New CNAS Report Examines the Threat of Emerging AI Capabilities to Cybersecurity

Washington, September 23, 2025—A new report from the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) examines how emerging artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities could disrupt the cyber offense-defense balance by disproportionately empowering attackers.

In Tipping the Scales: Emerging AI Capabilities and the Cyber Offense-Defense Balance, author Caleb Withers analyzes the present impact of AI on cyber defense and offense and projects how future frontier AI capabilities could shape the offense-defense balance.

The report finds that AI capabilities have historically benefited defenders, allowing them to rapidly scale solutions to counter new threats. However, future frontier models could disrupt this balance as increasingly autonomous systems potentially tip the scales toward attackers in dramatic and potentially dangerous ways.

As competition between the United States and China intensifies and AI-enabled cyber capabilities advance, the urgency of anticipating and preparing for AI’s impact on future cyberattacks grows.

The report calls on policymakers to:

• Double down on policies to shore up cybersecurity.
• Invest in AI research and development to differentially promote cyber defense.
• Strengthen evaluation of AI cyber capabilities and risks, including relevant U.S. government capabilities and authorities.
• Sufficiently resource the Bureau of Industry and Security to enforce AI-related export controls.
• Clarify federal regulation around reasonable care and liability for cyber harms from frontier AI.
• Promote information security with frontier AI developers.
• Promote global norms around liability from automated cyber operations.

The future impact of AI-powered cyber threats is not predetermined. This report emphasizes the U.S. government’s crucial role in mitigating the most harmful AI-related impacts on cybersecurity and warns that, without intervention, increasingly advanced AI systems could give attackers a decisive and dangerous advantage.

For more information or to arrange an interview with the report’s author, please contact Charles Horn at [email protected].