Irish Examiner view: Urgent action needed on cyber threats

Ireland is known to be vulnerable to cyber threats of any description

There are many who suggest that AI can and will be used for positive applications, but a majority, however, are in the opposite camp, fearing the technology will largely be used for malign purposes. File picture

Such is the cloud of unknowing around where AI is going — how powerful it could be, how widespread, how many jobs might be curtailed, or even if it will be beneficial in the long run — that there have been many calls to control the technology, or at least those who are in charge of its development.

There are many who suggest that AI can and will be used for positive applications, but a majority, however, are in the opposite camp, fearing the technology will largely be used for malign purposes.

Somewhat startlingly this week, one particular element of the latter camp came out with a firm warning that powerful AI models capable of taking down governments and businesses are mere months away. They urged world leaders to “act now” to prevent it happening.

The warning came from the Five Eyes, a global intelligence alliance of Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the US, and the UK. It comes in the same month that the Trump administration in the US decided to block “foreign nationals” using a much-hyped AI model called Fable, developed by leading-edge tech company Anthropic.

A public statement by the alliance — itself an unusual occurrence — this week outlined that while AI would help improve cyber defences over time, “it also accelerates the speed, scale and sophistication of cyber threats”.

The Five Eyes group also maintained that “frontier AI models” are expected to exceed industry expectations and, in doing so, fundamentally transform both offensive and defensive cyber capabilities.

“The timeline,” it warned, “is not years, it is months.”

It also stated that, in such an environment, cyber resilience is integral to advancing business continuity, market confidence, and long-term value. But advanced leaps in AI models would lower barriers for bad actors and increase the speed and complexity of cyberattacks.

“A whole-of-organisation and whole-of-society response is required,” the alliance maintained.

This warning is stark, but it is notable that, publicly at least, there appears to be little or no such response from the global establishment.

Given that Ireland is set to assume the presidency of the EU in a matter of days and is already known to be vulnerable to cyber threats of any description, this would suggest there is a matter of urgency in the planning for any such eventuality.

Sadly, there does not appear to be any such resolve either here or among our EU colleagues.

Flamingo revolt

The ease and nonchalance with which global elites seem able to drift in and out of the day-to-day activities of sovereign countries for the net benefit of nobody other than themselves has been highlighted recently in the formerly stringent Marxist-Leninist state of Albania.

Enver Hoxha’s Socialist Republic dissolved amid internal revolution in 1989 and the Balkan nation went on to become a sovereign parliamentary constitutional republic. Since 2009, it has been seeking membership of the EU.

It is a developing country with an upper- to middle-income economy driven by the service industry with manufacturing and tourism playing increasingly important roles in economic evolution.

As it is a relatively unspoilt haven in the Mediterranean basin, Albania has attracted the attention of wealthy developers seeking to profit greatly in its open market economy.

One such is Jared Kushner who — along with his wife Ivanka, the daughter of US president Donald Trump — wants to develop of a mega resort on the Albanian island of Sazan. It is one of two they plan to build on the country’s south coast.

The Americans’ plan has triggered an uprising among a local population. Not since the collapse of the communist regime has Albania been convulsed by such collective fury.

The ‘Albania is not for sale’ campaign sparked by the Kushners’ plan has brought hundreds of thousands of protestors out onto the streets.

The Flamingo Revolution, as it has become known — the name is a reference to the threat to the wildlife and delicate ecosystems near the Kushners’ planned developments — is gathering pace. It is an unusual, and welcome, uprising against those privileged few who think they can do what they want, when and where they want to.

The Albanian people are angry. And rightly so.

Slave trade

Demand for reparatory justice by African and Caribbean countries for the transatlantic slave trade has found global support, apart from in many European countries including, strangely, Ireland.

Last week, the Ghanian president, John Dramani Mahama, hosted a conference in the capital, Accra, on reparatory justice and said that while nobody could be held personally
responsible for the slave trade, its enduring consequences needed thoughtful, co-ordinated, and sustained international engagement.

“History does not ask us to inherit guilt, but it asks us to inherit responsibility,” he said.

The conference came three months after the UN general assembly approved Ghana’s resolution on behalf of the African Union calling for reparative justice for the transatlantic slave trade.

A total of 123 countries voted in favour of the resolution, with just three — the US, Israel, and Argentina — voting against. Some 52 others abstained from the vote, including most EU states, with Ireland one of them.

The EU objected to putting the slave trade at the top of a hierarchy of crimes against humanity and rejected the idea of reparations for crimes that were not against international law when they were committed.

Our position on this is strange, given that we were the victims of the blunt force of colonialism for centuries and that forced migration played has a huge part in the iconography of our nation.

One would have thought that the African and Caribbean nations that fell victim to the slave trade might have found a more sympathetic ear here in Ireland.

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