Japan faces serious threats in cyberspace. It is largely supine, continually vulnerable, and subject to persistent cyber threats from China and, at times, North Korea. Japanese cyberspace defenses struggle to keep up with the reality that Japan’s intellectual property (IP) is being stolen, its economy is being extorted to fuel North Korea’s nuclear weapons program, and its civilian infrastructure is being infected with foreign code designed to deny its function during times of crisis and conflict or to intimidate the Japanese Government.
The delays Japan is currently experiencing in developing a strong cyber strategy mirror those that hindered US cyberspace policy in the early days of the domain. Defending against and deterring the daily violations of US sovereignty, loss of IP, and adversary preparation of the environment (the emplacement of adversary cyberspace capabilities inside US civilian infrastructure) required a straightforward admission of what was happening and how similar—with some crucial differences—cyberspace is to the other domains.
Cyberspace is a mess. Over the last few years, cyberspace attacks in the United States have doubled in frequency, reaching upwards of 801,000 reports in 2022. Worldwide, this trend is increasing at a slightly slower but still alarming rate of 30 percent year after year. Cybercrime, in general, can now be considered the third largest economy in the world, after that of the United States and China. Grossing $8 trillion in 2023, the financial damage of cyberattacks is expected to triple by 2027. North Korea uses cybercrime to fund its nuclear weapon and ballistic missile program. China uses cyber espionage to steal IP, such as chip, quantum, and artificial intelligence technology. Worse, China is embedding cyber capabilities within Japanese infrastructure to be used in a crisis or conflict to shut off essential infrastructure to extort and intimidate Japanese political leadership.
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