National cyber shield could be ready in five years
GCHQ director Anne Keast-Butler confirms plans to build a national cyber defence capability using AI agents to defend critical infrastructure at ‘machine speed’
The UK’s signals intelligence agency, GCHQ, has confirmed plans to build a national cyber shield using artificial intelligence (AI) agents to defend against cyber attacks.
“In the past few months, GCHQ has developed the blueprint for a new national cyber defence capability that will hardwire cutting-edge agentic AI into machine-speed cyber defence,” GCHQ director Anne Keast-Butler said yesterday.
The system, which is planned to be up and running within five years, will use AI agents to identify threats to critical national infrastructure, including energy, water, healthcare, transport and financial services.
The project, described by ministers as a “generational endeavour”, aims to protect UK infrastructure from sophisticated attacks, such as that on Jaguar Land Rover, which is estimated to have cost the economy £1.5bn.
The GCHQ director said the agency was using AI to “reimagine” cyber security, reflecting a government vision to develop defensive AI technology with the capability to identify and repair security vulnerabilities in software at “machine speed”.
The latest frontier AI is “rapidly unearthing fault lines in technologies our society relies on every single day”, she said.
GCHQ is also building frontier AI “responsibly and ethically” into its own algorithms for analysing data collected for intelligence purposes, Keast-Butler confirmed.
Uses include translating foreign languages and finding needles in a haystack of data faster than ever before.
Requirement for AI-powered cyber defence
Keast-Butler said Russia has scaled up actions against the UK and Europe, targeting undersea cables and launching cyber attacks. These “hybrid attacks” are designed to undermine critical infrastructure, democratic processes, supply chains and public trust.
“GCHQ is working tirelessly with intelligence and defence partners to degrade and reduce the Russian threat,” she said.
The National Cyber Force is delivering high-impact cyber operations every day to counter state threats and undermine terrorists and criminals. A priority area is protecting the data and energy flowing through the critical undersea cables and pipelines.
“We’re also disrupting Russia’s attempts to smuggle Western tech, fending off its cyber attacks, and countering reckless sabotage and assassination attempts,” said Keast-Butler.
UK security minister Dan Jarvis first announced plans for a “national cyber shield” in April. He said protecting critical national infrastructure would require a “fundamentally different approach” in the age of AI. “We will not secure the central pillars of the UK state simply by purchasing off-the-shelf vendor solutions.”
The Cabinet Office has asked leading AI companies to work with the government to develop AI-powered cyber defence capabilities.
Sovereign IT
The GCHQ director said that as nations grapple with sovereign IT, it is not realistic for countries to shut out foreign technology.
Tech sovereignty is about the agency, ability and agility of nations to shape their own digital future
Anne Keast-Butler, GCHQ
“For me, tech sovereignty is about the agency, ability and agility of nations to shape their own digital future,” she said.
That means backing UK tech companies and academic research, “whilst not limiting our ability to harness the best of the world’s technology”.
“Sovereignty doesn’t have to mean ‘made in the UK’, so long as we carefully manage our supply chains, dependencies and data,” she said.
Quantum future needs action now
Keast-Butler, a mathematician, said that usable quantum technology has always been a decade away, but that has changed.
“Quantum sensing is here – our new cutting-edge work with academia and industry is identifying the fingerprints of stealth, such as detecting missile launches,” she said.
Once they are operational, quantum computers will be able to complete tasks that currently take years in a matter of seconds.
That includes breaking encryption, she said, urging businesses to follow advice from the National Cyber Security Centre to phase in encryption algorithms that are secure from attacks by quantum computers.
Space-based tech is a critical asset
China and Russia are investing heavily in space to support both peacetime and war ambitions. And Iran has used satellite images to support its attacks on Gulf states.
In three years, more than 10,000 new objects have been launched into space as more satellites are required to support the growing volume and speed of data crossing the planet.
“Space-based tech is critical to both our way of life and our national security, and that’s why GCHQ is working with partners to harness, secure and defend it,” she said.
Cryptography for the quantum era
Keast-Butler said GCHQ’s ability to design world-leading encryption was fundamental for protecting the integrity of technology and for national security.
GCHQ pioneered public key cryptography in the 1970s, which is still used to protect the security of the internet. The agency’s mathematicians are developing new forms of encryption that will allow data to be managed safely.
