Knowledge in the grey zone: AI and cybersecurity

Abstract

Abstract Cybersecurity protects citizens and society from harm perpetrated through computer networks. Its task is made ever more complex by the diversity of actors—criminals, spies, militaries, hacktivists, firms—operating in global information networks, so that cybersecurity is intimately entangled with the so-called grey zone of conflict between war and peace in the early twenty-first century. To counter cyber threats from this environment, cybersecurity is turning to artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI) to mitigate anomalous behaviours in cyberspace. This article argues that AI algorithms create new modes and sites of cybersecurity knowledge production through hybrid assemblages of humans and nonhumans. It concludes by looking beyond ‘everyday’ cybersecurity to military and intelligence use of AI and asks what is at stake in the automation of cybersecurity.