand that an image, a voice, or a video can be manipulated.
Misinformation, A Democratic Blind Spot
The debate on AI and cybersecurity quickly leads to another area: misinformation. Here too, the issue goes beyond technology. A doctored video can have political effects without hacking a single server. So can false information amplified at scale. The same goes for an automated account trying to provoke anger or fear. Borhani details this shift in the interview below.
One of the major issues raised by the event is precisely this shift. Digital security is not only about protecting access to a system. It also becomes about protecting the minimum conditions for a reliable public debate.
“Cognitive warfare,” often used as an intimidating phrase, can then be understood simply. It is about acting on how people perceive things. Not just stealing a secret, but changing the way a population interprets what it sees. In a democracy, trust in the media, institutions, and evidence conditions collective decision-making. That fragility is therefore significant. Artificial intelligences can generate a voice, a face, or a scene in minutes. The line between true and false becomes one of the most exposed fronts.
This perspective requires connecting cybersecurity, media literacy, law, research in cognitive sciences, and leadership training. It also requires not separating young people from the rest of the population. Students are very exposed to social media, but they are not automatically more gullible. They may spot certain mechanisms because they grew up with them. They can also be saturated with content. The decisive skill remains critical thinking.
An Organizer Who Opens The Dialogue
It is useful to place Sam Borhani in the context of this evening. A 20-year-old law student, he founded Cyber Saclay-Team, the cybersecurity association at Paris-Saclay University, which he has chaired for more than two years. He is also vice president of FNEIR.
During this meeting, his role was not to referee the exchanges, but to make their circulation possible. By bringing together university leaders, entrepreneurs, and cybersecurity executives in front of around twenty students, he gave a student initiative a concrete bridge-building function. The success lies less in the prestige of the lineup than in the rare opportunity for these students to question directly those who turn research into products, standards, or industrial decisions.
The result therefore deserves measured praise. The evening first created a framework, contacts, and a shared grammar. It was not meant to deliver an industrial roadmap on June 3. What will matter most are the public follow-ups: a summary, partnerships, new formats, or awareness initiatives. That long timeline is normal. It makes it possible to see whether the momentum given to students lasts.
What The Evening Opens Up Next
A very good event is not recognized only by the names it brings together. It is also recognized by the problems it makes discussable, and therefore open. In that sense, Minds & Leaders fulfilled a first function well. It made several projects visible that go beyond Paris-Saclay.
The first concerns industrialization. France produces solid research, but still needs to better turn its advances into products, procurement, and durable companies. The second concerns digital sovereignty in practice. It means choosing one’s dependencies, protecting intellectual property, selling, consolidating, and reaching sufficient scale. The third concerns regulation. It has to protect without stifling, and then frame without slowing down European players at the decisive moment. The fourth is AI. It must be used for defense, while acknowledging that it also arms attackers. The fifth is cyber risk culture. It can no longer remain confined to experts.
We are already waiting to see what public traces will extend this meeting. A summary, an assessment, or regular follow-ups would help make the expertise more durable. They would also allow the audiences absent on June 3 to join the dialogue.
So the central question remains open, but it is now better framed. Bringing researchers, students, entrepreneurs, and cyber leaders around the same table is a useful step. The next step will be turning those exchanges into products, solid companies, or shared habits. That transition will depend on industrial, regulatory, and budgetary decisions. That is precisely where the initiative will be judged over time.
Interview With Sam Borhani
At the end of the evening, Pierre-Antoine Tsady put his microphone to Sam Borhani for the Ecostylia Newsroom. The goal was to revisit how he connects cybersecurity, law, risk culture, and democratic responsibility.
Pierre-Antoine Tsady: You come from law, not engineering. What does that change in the way you approach cybersecurity?
Sam Borhani: A different perspective. Cybersecurity is not just code or firewalls. Behind every attack are questions of responsibility, law, strategy, trust, and sometimes even democracy. My background leads me to look at the human factor before the technology. The technical side is indispensable, but it remains a means in service of an objective: protecting people and organizations.
P.-A.T.: The June 3 evening emphasized bridges between students, companies, and institutions. Why does that need seem so important to you?
S. B.: I saw a lot of fascinating experts, but very few opportunities for students to meet them. The idea for Cyber Saclay-Team came from that observation. Instead of waiting for someone to create those opportunities, we might as well try to build them ourselves. What motivates me is creating bridges around a shared topic. It concerns students, companies, institutions, and, more broadly, citizens.
P.-A.T.: You say cybersecurity has become a civic issue. What does that mean in practical terms?
S. B.: Experts remain essential, but everyone is concerned. When you use your phone, share information, or vote, digital life is everywhere. Cybersecurity touches how we live, work, and even debate. To me, it can no longer be seen as something reserved for a few specialists.
P.-A.T.: When we talk about “cognitive warfare,” what does that actually mean in citizens’ everyday lives?
S. B.: It means things we already see every day. A doctored video can go viral. False information can spread faster than the truth. A fake account can try to create anger or fear. It is no longer necessarily necessary to hack a computer to destabilize a country. Sometimes it is enough to influence how people perceive reality.
P.-A.T.: Young people are very exposed to social media. Are they more vulnerable to misinformation, or more clear-eyed than previous generations?
S. B.: I think we are both the most exposed and the best placed to understand certain mechanisms. We grew up with social media, so we sometimes spot certain traps more easily. But at the same time, we are bombarded with content all day long. No one is completely safe. The best protection is still to develop critical thinking.
P.-A.T.: If you had to identify one top digital weakness in France, what would it be?
S. B.: I would talk mainly about risk culture. We invest a lot in technology, but we sometimes forget that the first line of defense is human. A lot of people still think cybersecurity has nothing to do with them. Then they become victims of a scam or an attack. We need to help people understand that this subject is now part of everyday life. We teach young people road safety rules; we should also teach them digital safety rules.
P.-A.T.: You work with major institutions and big companies. How do you maintain independence in that context?
S. B.: For me, a partnership does not mean dependence. It means pooling expertise around a shared goal. Our mission remains clear: raise awareness, pass on knowledge, and create opportunities for students. As long as that holds, we keep our independence. On the contrary, working with very different players gives us complementary viewpoints.
P.-A.T.: Should cybersecurity be taught as a civic subject, like media literacy?
S. B.: Yes, absolutely. I like to talk about a kind of “digital awareness”: understanding the risks as well as the opportunities tied to our uses, adopting appropriate behaviors, and measuring the impact of our actions online. The challenge is not only technical; it is civic. It is about enabling everyone to act with full awareness.
P.-A.T.: In ten years, what digital dangers will we regret not taking seriously enough today?
S. B.: The difficulty of distinguishing truth from falsehood. With artificial intelligence, we can already create highly realistic videos, voices, or images. In a few years, it will be even easier. If we do not develop a real culture of doubt and verification, the risk is not only technical. The trust between citizens, media, and institutions can be weakened. Yet a democracy functions above all on trust.