NSA chief announces new AI Security Center, ‘focal point’ for AI use by government, defense industry

WASHINGTON — The National Security Agency is establishing what its director called an “AI Security Center” within the agency’s Cybersecurity Collaboration Center in order to consolidate all of its artificial intelligence security-related efforts, the agency’s head said today.

“The AI Security Center will become NSA’s focal point for leveraging foreign intelligence insights, contributing to the development of best practices, guidelines, principles, evaluation methodology and risk frameworks for AI security, with an end goal of promoting the secure development, integration and adoption of AI capabilities within our national security systems and our defense industrial base,” Gen. Paul Nakasone said today at an event hosted by the National Press Club.

The need for the new entity was born out of a study recently completed by the NSA, which found that the agency needed to focus on AI security as adversaries are moving quickly to exploit vulnerabilities in US and allied AI systems. Nakasone said today the AI Security Center will be fundamental to “understanding our threat.”

“AI security is about protecting AI systems from learning, doing and revealing the wrong thing,” Nakasone said. “It is a set of practices to protect AI systems and lifecycles from digital attacks, theft and damage. We must build a robust understanding of AI vulnerabilities, foreign intelligence threats to these AI systems and ways to counter the threat in order to have AI security. We must also ensure that malicious foreign actors can’t steal America’s innovative AI capabilities to do so.”

The new AI center will be housed in the NSA’s Cybersecurity Collaboration Center because AI security “is principally a cybersecurity responsibility,” he added.

According to the NSA, the Cybersecurity Collaboration Center “works with industry, interagency and international partners to harden the U.S. Defense Industrial Base, operationalize NSA’s unique insights on nation-state cyber threats, jointly create mitigations guidance for emerging activity and chronic cybersecurity challenges, and secure emerging technologies.”

Nakasone added that the AI Security Center will also help industry understand the threats it faces against its intellectual property, and it will also work closely with “partners, labs, academia, across the [intelligence community] and Department of Defense and foreign partners.”

“We want to ensure that NSA has a clear path forward to address both the opportunities and challenges of AI as industry rockets forward with innovation,” Nakasone said.