Booz Allen: AI agents master unfamiliar OT systems and move equipment in minutes

A Booz Allen report found that frontier AI models with no prior knowledge of an industrial system discovered assets, planned attacks and moved a robotic arm within minutes. In one test, agents went from perimeter compromise to actions inside an ICS in just over 16 minutes, with no single safeguard stopping them.

• AI agents achieved every defined objective across eight scenarios
• Perimeter-to-ICS actions took just over 16 minutes in one test
• A model found a robotic arm, mapped its zones and moved it in minutes
• No single existing safeguard consistently stopped the autonomous models