Russia and other adversaries of the UK are trying to use artificial intelligence to enhance cyber-attacks against the nation’s infrastructure, the cabinet minister Pat McFadden will warn at a Nato conference in London on Monday.
The chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster will announce the creation of a research programme in London, called the Laboratory for AI Security Research (LASR), to keep on top of emerging threats as he warns there is a risk that Russia will try to knock out the electricity grid.
There is a danger that artificial intelligence “could be weaponised against us,” McFadden will warn, arguing that the UK is already engaged in the “daily reality” of a “cyberwar,” with hacking efforts coming in particular from Russia.
Over the past year, Russia’s criminals and hackers have “stepped up their attacks” against the UK, he will add, and targeted other Nato allies who have been supporting Ukraine with military aid as it tries to fight off Russian aggression.
Last week, the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, went further and directly threatened countries including the UK, which allowed Ukraine to use Storm Shadow missiles on targets inside Russia. Russia “had the right” to strike military targets in response, Putin said.
Few believe that Russia would risk a conventional military attack against a Nato member in reality, but an enhanced cyber-attack remains a real possibility, possibly by targeting the electricity network.
McFadden is expected to say that “Russia has targeted our media, our telecoms, our political and democratic institutions and our energy infrastructure,” and warn that “with a cyber-attack, Russia can turn the lights off for millions of people. It can shut down the power grids”.
Russia has conducted cyber-attacks on Ukrainian power networks in the past, though the country’s defences have improved. Two regional power outages in December 2015 and 2016 were blamed on Russian hackers from the GRU military intelligence, according to a US indictment, though the impact of each was brief.
Artificial intelligence has already been used by North Korean cyber hackers, according to the US, to try to create more destructive hacking tools, a trend that is expected to develop. “North Korea is the first, but it won’t be the last,” McFadden will say.
The new lab will be funded with £8.2m and is being created with the cooperation of the UK spy agency GCHQ as well as other government agencies. Ministers hope that the private sector will contribute additional resources to help jointly tackle the threat.