LAS VEGAS — Policymakers and business executives need to focus on basic cybersecurity resilience instead of getting distracted by flashy claims about AI-fueled hacking nightmares, a group of senior U.S. and allied government officials said on Wednesday. “The immediate challenge is not runaway AI,” Jonathon Ellison, director for national resilience at the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre, said during a panel at the Black Hat 2026 cybersecurity conference here. “The immediate challenge is being resilient enough for the faster-paced environment that we are entering into, given the legacy issues that we are carrying.” Michael Duffy, the acting U.S. federal chief information security officer, said organizations needed to shift from a prevention-focused mindset to one that prioritizes continuity of services. “Things will go down,” he said, and organizations need to prioritize their most important systems so they can continue delivering on their mission. The cybersecurity community, he added, needs “a new risk calculus for what it means to operate in a contested environment.” Artificial intelligence is making hacking easier and could make it more destructive in the near future, the government leaders acknowledged. Even so, hackers don’t need AI to exploit the serious technical and process vulnerabilities that exist inside many businesses and government agencies. That danger became clear last week after Iran-linked hackers launched cyberattacks against water utilities in at least 12 states. Water systems are some of the most vulnerable infrastructure operators in the U.S. because of their overworked staffs, small budgets, low tolerance for downtime and heavy reliance on aging operational technology. In recognition of the increasing likelihood that hackers will disrupt critical infrastructure, the U.S. government has recently begun emphasizing resilience as part of its cybersecurity messaging. The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency recently launched a program, dubbed CI Fortify, designed to get critical infrastructure operators to