Minister calls on AI firms to work with government on national cyber defence
Warning of unprecedented challenge posed by rapid growth in power of AI
Leading AI companies should work with government to build AI powered cyber defence capabilities, according to the UK security minister, who described the task as a “generational endeavour” that will “test the absolute limits of our engineering and innovation.”
Dan Jarvis warned that the nature of the threat is changing faster than any previous government has had to confront, with AI allowing the UK’s adversaries to automate attacks and identify vulnerabilities in critical systems “faster than any human team can patch them.”
Addressing the CYBERUK conference in Glasgow on Wednesday, he stressed that it was not possible to “fight a machine-speed threat with human-speed bureaucracy,” and called on the AI industry to help co-develop systems for Britain’s national cyber defence.
He said: “Let me clear, protecting the critical national infrastructure requires a fundamentally different approach. We will not secure the central pillars of the UK state simply by purchasing off the shelf vendor solutions. We need a new mode of collaboration and it is time to set a higher standard for responsible action.
“Today, I can give a commitment that the government will respond to this changing threat. We will need to build national scale AI-powered cyber defence capabilities - capabilities that can protect our nation’s most critical networks by autonomously identifying and addressing vulnerabilities at a speed and scale that no human can match.
“To achieve this, my message to the frontier AI companies is this - the responsibility goes beyond releasing enterprise software. We want you to work with us directly. Partner with the UK government to co-develop AI for national cyber defence, and make no mistake, this is a generational endeavour and it will test the absolute limits of our engineering and innovation.”
Mr Jarvis also invited organisations to sign a voluntary cyber resilience pledge, part of a national cyber action plan to be published this summer. A further £90 million will also be invested to bolster cyber resilience, including amongst SME firms.
Also speaking at the conference, held in the city’s SEC venue, was Richard Horne, chief executive officer of the National Cyber Security Centre, who pointed to a growing sophistication in the cyber threat posed by state actors.
The number of nationally significant incidents handled by the National Cyber Security Centre more than doubled in 2025, with hostile states and criminal actors increasingly deploying automated AI systems to identify and exploit vulnerabilities.
“We know that China's intelligence and military agencies now display an eye watering level of sophistication in their cyber operations,” Mr Horne explained. “This, combined with their whole of state approach, means we face more than just a capable cyber threat, but a peer competitor in cyberspace.
“We know that Iran is almost certainly using cyber activity to support the repression of British individuals on our streets who are seen as a threat to the regime, and we know that Russia is taking the cyber lessons it has learnt in a theatre of war and is moving them beyond the battlefield - the tactics and techniques honed in conflict are being directed at states it considered hostile.”
He added: “Working with our partners, including the National protective security authority, we are seeing sustained Russian hybrid activity targeting assets across the UK and Europe. We have a unique window to learn how cyber operations are being used in conflict situations and shore up our resilience at home.”
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