Washington, June 7: The landscape of cybersecurity is rapidly evolving due to artificial intelligence (AI). While AI provides powerful new tools for security, it also equips criminals and hostile nations with innovative methods to attack critical infrastructure. This was a key concern raised during a congressional hearing involving technical experts and lawmakers.
The hearing took place shortly after President Donald Trump signed an executive order. This order directs federal agencies to create a framework for assessing advanced AI’s cybersecurity capabilities and to grant government and critical infrastructure operators greater access to cutting-edge AI models.
Experts informed members of the House Homeland Security Subcommittee that AI is accelerating the process of identifying vulnerabilities in cybersecurity software. This increase in speed is intensifying the pace of cyberattacks and escalating competition between the U.S. and China.
Subcommittee Chairman Andy Ogles stated, “These AI models are already changing the threat landscape, and the federal government cannot be the last entity to understand what they can do.”
Sandra Joyce, Vice President of Google Threat Intelligence Group, noted that cybercriminals are already leveraging AI. She testified, “Our concerns were recently confirmed when we found evidence that cybercriminals used AI to develop a zero-day exploit for the first time.”
She explained that attackers are using AI to quickly identify vulnerabilities and are advancing through networks much faster than traditional security teams.
Joyce added, “Threat actors can operate much more rapidly both before and after breaching a network with the help of AI. They can exploit vulnerabilities before we can patch them and can move swiftly through networks using autonomous agents.”
Chris Meserole, Executive Director of the Frontier Model Forum, stated that advanced AI systems bring both opportunities and threats. He remarked, “If an AI agent can discover zero-day vulnerabilities, it can secure us in the hands of a defender, but in the hands of an attacker, it becomes a threat.”
Meserole warned that foreign competitors could replicate the capabilities of advanced AI systems using a technique called “adversarial distillation,” while also removing their security limitations. He said, “Foreign entities can accelerate their AI development using this technique and then leverage its capabilities against U.S. critical infrastructure.”
Jack Cable, CEO of Corridor Security and former advisor to the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), emphasized that AI is increasing both the speed and scale of cyber risks. He stated, “The biggest challenge is not that AI is creating new types of vulnerabilities. The real challenge is that AI significantly accelerates both the creation and exploitation of vulnerabilities.”
Cable urged governments and companies to focus more on preventing vulnerabilities in software from the outset, rather than relying solely on fixing issues after they arise.
Throughout the hearing, the issue of China was frequently raised. Lawmakers questioned witnesses about the growing global influence of Chinese AI models. Experts warned that if the U.S. falls behind in competition, low-cost Chinese AI systems could become widely used in software development, cloud computing, and critical infrastructure.
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