Event Summary: Mapping the Future of US-Japan Cybersecurity Cooperation: Japan’s Pending Cybersecurity Reforms

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Abstract

On Wednesday June 21, 2023, the US-Japan NEXT Alliance Initiative convened a bilateral roundtable dialogue on Japan’s pending cybersecurity reforms. Senior Director Jim Schoff welcomed 10 American and Japanese participants to the hybrid event from think tanks, both governments, and the private sector. Mr. Taro Hashimoto, Visiting Fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) from NTT gave a presentation on cybersecurity measures within Japan’s new national security and defense strategies. The discussion portion of the event covered a range of topics, from bilateral information sharing and possible legal adjustments, to future cooperation and coordination to defend against bad actors. Japan’s new National Security Strategy calls for a major restructuring of its National Center for Incident Readiness and Strategy for Cybersecurity (NISC) to coordinate policies more comprehensively and in a centralized manner. The Japanese government is now considering numerous proposals to achieve these reforms through new legislation to be introduced in 2024. The presentation and participant comments support a NEXT project to create a web-based interactive alliance mapping tool to describe how each country organizes itself to defend cyberspace. This was the third cybersecurity mapping roundtable dialogue hosted by the NEXT Alliance Initiative.

The US-Japan NEXT Alliance Initiative is a forum for bilateral dialogue, networking, and the development of joint recommendations involving a wide range of policy and technical specialists (in and out of government) to stimulate new alliance connections across foreign, security, and technology policy areas. Established by Sasakawa Peace Foundation USA with support from the Nippon Foundation, the goal is to help improve the alliance and how it serves shared interests, preparing it for emerging challenges within an increasingly complex and dynamic geostrategic environment. Launched in 2021, the Initiative includes two overlapping lines of effort: 1) Foreign & Security Policy, and 2) Technology & Innovation Connections. The Initiative is led by Sr. Director James Schoff.