The UK’s spooks are working with Amazon to boost the use AI, using cloud analytics and other technologies
GCHQ has signed a deal with AWS that will see the agency’s most classified material stored in a high-security cloud system.
The deal is worth up to £1 billion. It will let GCHQ, MI5, and MI6 – the UK’s three spy agencies – to use AWS’ cloud to boost the use of AI, data analytics, speech recognition and other technologies for espionage.
British agents can share information from overseas more easily and carry out faster searches on each other’s databases.
The Agencies’ data would be held in the UK, and AWS would not have access to information stored in the system.
Jeremy Fleming, GCHQ director, said that making use of AI will be “at the heart” of the agency’s transformation to keep the UK safe as espionage operations move into a digital age.
