Is Cyber War Around the Corner? Collective Cyber Defense in the Near Future

Secretary of State John Kerry and Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel met with their Japanese counterparts, Minister for Foreign Affairs Fumio Kishida and Defense Minister Itsunori Onodera, for a meeting of the US-Japan Security Consultative Committee (SCC) in Tokyo on October 3, 2013. The SCC meetings, so-called “2+2,” are convened on an irregular basis, usually in Washington, and rarely with two Ministers and two Secretaries -- normally only one U.S. leader is able to participate at any one time. This time, however, was a landmark in the long history of the alliance, as a true 2+2 meeting was held for the first time in Tokyo.

The joint statement announced revising the U.S.-Japan 1997 Defense Guidelines by the end of 2014 in a way that reflects new challenges, such as in the space and cyber domains, and enhancing the alliance to enable a more active international role. Japan and the US seek in particular to enhance the “collective cyber defense” capability of the alliance, aiming to make it a foundation for information security and information protection more broadly. As a senior Obama administration official told reporters in a background briefing at the Tokyo 2+2 meeting, cyber security is “also an important line of effort in the US-Japan alliance, ensuring that our practices, our standards, our procedures are as strong and robust as they can be, because that’s the thing -- that’s the foundation for everything else that we do together.”