FBI's Wray urges partnerships against China cyber threats

FBI Director Christopher Wray called for stronger public-private collaboration to counter AI-enabled cyber threats, citing China as the top adversary at the 2023 mWISE conference.

At the 2023 mWISE Cybersecurity Conference, FBI Director Christopher Wray addressed the intersection of artificial intelligence and cyber threats, noting that both criminals and hostile nation-states are already exploiting AI for malicious purposes. He stated the FBI is working to ethically leverage AI for its own operations while tracking adversarial use of the technology. Wray highlighted recent successes achieved through public-private partnerships, including the takedown of the Qakbot malware/botnet infrastructure and the disruption of the Hive ransomware group, as examples of effective collaborative cyber defense.

The bulk of Wray's remarks focused on China as the primary long-term cyber threat to the United States, asserting that China's state-sponsored hacking apparatus exceeds that of all other major nations combined and warning that AI could amplify the effectiveness of China's existing intellectual property theft and data collection operations. He noted a significant resource disparity, stating Chinese hackers outnumber dedicated FBI cyber personnel by at least 50 to 1. Wray also acknowledged Russia, Iran, and North Korea as active threat sources.

This is a policy/awareness speech rather than a technical threat report — it contains no new indicators, exploited vulnerabilities, or specific incident details. Wray closed by urging organizations to proactively build relationships with local FBI field offices and to incorporate the Bureau into their incident response plans ahead of any crisis, rather than reaching out only after a breach.

Source reporting: https://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/fbi-director-speaks-at-2023-mwise-cybersecurity-conference