{"id":891941,"date":"2026-09-14T18:02:14","date_gmt":"2026-09-14T18:02:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/891941\/"},"modified":"2026-09-14T18:02:14","modified_gmt":"2026-09-14T18:02:14","slug":"australias-outdated-technology-is-vulnerable-to-ai-hacking-attacks-signals-chief-says-australian-security-and-counter-terrorism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/891941\/","title":{"rendered":"Australia\u2019s outdated technology is vulnerable to AI hacking attacks, signals chief says | Australian security and counter-terrorism"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of Australia\u2019s top intelligence agencies has warned that AI attacks could exploit the country\u2019s old technology, as the government negotiates its guardrails on artificial intelligence\u2019s rapid development.<\/p>\n

The chief of Anthropic, developer of Claude, has warned AI bots could swarm the internet within a year and called to \u201cslow the pace\u201d of development with support from the head of OpenAI and Elon Musk<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Abigail Bradshaw, the director general of the Australian Signals Directorate, said her agency did not know how many AI agents were active on the internet.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think that prospect of getting some sort of definition or calculation of how these agents are out there is really remote,\u201d Bradshaw said while speaking to the Sydney Dialogue summit in Canberra on Monday.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd I would just say: a lot.\u201d<\/p>\n

She said Australian governments and businesses would have to spend \u201cenormous\u201d amounts to update their vulnerable outdated technology, taking offline systems that Australians had come to expect would be available all the time.<\/p>\n

Anthropic\u2019s chief executive, Dario Amodei, recently called for independent assessors to interrogate AI companies\u2019 models<\/a> and for US government permission for leading AI companies to coordinate without being punished for anti-competitive collusion. Bradshaw called for national security agencies to be involved in the independent interrogation.<\/p>\n

The Greens demanded the government legislate mandatory safety testing and transparency obligations for the most developed AI systems on Monday but their motion for debate was rejected by Labor senators.<\/p>\n

Labor\u2019s Andrew Charlton, the assistant technology minister, told the Sydney Dialogue he took the companies\u2019 warnings seriously but did not want them or the US to be responsible for setting the guardrails around AI.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think we should care very much about what individual chief executives say or what individual executives claim they want to happen,\u201d Charlton said.<\/p>\n

Charlton said the Albanese government would set its forthcoming guidelines for AI companies to cover the range of \u201cextremely dangerous\u201d and more benign possibilities being forecast.<\/p>\n

The laws are expected<\/a> early next year. Anthropic\u2019s chief lawyer, Jeff Bleich, told Monday\u2019s summit the company had been \u201cheartened\u201d by the strong support for its calls and said Australia would need to play a role in setting the rules.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think it makes any sense that something this important would be decided either by company executives or by leaders in only two countries,\u201d Bleich said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s just important for the model developers not just for social licence, which is critical, but also some legal certainty.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt won\u2019t be easy to get these things done but it actually makes it better to come to Australia.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Bleich said Anthropic believed rules were needed within months as the technology developed at an exponential pace.<\/p>\n

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One of the factors affecting companies\u2019 interest in Australia has been access to copyright-protected material produced by local creatives so it can train its models. The industry minister, Tim Ayres, told the summit the government wanted local training but remained unwilling to reduce copyright protections.<\/p>\n

OpenAI\u2019s vice-president for global policy, Ann O\u2019Leary, said her company was in \u201cregular\u201d and \u201cdeep\u201d conversation with the government about the copyright rules but was \u201cvery eager to have a bigger and broader relationship\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t have to tell any of you how important Australia is from a geopolitical standpoint,\u201d O\u2019Leary told the summit. \u201cWe very much recognise that having a diversification of where we train is going to be important as you move forward.\u201d<\/p>\n

She said OpenAI wanted to ensure creators could keep creating.<\/p>\n

Andrew Hastie, the Coalition\u2019s industry spokesperson, warned the summit Australia would be vulnerable in future conflicts if it could not get advanced companies to locate themselves in Australia, calling for a formal deal with the US.<\/p>\n

The government is already using Claude\u2019s advanced Mythos model. Paul Robards, a data expert at Australia\u2019s department of defence, downplayed the likelihood of Australia developing frontier technology.<\/p>\n

\u201cWithout a sovereign AI frontier model here in Australia, we are going to be a supplicant state, not a sovereign state,\u201d Hastie said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need to work on a way to get a hyperscaler down under \u2026 I think working with the United States, through Aukus if we want to use that frame, is the pathway.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"One of Australia\u2019s top intelligence agencies has warned that AI attacks could exploit the country\u2019s old technology, as…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":891942,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,44],"class_list":["post-891941","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/891941","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=891941"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/891941\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/891942"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=891941"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=891941"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=891941"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}