{"id":92054,"date":"2023-08-11T13:47:14","date_gmt":"2023-08-11T13:47:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.techopedia.com"},"modified":"2023-09-07T07:43:30","modified_gmt":"2023-09-07T07:43:30","slug":"ai-powered-espionage-a-bond-movie-or-actual-reality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.techopedia.com\/ai-powered-espionage-a-bond-movie-or-actual-reality","title":{"rendered":"AI-Powered Espionage \u2013 A Bond Movie or Actual Reality?"},"content":{"rendered":"
One thing that really drives me crazy is when reality starts looking like a sci-fi movie from the 80s or 90s.<\/p>\n
We can argue the present has always been influenced by the wonkiest predictions about the future since at least the time of Jules Verne.<\/p>\n
However, it\u2019s indisputable that the recent technological revolutions \u2013 the Internet<\/a> and artificial intelligence<\/a> (AI) above all else \u2013 are making our world increasingly look like what we called \u201ccyberpunk<\/a>\u201d in the 80s.<\/p>\n In what some could see as an unexpected twist, but I\u2019d prefer to call a \u201cprediction from the past,\u201d the world\u2019s secret services have started actively employing artificial intelligence\u00a0to wage their (now virtual) espionage wars.<\/p>\n And so here we are, living in a world that makes John Badham\u2019s WarGames<\/a> movie look less like fiction and more like a documentary (albeit with color screens).<\/p>\n We can all see the impact of shifting the cold war of attrition between the global powers into the virtual space.<\/p>\n In the last few years, the number of cyberattacks that threatened or even damaged the largest governmental agencies spiked to unprecedented levels, with cyberattacks against governments jumping 95% in the last half of 2022<\/a>, according to one source.<\/p>\n The more we become connected, the less we are protected by what traditionally granted security to any nation: military power and security.<\/p>\n Maybe it’s rival spy agencies battling against each other, but the implications are quite dire.<\/p>\n Nefarious actors can now cross any border without firing a single bullet, or having to cross any mountain, river, desert, or walled border.<\/p>\n And you don\u2019t need to possess the full might of the whole Chinese or Russian army to pose a serious threat to a U.S. governmental agency anymore.<\/p>\n You just need a small group of proficient hackers<\/a>, armed with the right set of virtual<\/em> weapons, possibly powered by some AI. In a nutshell, war isn\u2019t what it used to be anymore \u2013 especially espionage war.<\/p>\n If the weapons used to wage espionage wars have changed, so does the flow of the war itself.<\/p>\n Intelligence has a completely different shape, size and range today, with millions of datapoints being collected every moment in the blink of an eye.<\/p>\n Big data technologies must be revolutionizing all espionage scenarios, especially since most of this data is open source and can be collected by anyone, rather than from a few clandestine actors.<\/p>\n Information travels at a much higher speed, and the number of actors collecting this information has significantly increased. Facebook, Twitter and Google process hundreds of petabytes<\/a> of data every day, and new commercial surveillance satellites are launched on a regular basis.<\/p>\n Things happen at a much faster speed, and reaction times are so much tighter.<\/p>\n As the chairwoman of the chair of the HAI Steering Committee on International Security Amy Zegart said<\/a>:<\/p>\n \u201cDuring the Cuban missile crisis of 1962, President Kennedy had 13 days to deliberate in secret about what he would do after U-2 spy planes discovered Soviet missiles in Cuba.<\/em><\/p>\n “On 9\/11, President George W. Bush had just 13 hours to weigh intelligence about who was responsible for that horrific attack and how the U.S. would respond. <\/em><\/p>\n “Today, decision time could be 13 minutes or less<\/strong>.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n With so much data to digest, and so little time to do that, AI is a necessary tool rather than a luxury.<\/p>\n Some of the biggest global players already understand that, and have started collecting datasets to feed their AIs \u2013 with or without consent from the recipients.<\/p>\n For example, MI6 chief Richard Moore explained his suspicions about China setting \u201cdata traps\u201d during the recent Covid-19 pandemic<\/a>, when Beijing often forced the countries who bought vaccines from them to share their vaccination datasets with them.<\/p>\nWaging War Into Cyberspace<\/span><\/h2>\n
AI as a Weapon in Espionage Wars<\/span><\/h2>\n