{"id":48019,"date":"2025-11-19T17:51:46","date_gmt":"2025-11-19T09:51:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/llms-to-accelerate-both-cyber-defenders-and-hackers-openai-exec-says\/"},"modified":"2025-11-19T17:51:46","modified_gmt":"2025-11-19T09:51:46","slug":"llms-to-accelerate-both-cyber-defenders-and-hackers-openai-exec-says","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/llms-to-accelerate-both-cyber-defenders-and-hackers-openai-exec-says\/","title":{"rendered":"LLMs to Accelerate Both Cyber Defenders and Hackers, OpenAI Exec Says"},"content":{"rendered":"<\/p>\n

RESTON, Virginia \u2014<\/em> The balance between space industry cyber defenders and the hackers, online spies and cyber warriors attacking their systems will tilt in dramatic and largely unpredictable fashion over the next few years as increasingly proficient generative AI models provide growing capabilities to both sides, Open AI<\/strong> executive Alexis Bonnell told the CyberSat conference Tuesday.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe must recognize the duality. AI is an accelerant for both offense and defense,\u201d said Bonnell, who is head of adoption and deployment at Open AI for Government.<\/p>\n

Large language models (LLMs) like Open AI\u2019s ChatGPT and its competitors can already assist both hackers and cyber defenders in important ways, she said, and full automation of some critical workflows in both attack and defense is coming soon.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat determines who wins is how fast we adopt it,\u201d Bonnell warned.<\/p>\n

America could out-resource its adversaries in every way except one, she said, \u201cThe only thing that adversaries have the exact same amount of as we do is time. That means that time is actually the most effective and critical and powerful weapon system we have available to us.\u201d<\/p>\n

The extraordinary potential of AI to unleash human creativity meant that the key to victory in space is to ask and answer \u2018What if?\u2019 faster than the adversary. \u201cThis isn\u2019t just about AI. This is also about, on the human side, making us more curious, more comfortable with speed, with risk,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Some respected voices in malware analysis have poured scorn on the idea of AI-powered autonomous malware attacking critical infrastructure, highlighting deficiencies in the so-far documented efforts of threat actors using LLMs.<\/p>\n

Bonnell told Via Satellite<\/em> in a brief interview after her remarks that to properly understand the threat to the space sector, it is important to develop \u201ca reasonable and mature hypothesis\u201d about AI risk.<\/p>\n

On autonomous malware, \u201cIt depends how autonomous we mean,\u201d she said. Human operators are already using AI to assist them during specific stages of an attack, she said, \u201cSocial engineering no longer requires skill, just compute.\u201d<\/p>\n

But the vision of a human operator merely issuing a single command or prompt to set in motion a complete attack chain, \u201cI would say that\u2019s going to be a couple of years,\u201d she predicted.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou have to be ready to be wrong\u201d when making predictions about AI, she added, the technology is advancing so fast that \u201cIn three months this all could be totally different.\u201d<\/p>\n

On defensive capabilities, Bonnell cited an exercise by one of the U.S. national labs, simulating a cyber attack on U.S. satellite communications. She said human analysts took 45 minutes to \u201cpiece together across consoles \u2026 root cause [analysis], hypothesis, and recommended responses.\u201d An AI assistant was able to do it in 30 seconds.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is not future tech. It is happening right now,\u2019 she said.<\/p>\n

But AI is not a philosopher\u2019s stone for either attackers or defenders, Bonnell said. Cyber defenders in the space sector need to decompose their workflows and figure out where AI could help their human workforce.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is not an argument that AI is going to solve everything. In fact, AI isn\u2019t very good at a lot of things.\u201d The key is teaming human and machine, she said.<\/p>\n

More from CyberSat 2025: <\/strong><\/p>\n