By Stuart Kerr, Technology Correspondent
🗓️ Published: 12 July 2025 | 🔄 Last updated: 12 July 2025
📩 Contact: liveaiwire@gmail.com | 📣 Follow @LiveAIWire
🔗 Author Bio: https://www.liveaiwire.com/p/to-liveaiwire-where-artificial.html
Welcome to the Battlefield
Cybersecurity is no longer a fight between people and malware. It’s an escalating conflict between algorithms. As artificial intelligence becomes more deeply embedded in both offensive and defensive systems, we are witnessing the rise of an algorithmic arms race. It’s a race where response times are measured in milliseconds, and the adversary isn’t human—it’s adaptive code.
AI-driven tools can detect anomalies in real time, respond autonomously to threats, and even predict attack vectors before they materialise. But on the other side of the digital divide, hackers are deploying generative adversarial networks (GANs), polymorphic malware, and deepfake-based phishing to exploit the same capabilities. The arms are automated. The battlefield is everywhere.
Offence Learns Quickly
As shown in The Silent Bias, AI systems can absorb and amplify behaviour at scale. In cybersecurity, this becomes weaponised. Offensive AI can run continuous simulations to learn the best method of breaching a target’s defences—and adapt in real time.
According to the CISA Joint Guidance, attackers now use AI to identify zero-day vulnerabilities, dynamically evade detection, and mimic legitimate users. The more they learn, the more invisible they become.
In Invisible Infrastructure, we explored how most systems rely on unseen layers of code. When that infrastructure is targeted, disruption goes deeper than defaced websites or leaked data—it can destabilise entire sectors.
Defence Grows Smarter
Thankfully, defensive AI is evolving too. Machine learning algorithms now power intrusion detection systems, spam filters, and endpoint security protocols. The CISA AI Cybersecurity Playbook offers a practical framework for public and private sector actors to collaborate on securing AI deployments.
One of the key recommendations? Treat every AI as both a tool and a target.
The 2025 ENISA Threat Landscape Report (PDF) warns of increasingly AI-powered ransomware attacks, identity spoofing, and large-scale social engineering campaigns. Without robust countermeasures, attackers can co-opt the very systems designed to protect.
Code Red for Ethics and Oversight
In Faith, Fraud and Face Filters, we examined how AI can manipulate perception. In cybersecurity, that same manipulation becomes a vector of attack. Deepfakes aren’t just humorous videos anymore—they are entry points to high-trust networks.
Regulators are starting to pay attention. The CISA AI Playbook Fact Sheet (PDF) stresses the importance of governance, transparency, and continuous threat modelling. But global standards are uneven, and private actors often prioritise agility over assurance.
Ghost Writers of the Courtroom raised concerns about accountability in AI decision-making. In cybersecurity, where milliseconds count, decisions are often made without human review. This creates gaps in responsibility—and avenues for blame to vanish as quickly as the code that caused the breach.
Preparing for the Next Offensive
What happens when AI learns to lie, hide, and attack faster than we can respond? The European Union Agency for Cybersecurity (ENISA) has called for enhanced red teaming, secure model deployment protocols, and post-incident AI forensics.
Yet most organisations remain underprepared. Many haven’t mapped out their AI dependency footprint, nor factored synthetic threats into disaster recovery plans.
The Path Forward
Securing AI requires more than patching software. It demands:
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Continuous monitoring of AI behaviour across environments
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Threat intelligence sharing between nations and industries
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Explainability protocols built into model design
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Cross-functional teams that include ethicists, engineers, and policymakers
The algorithmic arms race won’t be won with tech alone. It requires strategy, collaboration, and above all, foresight. Because in a world where the attacker never sleeps, security must never blink.
About the Author
Stuart Kerr is the Technology Correspondent at LiveAIWire. He writes about AI’s impact on infrastructure, governance, creativity, and power.
📩 Contact: liveaiwire@gmail.com | 📣 @LiveAIWire
