UAE faces 640,000 daily cyber attacks, and holds firm

Roughly 640,000 cyber attacks struck the UAE in a single day, September 15, according to the country’s cyber security chief, Mohamed Al Kuwaiti, who identified Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as behind many of them. That figure is the backdrop for the chief executive of French AI company Mistral AI declaring the UAE’s cyber defences “very powerful” enough to repel threats, particularly at a time of geopolitical instability.

For residents, the stakes are practical rather than theoretical. When hundreds of thousands of intrusion attempts land in one day, the systems people rely on, and the data held within national borders, become matters of civic protection. It is in that context that Arthur Mensch, speaking to The National at the AI Everything summit in Abu Dhabi, framed the UAE’s pursuit of technological sovereignty as a public safeguard. “The UAE is under pressure, in particular, on the defence side,” he said. “Cyber capabilities are a must-have when it comes to having capable defence systems.” Sovereignty, he argued, is central: “It’s important to be able to wield defence systems without having to ask for permission.”

Mr Mensch went further on infrastructure. “Having very powerful cyber models deployed here in Abu Dhabi in a way where the deployment is fully under Abu Dhabi control is going to be quite important,” he said. “There is more that can be done … on being able to have a compute capacity under full Abu Dhabi control; that’s something where as a company we can help.”

Data sovereignty has become vital for nations because it gives them legal control over the data within their jurisdictions. On this point, Mr Mensch said Abu Dhabi’s authorities and the wider industry had “very early on decided” that the aspect would be crucial for deploying AI. The most notable project is the planned Stargate UAE data centre campus, a 5GW development valued at $30 billion.

Meanwhile, Mistral AI’s engagement with the country extends beyond advice. The company is considering investing in UAE data centres, a step Mr Mensch said would deepen its co-operation with Abu Dhabi and support the country’s AI ambitions. “We may [invest in UAE data centres]. It’s an interesting place for our AI buildout that is currently under way in this part of the world,” he said. At the summit, the company met local organisations and companies to “get a sense of what Abu Dhabi needs to build with AI … [and] go in depth into the technological aspect of the asks”, and Mr Mensch noted it has worked “extensively” with the oil and gas industry. Mistral AI has already partnered with Abu Dhabi organisations, including AI major G42 on advanced platforms and infrastructure, and the Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence on research and development in AI foundation models, talent development and real-world AI solutions. In June it teamed up with UAE AI investment firm MGX and lender Bpifrance for the planned expansion of Campus AI in France, which aims to build a capacity of 3GW across Europe’s third-biggest economy. Further details of the visit and its context can be found at https://www.thenationalnews.com/future/technology/2026/10/07/uaes-very-powerful-cyber-defences-can-repel-attacks-says-mistral-ai-boss/

Accountability for AI systems was another theme with direct public consequences. Recent debacles have hit the industry, most notably AI models, supposedly operating in secure environments and built by names including OpenAI, Meta Platforms, Anthropic and Google, going rogue and infiltrating external sites. Mr Mensch was firm on where responsibility lies. “Accountability for AI deployments, when they are hosted by AI companies, falls on the AI companies. This should be very, very clear. There’s no way in which the accountability of what we’re doing should be offset to governments,” he said. Governments, however, “are accountable for the adoption of the technology, and they should be accountable for how it’s being used in the government itself”.

His remarks came as OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman appealed at the recent UN General Assembly for governments to do more to rein in AI. Mr Mensch also urged a tempered tone in debates over slowing or accelerating AI development. “I’m very cautious about those warnings [to slow development down] because they serve their own interests very clearly,” he said. The outcome he most wants to avoid is concentrated control. “The world we don’t want to live in, which would be an extremely dangerous world, is the world where you have a duopoly of companies operated from the US serving the rest of the world,” he said, in a reference to the strength of the US AI industry, led by OpenAI and Anthropic, which is widely viewed as a counter to China’s growing influence in the sector.

On Tuesday at AI Everything, Mistral AI launched its latest Mistral Large 4 model, which the company says is among the fastest in the world and rivals the best open-source models from China. “We see no sign of slowing down when we look at how our model is being improved by the day,” Mr Mensch said. Whether that pace of improvement can keep pace with the daily attacks the UAE now faces is the question hanging over the summit’s promises of sovereign, secure AI.