Speech by Minister for Defence Pål Jonson at a High-Level Forum on AI and Intelligence

Ladies and Gentlemen, Recorded Future and the Swedish Defence University - thank you for the opportunity to attend this conference. 

I am very impressed to see that we can gather both the government resources and the private sector in one conference. I would in particular extend my gratitude for their effort to make this happen to Sir Alex Younger, Dr. Staffan Truvé and Lars Hedström. 

I had hoped to be able to partake in the conference and listen to your knowledge but will settle with getting an extensive summary from my colleagues at the Ministry of Defence that have been attending the whole day.

Security Situation

All of us in this room are aware of the drastic negative effect the Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 has had on the European security situation. 

The security situation in Europe has deteriorated and hybrid threats is a key security challenge in the region. We do have experience in Sweden of both Chinese attempts to influence decision making, as well as disinformation campaigns by various actors connected to cases of Quran burning. But the main hybrid threat actor in our region is of course Russia.

We constantly see Russian attempts on sabotage, disinformation, attempts to influence democratic elections and cyber incidents in Europe. A conclusion from Ukraine is that Russia will exploit any perceived vulnerability in our societies as a weapon – if deemed useful. Russia will also use any means deemed useful. Our response must be broad, both in Sweden and international cooperation. A challenge of “connecting the dots”. Both in terms of identifying antagonistic patterns in seemingly unconnected events, and to enhance cooperation between civil and government resources. 

The intelligence community has an obvious core role to play in connecting the dots in terms of identifying antagonistic patterns, and AI will increasingly be an important tool for that purpose.

The development on Intel and information

The last decade has been a decade of exponential development within the information technology and the importance of information. With so much expertise in the room I will not dwell on this but only state the fact.

This has led to an importance change for the Intelligence Community. For decades the Intelligence Community was in the fore front in information management and technology. They were the top tier in developing innovative and cutting-edge tools and crafts for discovering, developing and disseminating information. 

The Intelligence Community is suited to be a great partner to the private industry. The Intelligence Community has vast experience in information management. They have for decades traded in the currency - information. One could say that until big data, machine learning and AI the Intelligence Community extracted every ounce of value from their information by hand.  

Now the information technology is no longer developing – it is racing with explosive speed. And the Intelligence Community is no longer the top tier, not even by far. Instead, the private sector is in lead. 

The democratic societies have been the incubator for intellectual and technological development for centuries. It is apparent that democracy and freedom of speech and equal rights is a superior soil for growing new technologies. This is both our USP but also what we need to defend. Together. 

In September 2023 53,8 percent of all AI companies in the world were located in the US, UK, Japan, Germany and France.

According to Stanford University in 2023 of the number of notable machine learning models produced, 51 of them came from industry, 21 from industry together with academia, 15 from Academia and only 2 from government origin. 

We are now in a situation when the Intelligence Community needs to partner up with the private sector. The partnership is the foundation for the Intelligence Communities future capacity to be in the forefront of the information arena to defend the democratic world. 

And the private sector in its turn needs to support the Intelligence Community to defend the free democratic societies that they are created from and working within. In doing this, the private sector needs to take into account the unique starting point and requirements in which in the Intelligence Community exists. 

History has shown us that an authoritative government with strong control over society neither creates substantial economic nor technical development.  

 I am convinced that voluntary and respectful cooperation between intelligence agencies and the private sector will make us stronger.

As shown today, both the intelligence community and the information tech sector has identified this need. Our adversaries do not have this advantage. 

Is AI another potential intelligence failure or tin foil hatter?

We demand that the Intelligence Community can produce reliable and correct information. To do this the control over the data needs to be strict. 

Large Language Models (LLM) are making it possible to extract information from larger data quantities than ever before. And there is more information to be processed than ever before. But LLM:s have some aspects that the Intelligence Community needs to address together with the Private Sector.

Intelligence failures occurs. And the Intelligence Community constantly strives to better itself to avoid these failures. But AI have the possibility to fail too. AI hallucinates. One example – Swedish professor at The Royal Institute for Technology, Pontus Johnson, once tested to ask ChatGPT to investigate himself. And to his surprise ChatGPT told him that he was a nobel laurate. The professor is not a Nobel laurate.

AI draws conclusion based on biased information. It is only as smart as the information it collects. If it is based on conspiracy theories, it will use that information. So, the data needs to be verified.

And can AI find black swans? Or will it only confirm the hypothesis asked to the AI. 

So basically, AI is not protected from turning up as a tin foiled hat algorithm. 

Conflicting business models 

So far, the Intelligence Community have to some degree been able to introduce AI in their own secure systems where they can let AI deduce from their controlled verified information from their own sensors. Now most of the information exists outside the community´s sensor system. This calls for change. 

Computing power and high-speed development creates a dependency to be connected to the cloud. This calls for a change from high security networks and secluded information towards cloud dependency, closed information systems and mowing to some form of Cloud solution. Some allies have done it.

The business model for the private sector in information technology is often based on access to their client’s data bases. And the Intelligence Community are reluctant to do that very thing. The IC cannot sell its information or most of its methods. But we need to find a partnership. This is a challenge. 

We can already see the results of AI on the battle ground in Ukraine. And we are already seeing cheap fake disinformation in the democratic elections in Europe and the US. Almost everyone can create a large-scale information operation today. 

The protection against the backside of the AI development is in Cyber Security. Last Wednesday the Swedish Government presented the largest cyber security investment ever with a package of approximately 200 million SEK. The government is also investing substantially in cyber defense and the development of our Intelligence Agencies.   

Round up

Last week Ali Baba announced their ambition to increase their AI effort. As mentioned earlier the democratic world has proven a better soil for information technology, but we are not far ahead. Authoritarian governments allow their intelligence and security services to explore the AI development without considerations of human rights and respect for individuals. I will quote former Finish President Niinistö – If you are on the side of good, then you need to be able to meet evil with force. This is our mutual challenge.

 I would once again express my gratitude to the persons making the effort to connect this impressive collection of competence that sits in this room. I am certain that in this room, there are people that already have solutions to all these challenges. This very conference is the evidence we are many democratic societies supporting each other and that we will stay strong.