Technology and Science23 September, 20262 min read
OpenAI Gives Ukraine Free Daybreak AI Cyber Defense Tools To Protect Civilian Infrastructure
This article is an automated aggregation of coverage from news outlets. Our editorials offer in-depth analysis curated by the NewsCord team.
OpenAI will provide Ukraine free access to its Daybreak AI cyber defense system. Daybreak will help identify vulnerabilities and secure civilian infrastructure like hospitals.
Daybreak for Ukraine
OpenAI will share its AI cyber defence system Daybreak for free with the Ukraine government to help protect civilian infrastructure like hospitals and power plants from cyber-attacks. CERT-UA recorded nearly 6,000 attacks in 2025, and OpenAI said Daybreak can quickly identify weaknesses in digital systems and help develop fixes.
George Osborne, Head of OpenAI for Countries, said, "Protecting civilian infrastructure means defending it against both physical and digital attacks, so people can continue to live, work and access essential services." Rafe Pilling, senior director of threat intelligence for Sophos, said Russian offensive cyber operations had been "a key component" of the Kremlin's aggression against Ukraine since 2014.
How the tools are used
OpenAI and the Ukrainian government agreed to provide Ukrainian cybersecurity officials with access to advanced AI models designed for cybersecurity work through the Daybreak program. Dmytro Kushneruk, consul general of Ukraine in San Francisco, said the tools would support cybersecurity automation including functions such as incident response, threat triaging, login analysis, inventorying systems, code analysis and validating vulnerabilities.
Kushneruk told a panel that humans must view "thousands and thousands of these logs and they have to find what’s really important, that’s why AI can give capable defenders really much greater advantage and leverage." Sasha Baker, Head of National Security Policy at OpenAI, said, "This is why the object is not to replace the cyber defender with AI, but to make sure the cyber defender acts faster."
Frontier risks and pressure
The BBC framed the Daybreak move within a broader debate over frontier AI models, saying the same abilities that help defenders spot weaknesses can also be used for attack. The BBC said Anthropic has tightly restricted access to its systems on the grounds that they are too powerful to fall into the wrong hands, while OpenAI allowed some firms in Europe and UK banks to use its most advanced cyber models.
The BBC also described evidence of AI being used in the Russia-Ukraine conflict, including Anthropic's claim that its Claude platform appeared to have been used by a group of Russian developers to build software for a swarm of so-called "kamikaze" drones. Sasha Baker said OpenAI was motivated by urgency, warning that "there are going to be bad guys out there that also try to use them," as tools proliferate in ecosystems.