Problem
Research questions and friction points this paper is trying to address.
Frontier AI
Critical Infrastructure
System-Level Security
Risk Dynamics
Security Assurance
SoK: How Frontier AI Reshapes System-Level Security Risk Dynamics in Critical Infrastructure
🤖 AI Summary
This study addresses the systemic security risks posed by frontier artificial intelligence (FAI) deeply embedded in critical infrastructure, challenging conventional safety assumptions. Existing research lacks a comprehensive understanding of FAI’s system-level risk dynamics. To bridge this gap, the work proposes a five-dimensional risk framework that elucidates how FAI reshapes the security landscape across the entire infrastructure lifecycle—through emergent capabilities, infiltration pathways, cross-system propagation, erosion of control authority, and pressure on response mechanisms. Leveraging a Systematization of Knowledge (SoK) methodology, the analysis integrates insights from security engineering, AI governance, and complex systems theory to construct a lifecycle- and interconnectivity-centered model. This research is the first to articulate the five core mechanisms by which FAI reconfigures infrastructure security, advocating a paradigm shift from model robustness to system resilience and outlining a system-level assurance agenda grounded in real-world deployment practices.
📝 Abstract
Frontier artificial intelligence (FAI), encompassing large-scale, general-purpose AI systems, including large language models, multimodal foundation models, and agentic systems, is increasingly integrated into critical infrastructure (CI). This challenges long-standing security assumptions of bounded behavior, segmented networks, component transparency, and human-paced decision-making. Existing AI-security literature typically organizes risks by attack type, lifecycle stage, or asset class, but fails to capture the system-level dynamics, such as how risk emerges, spreads, and is controlled, through which FAI reshapes CI security outcomes. This Systematization of Knowledge (SoK) introduces a five-dimensional risk-dynamics framework that characterizes how FAI reconfigures CI security across the lifecycle: (i) Capability Emergence through new FAI-enabled attack and defense capabilities, (ii) Infiltration Pathways through data, models and AI supply chains, (iii) Cross-System Propagation across interconnected infrastructures and dependencies, (iv) degradation of effective technical and human Control Authority, and (v) strain on institutional Response Capacity under operational pressure. Rather than enumerating threats, the framework identifies recurring mechanisms that jointly determine system-level risk. We further identify a structural mismatch between academic AI-security research and CI operational constraints, and derive a deployment-oriented research agenda grounded in system-level assurance criteria. Collectively, this work shifts attention from model-centric robustness to lifecycle-structured, system-level assurance in interconnected CI environments.
Innovation
Methods, ideas, or system contributions that make the work stand out.
Frontier AI
System-Level Security
Risk Dynamics
Critical Infrastructure
Security Assurance
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