UK Cyber Spies Plan AI ‘Lab’ to Counter Hostile State Threats

UK spies are stepping up efforts to tackle cyber and artificial intelligence threats from hostile foreign states, including the sort of online manipulation that helped foment rioting across the country in the past 10 days.

GCHQ, the UK’s national security listening post, is working with Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s administration on a “Laboratory for AI Security Research,” people familiar with the matter said. The new body would unify work by government departments and intelligence officials to study how Britain’s enemies might use AI offensively, they said. GCHQ did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The center would look at the full range of dangers, according to the people, ranging from the spread of the online misinformation — such as the kind that played a role in sparking riots over the past two weeks — to AI-made bio weapons.

Cyber and AI threats to the UK’s national security have come into increasing focus in recent months. Amid a recent spate of rioting and violent disorder sparked in part by online misinformation about the suspect in the killings of three young girls, British authorities suspected foreign state-backed actors used bots to amplify anti-immigration sentiment on the social media platform X.

The new organization would in time seek to work with technology companies and academic experts, as well as international allies, to counter AI-based threats to national security and British businesses, according to the people, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the project has not been made public. They warned that the plans were not yet finalized and could still be changed.

The Group of Seven nations and the European Union made combating Russian disinformation and influence operations a top priority at a leaders’ summit in Italy earlier this year. Those efforts included publicly exposing Russian campaigns and methods, sanctioning outlets and individuals, and coordinating responses to Moscow’s actions, as well as striving to prevent disinformation spreading on major technology platforms.

Hacking has been another area where the UK and its allies have seen hostile foreign state activity. In May, British officials said China was the likely culprit in a cyber-attack that gained access to the personal data of UK military personnel. Just two months earlier, the UK had accused Chinese hackers of targeting politicians, companies and dissidents, as well as stealing troves of British voter data. Beijing denied all those allegations.

Giving some insight into the work GCHQ does, its director-general Anne Keast-Butler said last year that the eavesdropping agency “contributed vital intelligence to shape the West’s response to the illegal Russian invasion of Ukraine; helped disrupt terrorist plots; and worked tirelessly to tackle the ongoing threat of ransom-ware, the impact of which costs the UK dearly.”

Photo credit: Jeenah Moon/Bloomberg