Ben Buchanan's testimony to the House Oversight Committee on Artificial Intelligence. 

In keeping with the Belfer Center’s mandate on science and international affairs, the Cyber Security Project has launched a new research initiative on Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) and their implications for cybersecurity. Led by Michael Sulmeyer, the Cyber Security Project seeks to explore themes of conflict in cyberspace and both AI and ML will play a growing role in national defense and security. Cyber Security Project fellow Ben Buchanan began the focus on AI and ML with his June 2017 Belfer Center Report, “Machine Learning for Policy Makers.”

Scholars have considered many analogies for cyber capabilities, grappling with how these capabilities may shape the future of conflict. One recurring theme in this literature is the comparison of cyber capabilities to powerful, strategic capabilities with the potential to cause significant death and destruction.

In the modern era, there is great convergence in the technologies used by friendly nations and by hostile ones. Signals intelligence agencies find themselves penetrating the technologies that they also at times must protect. To ease this tension, the United States and its partners have relied on an approach sometimes called Nobody But Us, or NOBUS: target communications mechanisms using unique methods accessible only to the United States. This paper examines how the NOBUS approach works, its limits, and the challenging matter of what comes next.

Postdoctoral Fellow Ben Buchanan was interviewed by Alyza Sebanius for The Atlantic on June 28, 2017. In his new book, The Cybersecurity Dilemma, Dr. Buchanan argues that the line between offensive and defensive attacks is far from clear.

Few areas of national policymaking will remain untouched by artificial intelligence. Though the challenges it poses are complex, the opportunities it offers are tremendous. Simply put, machine learning is too important to ignore.

Cyber Security Project Director Dr. Michael Sulmeyer led a discussion on the future of Russian Cyber Operations with New York Times National Security Correspondent David Sanger, Director of the Center on the United States and Europe at the Brookings Institution Dr. Fiona Hill, and Cyber Security Project Fellow Dr. Ben Buchanan.

Prepared Testimony and Statement for the Record of Ben Buchanan for the Subcommittee on Crime and Terrorism, United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary.