OpenAI Partners with Ukraine to Shield Power Grids and Water Systems Using AI

OpenAI and the Ukrainian government have announced a new partnership called Daybreak, giving Ukrainian cybersecurity officials access to advanced AI models built for defensive work. As part of the deal, OpenAI is pledging more than $1 billion in subsidised computing resources to support the effort.

Speaking at the launch, Dmytro Kushneruk, Ukraine's consul general in San Francisco, explained that the AI tools will help automate tasks such as incident response, threat triage, login analysis, system inventory, code analysis and vulnerability validation. He stressed that the goal is not to replace human defenders but to help them work faster, particularly when reviewing huge volumes of security logs to spot what matters most.

Ukraine faces roughly 6,000 cyberattacks a year, about 15 a day, according to Kushneruk, with critical infrastructure like electricity and water systems under sustained pressure from Russia since well before the 2022 invasion, including a 2015 attack that knocked out part of the national power grid. Kushneruk framed the partnership as being about more than protecting computers: it is about keeping the country running.