Skip to main content

Implications of AI in National Security: Understanding the Security Issues and Ethical Challenges

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
Artificial Intelligence in Cyber Security: Impact and Implications

Abstract

National security is the security and defence of a country. In the UK, national security provides coordination on security and intelligence issues of strategic importance across a government [25]. In the midst of the fourth industrial revolution, many countries including the UK have adopted Artificial Intelligence (AI) to achieve optimal national security for its citizens, economy, and institutions. In fact, AI, with its evolving intelligent behaviours, has become a major priority for defense for many governments. AI has the potential to support a number of domestic and international security initiatives, from online security to counter-terrorism. It also has the potential to change everything about the way government offices relate to each other and the rest of the world, how they work and ultimately get on together. Therefore, the more pressing question centres around how AI will shape national security? AI encompasses a series of complex issues that cut across security and ethical boundaries. This book chapter will discuss these themes in relation to national security. In detail, it will examine the security issues and ethical challenges of AI for the operational and strategic levels of national Security.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 149.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 199.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD 199.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

References

  1. Allen G, Chan T (2017) Artificial intelligence and national security. Tech. rep. www.belfercenter.org

  2. Andresen SL (2002) John McCarthy, Father of Al

    Google Scholar 

  3. Asimov I (1942) Runaround. Astounding science fiction

    Google Scholar 

  4. Ayet Puigarnau J (2018) Communication from the commission to the European Parliament, the European council, the council, the European Economic and social committee and the committee of the Regions. https://data.consilium.europa.eu/doc/document/ST-8507–2018-INIT/en/pdf

  5. Babuta A, Oswald M, Janjeva A (2020) Artificial intelligence and UK national security: policy considerations. Tech. rep

    Google Scholar 

  6. Besse P, Castets-Renard C, Garivier A, Loubes JM (2018) Can everyday AI be ethical. Fairness of Mach Learn Algorith. arxiv.org/abs/1810.01729

    Google Scholar 

  7. Bhatnagar S, Cotton T, Brundage M, Avin S, Clark J, Toner H, Eckersley P, Garfinkel B, Dafoe A, Scharre P, Zeitzoff T, Filar B, Anderson H, Roff H, Allen GC, Carrick JS, Sèan F, Hèigeartaigh O, Beard S, Belfield H, Farquhar S, Lyle C, Crootof R, Evans O, Page M, Bryson J, Yampolskiy R, Amodei D (2018) The Malicious use of artificial intelligence: forecasting, prevention, and mitigation authors are listed in order of contribution design direction, vol 101. https://img1.wsimg.com/blobby/go/3d82daa4–97fe-4096–9c6b-376b92c619de/downloads/1c6q2kc4v_50335.pdf. arXiv:1802.07228

  8. Bulao J (2021) How much data is created every day in 2021? [You’ll be shocked!]. https://techjury.net/blog/how-much-data-is-created-every-day/

  9. Burt T, Horvitz E (2020) New steps to combat disinformation—Microsoft on the issues. https://blogs.microsoft.com/on-the-issues/2020/09/01/disinformation-deepfakes-newsguard-video-authenticator/

  10. Busby M (2020) A-level student launches legal bid against of qual—A-levels—The guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/education/2020/aug/16/a-level-student-launches-legal-bid-against-ofqual

  11. Carlini N, Mishra P, Vaidya T, Zhang Y, Sherr M, Shields C, Wagner D, Zhou W (2016) Hidden voice commands. In: Proceedings of the 25th USENIX security symposium, pp 513–530

    Google Scholar 

  12. Chatila R, Havens JC (2019) Ethically aligned design (IEEE)

    Google Scholar 

  13. Chui M, Harrysson M, James Manyika J, Roberts R, Chung R, Nel P, van Heteren A (2018) Notes from the AI frontier. Applying AI for social good. McKinsey Global Institute

    Google Scholar 

  14. Cinelli M, de Francisci Morales G, Galeazzi A, Quattrociocchi W, Starnini M (2021) The echo chamber effect on social media. In: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America

    Google Scholar 

  15. Conner-Simons A (2016) System predicts 85% of cyber-attacks using input from human experts—MIT News—Massachusetts Institute of Technology. https://news.mit.edu/2016/ai-system-predicts-85-percent-cyber-attacks-using-input-human-experts-0418

  16. Connor BT, Doan L (2021) Government and corporate surveillance: moral discourse on privacy in the civil sphere. Inf Commun Soc

    Google Scholar 

  17. Crume J, Lhotka D, Austin C (2018) Security and artificial intelligence. Tech. rep. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_intelligence

  18. Damiani J (2019) A voice deepfake was used to scam a CEO out of $243,000 (2019). https://www.forbes.com/sites/jessedamiani/2019/09/03/a-voice-deepfake-was-used-to-scam-a-ceo-out-of-243000/?sh=192aef622241

  19. DeepQuanty: Sherlock AI—DeepQuanty (2020). http://deepquantyailabs.com/sherlock-ai/

  20. Directorate-General for Communication: the EU in 2019—General Report on the Activities of the European Union (2020). https://op.europa.eu/webpub/com/general-report-2019/en/#chapter0

  21. Dronewars: Drone Wars UK (2021). https://dronewars.net/

  22. EU: EUR-Lex-32021R0240-EN-EUR-Lex (2021). https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/reg/2021/240

  23. European Union Agency for Cybersecurity: Mehari—ENISA (2020)

    Google Scholar 

  24. Fosch-Villaronga E Lutz C, Tamò-Larrieux A (2020) Gathering expert opinions for social Robots’ Ethical, legal, and societal concerns: findings from four international workshops. Int J Soc Robot

    Google Scholar 

  25. GOV.UK: National security and intelligence—GOV.UK (2021), https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/national-security.

  26. Gantz J, Reinsel D (2012) IDC the digital Universe in 2020: big data, bigger digital shadows, and biggest growth in the far east sponsored by EMC Corporation. Tech. rep. www.emc.com/leadership/digital-universe/index.htm

  27. Guidotti R, Monreale A, Pedreschi D (2019) The AI black box explanation problem. Ercim News

    Google Scholar 

  28. Hanson-Robotics: Sophia-Hanson Robotics (2020). https://www.hansonrobotics.com/sophia/

  29. Hao K (2021) Google has released a tool to spot faked and doctored images. MIT Technol Rev. https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/02/05/349126/google-ai-deepfakes-manipulated-images-jigsaw-assembler/

  30. Heaven D (2019) Why deep-learning AIs are so easy to fool. Nature

    Google Scholar 

  31. Hofseth, A.: Fake news, propaganda and influence operations – a guide to journalism in a new and more chaotic environment (2017)

    Google Scholar 

  32. Hutchins E (2018) Cyber Kill Chain®—Lockheed Martin

    Google Scholar 

  33. IBM: Artificial Intelligence for Smarter Cybersecurity—IBM (2021). https://www.ibm.com/security/artificial-intelligence

  34. Institute FoL (2020) Asilomar AI principles. Future of Life Institute, Understanding the Security issues and Ethical challenges 19

    Google Scholar 

  35. Iyer KS (2016) MIT researchers develop AI that can detect cyberattacks with 85% accuracy TechWorm. https://www.techworm.net/2016/04/mit-researchers-develop-ai-detect-cyberattacks-85-accuracy.html

  36. Jacobs S (2018) Political Propaganda spread through social bots. In: Summer lightfoot

    Google Scholar 

  37. Kelly JE (2015) Computing, cognition and the future of knowing. IBM White Paper

    Google Scholar 

  38. Keshavarzi Arshadi A, Webb J, Salem M, Cruz E, Calad-Thomson S, Ghadirian N, Collins J, Diez-Cecilia E, Kelly B, Goodarzi H, Yuan JS (2020) Artificial intelligence for COVID-19 drug discovery and vaccine development. Front Artif Intell

    Google Scholar 

  39. Limba T, Stankevičius A, Andrulevičius A (2019) Industry 4.0 and national security: the phenomenon of disruptive technology. Entrep Sustain Issues

    Google Scholar 

  40. Luyten K (2021) Lobe: Lobe—Machine Learning Made Easy, Addressing the dissemination of terrorist content online. Tech. rep. https://www.lobe.ai/

  41. MIT: Moral Machine (2016). https://www.moralmachine.net/

  42. Manyika J, Chui M, Bughin J (2013) Disruptive technologies: advances that will transform life, business, and the global economy. McKinsey Global

    Google Scholar 

  43. Martin AS, Freeland S (2021) The advent of artificial intelligence in space activities: new legal challenges. Space Policy

    Google Scholar 

  44. Martin N (2019) The major concerns around facial recognition technology. https://www.forbes.com/sites/nicolemartin1/2019/09/25/the-major-concerns-around-facial-recognition-technology/?sh=29b3bafb4fe3

  45. Meijer A, Wessels M (2019) Predictive policing: review of benefits and drawbacks. Int J Public Adm

    Google Scholar 

  46. Mirsky Y, Mahler T, Shelef I, Elovici Y (2019) CT-GAN: malicious tampering of 3D medical imagery using deep learning

    Google Scholar 

  47. Neri E, Coppola F, Miele V, Bibbolino C, Grassi R (2020) Artificial intelligence: who is responsible for the diagnosis?

    Google Scholar 

  48. Pagallo U (2018) Vital, Sophia, and Co.-The quest for the legal personhood of robots. Information (Switzerland)

    Google Scholar 

  49. Pan Z, Yu W, Yi X, Khan A, Yuan F, Zheng Y (2019) Recent progress on generative adversarial networks (GANs): a survey. IEEE Access

    Google Scholar 

  50. Property Office I (2019) Artificial intelligence

    Google Scholar 

  51. Rachum-Twaig O (2020) Whose robot is it anyway?: liability for artificial intelligence-based robots. University of Illinois Law Rev

    Google Scholar 

  52. Radulov N (2019) Artificial intelligence and security. Instr Sci J “Security and Future”

    Google Scholar 

  53. Redirect: The Redirect Method (2021). https://redirectmethod.org/

  54. Robert LP, Alahmad R, Esterwood C, Kim S, You S, Zhang Q (2020) A review of personality in human-robot interactions

    Google Scholar 

  55. SEC: SEC.gov—HOME (2019). https://www.sec.gov/

  56. Sayler KM (2020) Artificial intelligence and national security—Economic impacts and considerations. Congr Res Serv

    Google Scholar 

  57. Schwartz O (2019) In 2016, microsoft’s racist chatbot revealed the dangers of online conversation

    Google Scholar 

  58. Soltan AA, Kouchaki S, Zhu T, Kiyasseh D, Taylor T, Hussain ZB, Peto T, Brent AJ, Eyre DW, Clifton DA (2021) Rapid triage for COVID-19 using routine clinical data for patients attending hospital: development and prospective validation of an artificial intelligence screening test. Lancet Dig Health

    Google Scholar 

  59. Song G, Kim S, Hwang H, Lee K (2019) Blockchain-based Notarization for social media. In: 2019 IEEE international conference on consumer electronics, ICCE 2019 (2019)

    Google Scholar 

  60. Sugawara T, Cyr B, Rampazzi S, Genkin D, Fu K (2019) Light commands: laser-based audio injection attacks on voice-controllable systems

    Google Scholar 

  61. Thomson JJ (1985) The Trolley problem. Yale Law J

    Google Scholar 

  62. Treanor J (2015) The 2010 ’flash crash’: how it unfolded—Stock markets—The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/apr/22/2010-flash-crash-new-york-stock-exchange-unfolded

  63. Truther: Cyber Terror Attacks (2013) TRUTHER.ORG: exposing false-flag terror since 2007 (2021). https://sites.google.com/site/trutherswitzerland/cyber-terror/cyber-terror-attacks-2013

  64. UK Government: Growing the artificial intelligence industry in the UK: recommendations of the review. Gov.uk (2017)

    Google Scholar 

  65. UK Government: AI Sector Deal—GOV.UK (2019). https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/artificial-intelligence-sector-deal/ai-sector-deal

  66. UNESCO: outcome document: first draft of the Recommendation on the Ethics of Artificial Intelligence—UNESCO Digital Library (2020). https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000373434

  67. UnitedNations: The global COVID-19 pandemic may lead to the loss of a decade of development gains—UN News (2021). https://news.un.org/zh/story/2021/03/1080892

  68. Vähäkainu P, Lehto M (2019, February) Artificial intelligence in the cyber security environment. In: ICCWS 2019 14th International Conference on Cyber Warfare and Security: ICCWS 2019. Academic Conferences and Publishing Limited, p 431

    Google Scholar 

  69. Van de Weghe T (2019) Six lessons from my deepfakes research at Stanford—by Tom Van de Weghe—JSK class of 2019—Medium. https://medium.com/jsk-class-of-2019/six-lessons-from-my-deepfake-research-at-stanford-1666594a8e50

  70. Vasilkova VV, Legostaeva NI (2019) Social bots in political communication. RUDN J Sociol

    Google Scholar 

  71. Verweij G, Rao A (2017) Sizing the prize: what’s the real value of AI for your business and how can you capitalise? PwC

    Google Scholar 

  72. Wang Y, Kosinski M (2017) Deep neural networks can detect sexual orientation from faces. J Person Soc Psychol 1–47

    Google Scholar 

  73. Webb A (2021) Tech Trends Report—The future today institute. https://futuretodayinstitute.com/trends/. Understanding the Security issues and Ethical challenges 21

  74. Zhang Z, Ning H, Shi F, Farha F, Xu Y, Xu J, Zhang F, Choo KKR (2021) Artificial intelligence in cyber security: research advances, challenges, and opportunities. Artif Intell Rev

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Fiona Carroll .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2021 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG

About this chapter

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this chapter

Yu, S., Carroll, F. (2021). Implications of AI in National Security: Understanding the Security Issues and Ethical Challenges. In: Montasari, R., Jahankhani, H. (eds) Artificial Intelligence in Cyber Security: Impact and Implications. Advanced Sciences and Technologies for Security Applications. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-88040-8_6

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-88040-8_6

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-88039-2

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-88040-8

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics