The UAE is facing a sharp increase in cyberattacks, with hacking attempts reportedly reaching around 800,000 per day, roughly four times the prewar level. The attacks have targeted sensitive sectors including aviation, energy, education and finance, while the UAE's Cyber Security Council has reported multiple waves of AI-assisted attacks during 2026.
In response, the country is building what Rest of World describes as a homegrown “cyber factory”—an AI-powered defensive infrastructure designed to detect, predict and respond to threats at machine speed. The UAE launched a programme in May to develop these capabilities, reflecting the growing realization that conventional cybersecurity teams cannot manually investigate hundreds of thousands of daily attempts.
The shift is important because AI is accelerating both sides of the cybersecurity arms race. Attackers can automate reconnaissance, identify vulnerabilities and scale campaigns, while defenders can use AI to analyze enormous volumes of network activity, identify anomalies and prioritize threats. The UAE's approach is essentially to fight automated attacks with an equally automated defensive layer, while maintaining human oversight for consequential decisions.
The broader takeaway is that AI is turning cybersecurity into a speed competition. The UAE's experience shows why governments are increasingly treating AI-powered cyber defense as national infrastructure rather than simply another enterprise security tool. As attacks become faster and more numerous, countries that can continuously detect, predict and contain threats may gain a significant strategic advantage—but they will also need strong safeguards to ensure that defensive AI itself does not introduce new vulnerabilities or make incorrect automated decisions.
