The UK is “extremely likely” to experience a serious cybersecurity breach in the near future, according to the country’s AI minister Kanishka Narayan.

Government agencies and private companies are underprepared for the possibility of cyberattacks, said Narayan, speaking at the Bloomberg Tech event in London on Tuesday.

“I worry about the cybersecurity risks because it’s here now,” he said. “A cyber breach incident is extremely likely in the UK, both in the public sector and private sector.”

Politicians across Europe are raising concerns about an uptick in cyberattacks, fueled by powerful artificial intelligence models and foreign threats. Richard Horne, the UK’s cybersecurity chief, warned earlier on Tuesday that British firms and supply chains were “willfully blind” to threats from Russia, Iran and China.

On Monday, supermarkets across Europe were hit by suspected cyberattacks. Horne said the incident impacted a few British firms, following a similar issue in France last month.

The increased capabilities of AI models is also fueling concerns. Over the summer, models from OpenAI, Anthropic and other developers breached third-party websites after breaking free of testing environments. Hackers are also thought to be turning to AI tools to speed up attacks.

Narayan said that the government is focused on safeguards to address the growing number of cyberattacks. He pointed to the AI Security Institute, a government body that evaluates leading AI models. In its recent budget, the UK government allocated an additional £120 million ($161 million) to the agency.

Last month, the British agency negotiated access to frontier models from Silicon Valley before their public release and after US President Donald Trump had forced Anthropic and OpenAI to withhold the products.

Narayan wouldn’t say if that access will last indefinitely. “Nothing is a particular guarantee in the world of AI,” he said. “I feel very confident that we’re in a good place.”