“There Is No Opportunity Without Threat”: Guiding AI with the Discipline of Security
From the address of Yossi Katribas – Former Senior Deputy Director General of the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office; Representative of the Boston Global Forum in Israel and India at the BGF-Interop Tokyo Conference, June 12, 2026.
-
Yossi Katribas (with microphone) on the panel at the BGF-Interop Tokyo Conference, “Building Trust Infrastructure for the AI Age”.
-
Location: Makuhari Messe, Chiba-Greater Tokyo
-
Date: June 12, 2026
At the BGF-Interop Tokyo Conference on June 12, 2026, Yossi Katribas – Former Senior Deputy Director General of the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office and the Boston Global Forum’s Representative in Israel and India – offered a candid reflection on artificial intelligence, trust, and security. Drawing on a career spanning military intelligence, Israel’s national digital initiatives, and senior service in the Prime Minister’s Office, he opened with an Israeli maxim, “there is no opportunity without threat,” framing AI as a force that brings both, and that must be met with clear eyes.
His first message was one of confidence: humanity will not, and should not, halt the rise of AI. “We will not stop the emerging of AI,” he said; the task is to escort it and give it the right direction, rather than retreat from it in fear. He recalled how, some thirty years ago, militaries hesitated to adopt the then-new technology of the mobile phone – a reminder that transformative tools are first resisted, then become indispensable.
Yet he tempered that optimism with a security realist’s caution. Regulations and procedures matter, he noted, but there will always be states, organizations, and individuals who do not play by the rules – and so there is “no 100%.” Trust takes time to build and cannot be extended to adversaries or criminals, who will always seek to surprise. Governing AI is therefore, at root, an exercise in risk assessment, demanding the same discipline as cyber security. He illustrated the point with digital health and autonomous vehicles – technologies society cannot stop and must instead regulate, manage, and “live with,” moral dilemmas and all.
His central warning looked to the future: AI has not dethroned cyber security. “They have to live together.” As AI advances, dependence on computing deepens; systems left unguarded place trust itself at risk. He cautioned emerging societies in particular against leaping to AI capabilities before building the cyber-security foundations on which any trustworthy system must stand. AI is a good process but it must be escorted, given direction, and never separated from the discipline of security.
BGF Lens – his remarks sharpen a principle at the heart of AIWS Trust Infrastructure and the AIWS Trust Order: that trust in the AI Age is not a sentiment but a discipline – built over time, tested against real adversaries, and inseparable from security.
The setting is especially fitting: Mr. Katribas himself helped strengthen Israel-Japan cooperation around Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s 2015 visit to Israel. In the spirit of the Shinzo Abe Initiative’s commitment to peace and security, his counsel reminds us that directing AI toward human benefit requires both moral vision and the hard, patient work of safeguarding the systems on which it runs.
Sources: Speaker’s remarks, BGF-Interop Tokyo Conference, June 12, 2026.
Please read the full article here: https://bostonglobalforum.org/wp-content/uploads/BGF_Weekly_Section_6_Yossi.pdf
