As the race for artificial intelligence supremacy continues, both U.S. companies and the Trump administration “need to be vigilant” about foreign espionage, Director of National Intelligence Jay Clayton told CNBC on Friday.
Clayton said on “Squawk Box” that AI is “amplifying” existing cybersecurity risks to America’s digital infrastructure, which is interconnected with critical systems related to everything from public goods to national defense to global communications.
That’s “why we’re focused on hardening these systems,” said Creighton, who heads the White House’s new AI task force, leveraging “our commitment to staying ahead of these bad actors.”
Clayton was asked how concerned Americans should be about the threat of foreign espionage, given the recent revelations that Abdulrahman Alfozan, a Saudi national, allegedly installed a recording device in OpenAI’s executive conference room. Alfozan has not been charged with espionage. The federal charges include alleged interception of oral communications.
Federal prosecutors said Alfozan, a former OpenAI employee, had booked a one-way ticket to Saudi Arabia with his wife and another family member before his arrest.
“The simple answer to your question is espionage. Commercial espionage and state-sponsored espionage are both real,” Clayton said.
“This is something that private companies need to be wary of. This is something that the government needs to be wary of as well,” he said.
The OpenAI incident “shows how hard people will go to try to replace our leadership in this space, or at least stay close to us with this emerging technology,” Clayton said.
A former CIA official told CNBC this week, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss private information, that the incident was “probably the tip of the iceberg.”
Creighton, who was named AI czar earlier this month, said the task force’s “very good” first meeting at the White House on Thursday built on the agreement signed by President Donald Trump and many AI leaders at the White House last month. President Trump had said the agreement, which includes the industry’s pledge to police AI risks itself, is “morally binding.”
The task force also established three subcommittees focused on various AI-related issues. One person will be responsible for reporting and response, another person will be responsible for critical infrastructure assessment and collaboration with the private sector, and a third person will be responsible for law enforcement and accountability, Clayton said.
The DNI reiterated to CNBC that the Trump administration intends to gain an advantage in the AI race.
“We are not the only ones developing this technology. There are vectors to this technology from our known adversaries and competitors,” he said. “The Chinese, the Russians, the Iranians, the North Koreans all have great technological capabilities. We need to stay ahead of them.”
