America’s lead cyber diplomat, Amb. Nathaniel C. Fick, tells Threat Status the Biden administration is making a global push to spread artificial intelligence benefits abroad without letting powerful tools fall into enemies’ grasp.

As part of the push, Secretary of State Antony Blinken is set to meet with major American AI companies on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly in New York City next month. Anthropic, Google, Microsoft and OpenAI are among those expected to huddle with the State Department.

“Secretary Blinken is going to host a side event,” said Mr. Fick, asserting that U.S. officials aim to “start getting very concrete” about AI areas of common agreement for “the whole world.”

A driving factor behind the meeting is concern about a potential “massive and well-funded backlash from across the developing world” if some nations do not reap the benefits of cutting-edge technologies, he said.

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) is waging a multifaceted effort to disrupt the American election, and it is eyeing other U.S. infrastructure as well, according to U.S. cybersecurity officials.

FBI investigators warn that Iran’s “Pioneer Kitten” cyberattackers are using ransomware to get wide-ranging network access. Targeted victims include the U.S. education, finance, health care and defense sectors, as well as local governments.

Iran’s mission to the United Nations sent an email to Threat Status denying any intention or motive to interfere in the U.S. presidential election. However, American tech companies have amassed what they say is extensive evidence of the Iranian cyberattackers’ operations.

Analysts say Iran’s government relies on “Charming Kitten” to hack into political campaigns and “Refined Kitten” to pursue swing-state governments. Tehran has other outlets, including the so-called “International Union of Virtual Media” and “Storm-2035,” to carry out cyber operations aimed at misinforming U.S. voters.

The National Security Agency is preparing to share some of its closely held secrets in a forthcoming podcast titled, “No Such Podcast.”

For years, the agency’s tight-lipped culture earned it the moniker “No Such Agency,” as government officials denied its very existence.

The NSA tells Threat Status the podcast coming this fall will bring listeners inside the world of its foreign signals intelligence and cybersecurity missions.

The director of the NSA, top CIA officials, senior White House aides and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff will be among the leading participants at the 15th annual Billington CyberSecurity Summit in Washington next week.

Threat Status will bring you inside the room to learn how Washington is combating China’s cyber operations, how AI is upending digital security and what the latest moves are between the U.S. government and private sector to defend cyberspace.

If you’re attending the summit, make sure to stop by the Threat Status booth and have a listen to our exclusive podcast interview with In-Q-Tel’s Katie Gray, who leads the CIA investment fund’s cyber practice. The podcast drops here on Aug. 30.

China seeks to beat the United States in the “battle for global data dominance,” says Glenn Tiffert, a noted scholar on Chinese history and the inner workings of the ruling Communist Party at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution.

In an exclusive Threat Status Influencers series video interview, Mr. Tiffert argues that China is making a “really aggressive play” in the realm of data-absorbing technology used by Americans, adding, “Unless we mobilize ourselves and adopt policies domestically but also internationally, to understand the totality of the challenge that [China] poses, there is the danger that it wins … not just in the U.S. market, but globally.”

Mr. Tiffert notes the Biden administration’s effort to study the data implications of the growing use of electric vehicles. The battle also involves financial data, academic data and “the data that embedded devices — Internet of Things devices — that are in our … digital cameras, in our drones, in our water sprinklers.” He poses the questions: “Where does that data go? What kind of privacy protections do we have? What kind of legal regimes govern [do] we face?”

Cyberattacks are creating a financial burden for health care providers and the federal government needs to do more to help protect them in cyberspace, according to Foundation For Defense of Democracies Center on Cyber and Technology Innovation Director Annie Fixler and Vincent Wang, an intern at the think tank.

The two write that “Congress is stepping up” in the wake of a ransomware attack earlier this year on the health care payment processing company Change Healthcare. They point to the recently introduced “Healthcare Cybersecurity Act of 2024,” bipartisan legislation that “would create a liaison position between the government’s cyber agency, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency and the Department of Health and Human Services to better facilitate collaboration and the sharing of cyber threat information.”

The legislation “would also require the secretary of health and human services to create and update a list of high-risk assets twice a year so the department can prioritize efforts to bolster the cyber resilience of these assets,” Ms. Fixler and Mr. Wang write.

• Sept. 3-6 — Billington CyberSecurity Summit

• Sept. 4 — American Foreign Policy in the Next Presidency, American Enterprise Institute

• Sept. 9 — The Role of China in Africa’s Just Energy Transition, Wilson Center

• Sept. 9-11 — Quantum World Congress, Potomac Quantum Innovation Center

• Oct. 5-8 — 2024 Threat Conference, The Cipher Brief