OpenAI, Ukraine partner on ‘Daybreak’ program to protect power grids and water systems

A Ukrainian official said the government will use the tools to automate cybersecurity functions in critical infrastructure as the war with Russia continues.

OpenAI and the Ukrainian government have agreed to a partnership that will provide AI tools and subsidized computing resources to better protect the nation’s critical infrastructure from cyberattacks.

The agreement, announced Wednesday at OpenAI’s New York office, will provide Ukrainian cybersecurity officials with access to advanced AI models designed for cybersecurity work through the company’s Daybreak program. OpenAI said it is also pledging over $1 billion in subsidized tokens to support the initiative.

During a panel discussion Dmytro Kushneruk, consul general of Ukraine in San Francisco, outlined how the tools would be used for cybersecurity automation, including functions such as incident response, threat triaging, login analysis, inventorying systems, code analysis and validating vulnerabilities.

In nearly all cases, Kushneruk said the primary benefit was carrying out those functions at machine speed. But this speed is meant to complement, not replace, Ukrainians’ human expertise.

In regard to incident response Kushneruk said 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.” 

“This is why the object is not to replace the cyber defender with AI, but to make sure the cyber defender acts faster,” he added.

Kushneruk said that for Ukraine, the partnership “is really not about protecting computers, it is about actually keeping our country running.”

Ukraine faces approximately 6,000 cyberattacks per year, or about 15 per day, according to Kushneruk. Over the past twelve years, the country’s critical infrastructure, including electricity and water systems, has endured sustained attacks from Russia in the form of cyberattacks and physical strikes.

Since Russia’s 2022 invasion, Ukraine’s critical infrastructure has been under constant threat. While missiles remain the primary concern, Kushneruk said Ukraine has been preparing to protect vital services since Russian GRU hackers shut down the country’s power grid in 2015. 

He added that while the country was “maybe not so much prepared” to deal with the fallout in 2015, it improved over time, including the resilience displayed in 2025 when trains kept running after Russian hackers attacked Ukraine’s railway system.

Some national security experts and congressional committees have explicitly cited the resilience of Ukrainian critical infrastructure as a model for U.S. industry.

Naz Durakoğlu, minority staff director of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said there is “pretty much across the board” agreement between the parties in favor of similar adoption of defensive AI tools by U.S. critical infrastructure operators, though issues like regulation remain sticking points.

“This is something that’s already happening, and frankly, it’s just kind of a basic duty of government to make sure that when you turn the tap on, water comes out, the electricity doesn’t go out, and hospitals keep running and treating patients,” said Durakoğlu. “So there is a broad understanding that this is a major issue, and I will say seeing what Ukraine has to go through day-to-day is also a huge wake-up call to our members on a bipartisan basis.”

OpenAI has publicly pushed for its product, and AI at-large, to be used to solve these types of problems. Company president and co-founder Greg Brockman signed an open letter released earlier this year calling for “collective action” and widespread use of AI models to find and fix vulnerabilities before the rest of the world,  including foreign governments and cybercriminals, got access to the same capabilities.

According to Politico, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman met with U.S. power companies in July to discuss using AI to protect the nation’s electrical grids.

On Wednesday, OpenAI’s national security policy head, Sasha Baker, said the company felt “urgency” to try to strike similar agreements with other governments and industries.

“There’s this period of time where we’re really rushing to get [these tools] in the hands of critical infrastructure operators, of governments around the world, of people who want to patch systems, defend their networks, remediate vulnerabilities because we know as these tools proliferate out there in the ecosystems, there are going to be bad guys out there that also try to use them,” said Baker. “So, we have this window of time to take action and we’re really motivated by the idea that we need to act with some urgency.”

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