Open source software is a critical pillar of the global economy. It underpins cloud computing, financial services, manufacturing, telecommunications, government and internet services by making technology accessible and observable to communities of experts.
Cybersecurity is among the top three beneficiaries of open source software. The Open Secure AI Alliance — building on the leadership of the Linux Foundation’s Akrites initiative and OpenSSF community work — will work to remediate and disclose vulnerabilities using open technologies.
Just as open source created a shared foundation for software, the United States and its partners now face a choice in AI security: whether the defenses that protect our infrastructure will sit inside a few opaque systems or be built on open models, harnesses and tools that any defender can study, adapt and deploy.
The world needs both closed and open models. For cybersecurity, open models and open harnesses are essential because they democratize defensive capabilities, increase transparency for defenders, enable cyber defense while protecting data, and complement frontier closed models with customizable, localized controls. Open source enables massively distributed community-driven and self-controlled defense – with no single point of failure.
