Machine learning systems’ vulnerabilities are pervasive. Hackers and adversaries can easily exploit them. As such, managing the risks is too large a task for the technology community to handle alone. In this primer, Andrew Lohn writes that policymakers must understand the threats well enough to assess the dangers that the United States, its military and intelligence services, and its civilians face when they use machine learning.

“Cyberoperations are almost ordinary, they happen every single day. This threat is constant. Nearly everyone is on the front lines of this global competition, not just the big players," said Director of CSET's Cybersecurity and AI Project Ben Buchanan. Buchanan notes that nation-state hacking is a part of the new era of espionage.

Based on an in-depth analysis of artificial intelligence and machine learning systems, the authors consider the future of applying such systems to cyber attacks, and what strategies attackers are likely or less likely to use. As nuanced, complex, and overhyped as machine learning is, they argue, it remains too important to ignore.

As demand for cybersecurity experts in the United States has grown faster than the supply of qualified workers, some organizations have turned to artificial intelligence to bolster their overwhelmed cyber teams. Organizations may opt for distinct teams that specialize exclusively in AI or cybersecurity, but there is a benefit to having employees with overlapping experience in both domains. This data brief analyzes hiring demand for individuals with a combination of AI and cybersecurity skills.

CSET Founding Director Jason Matheny presented the keynote address at the virtual colloquium on the future of data science and the implications for privacy and national security hosted by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.

Machine learning may provide cyber attackers with the means to execute more effective and more destructive attacks against industrial control systems. As new ML tools are developed, CSET discusses the ways in which attackers may deploy these tools and the most effective avenues for industrial system defenders to respond.

Chris Rohlf is a Non-Resident Research Fellow at CSET, where he works on the CyberAI Project.

Geographical, the magazine of the Royal Geographical Society, reviews CSET Senior Faculty Fellow Ben Buchanan's latest book, which highlights the landscape of subtle but persistent cyber attacks that are changing statecraft.