UK in AI arms race with Russia as Putin ‘wants destruction’, minister to warn

The UK is in a “new AI arms race” with countries like Russia and North Korea, the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster will say on Monday.  

Minister Pat McFadden will be speaking at the NATO Cyber Defence Conference at Lancaster House, warning the UK and its allies that “cyber war is now a daily reality”.

“Be in no doubt: the United Kingdom and others in this room are watching Russia. We know exactly what they are doing, and we are countering their attacks both publicly and behind the scenes,” he will say.

“Putin is a man who wants destruction, not peace.”

Read more: Russia ready to hit UK with wave of cyber attacks

In a bid to keep up with adversaries, Mr McFadden will announce a new Laboratory for AI Security Research (LASR).

“AI is already revolutionising many parts of life – including national security,” he will say.

“But as we develop this technology, there’s a danger it could be weaponised against us. Because our adversaries are also looking at how to use AI on the physical and cyber battlefield.”

Chinese threats

US officials recently discovered a Chinese attack on the country’s telecommunications infrastructure, where operatives “extracted all sorts of sensitive information from US telecommunications and penetrated it very deeply”, according to tech investor Andrew Levi.

“That shows that this isn’t just about Russia,” he told Sky News.

In May, GCHQ director Anne Keast-Butler said the intelligence agency now “devotes more resource to China than any other single mission“, after the country hacked the Ministry of Defence’s payroll system and was accused of stealing data about UK voters from the Electoral Commission.

In recent months, cyber security firm Check Point said it had seen “an uptick of 72% in cyber attacks on targets in the UK”, according to Sergey Shykevitch, who leads the company’s threat intelligence research.

“It is definitely possible, with the right investment and national cyber security strategy, to reduce the risks from such attacks,” he told Sky News. “But we have to remember that for the attacker, it is enough to have one successful attack in order to achieve their goal, while the defender has to be able to prevent 100% of the attacks.”

AI ‘only one part of the puzzle’

The new AI laboratory will receive an initial £8.22m round of government funding before inviting further investment and collaboration from industry.

However, one expert told Sky News AI is only “one part of the puzzle” in terms of making the UK less vulnerable to cyberattacks.

“We need to fundamentally change our posture and invest in our networks,” said Stephen Kines, chief executive of British cyber security firm Goldilock.

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He said the UK’s “legacy infrastructure” leaves the country vulnerable and adding AI protection on top is like having a “nice front door” with a security camera doorbell but an “old-school back door”.

“That’s really the problem we have. We’ve got these back doors that just have no security whatsoever,” he said.

Mr Kines suggests the UK would be better off implementing physical “kill switches” in its grids in order to protect against Russian attacks, as well as reducing how many access points are connected to the internet.

“If you take it down to the physical layer, then you can actually defeat the Russians because they can’t physically penetrate it from thousands of miles away.”

Alongside the new laboratory, the chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster will also announce a new £1m incident response project to share expertise so that allies can respond to cyber incidents more effectively.