(24 June 2026 – Global) Five Eyes intelligence agencies are warning that AI-borne cyber threats are already here with the time to act down to months, not years.
The heads of the Five Eyes cybersecurity agencies in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, United Kingdom and US issued a rare joint statement urging business and government leaders to act immediately and ramping up awareness campaigns around AI being used by malicious actors to exacerbate attacks.
The statement warns frontier AI models are expected to exceed industry expectations and will transform both attack and defence as the gap between a vulnerability being found and exploited closing fast.
“AI lowers barriers for malicious actors and increases the speed and complexity of attacks, shrinking the window between vulnerability discovery and exploitation ever more quickly. At the same time, AI offers powerful tools to strengthen defence. Cyber risk can no longer be treated as a purely technical issue” the joint statement from the agencies said.
“I’m actually really positive that we have the tools and we have the capabilities. If we all take action and we actually take the time to look at our cyber risk management plans, and the priorities we place on the things that we need to do to defend ourselves, then we’re in a really good place” said Australian Cyber Security Centre Head, Stephanie Crowe.
“It’s even better if we can learn from new technologies emerging in the environment, like AI, on how we can use these new technologies defensively, because our adversaries are using them and we all need to use them to defend our networks.”