I think some exposure to ML is going to be pretty important to most areas in IT, including security. A bit like how whether you want to be in coding, security,

I think some exposure to ML is going to be pretty important to most areas in IT, including security. A bit like how whether you want to be in coding, security, ops, management etc, you probably should know a bit of software architecture. I reckon ML has become less niche and moved into a more mainstream discipline in the field where some exposure will be important to anyone. So I'd say put enough time into it to at least understand what it does, why people use it, and some of the key terminology, so you can hold your own in a professional conversation involving ML. ML does also have some specific applications in security (anomaly detection etc).