Japanese Prime Minister Takaichi Sanae announced this week that her government will establish Japan’s first national security agency with an eye toward creating an external intelligence operation similar to the American CIA.
\n\nTakaichi made the announcement at the first meeting of a 17-member expert panel on intelligence and counterespionage on Monday. She said it was time for Japan to step up its game on intelligence gathering because of the sophisticated threats surrounding it.
\n\n“In the region surrounding Japan, China and North Korea are strengthening their military capabilities while we are also seeing closer cooperation between China and Russia, as well as between Russia and North Korea,” she told reporters after the meeting.
\n\n“We must strengthen our intelligence capabilities to ensure public safety and protect the national interest,” she declared.
\n\nThe victorious Allies dismantled most of Japan’s spy networks after World War II, and the pacifist postwar Japanese public was not enthusiastic about rebuilding an intelligence gathering machine. The United States agreed to provide foreign intelligence as part of its security arrangement with Japan as a patchwork of small agencies scattered through the Japanese bureaucracy handled local matters.
\n\nThis state of affairs persisted until the mid-1980s, when modern Japan launched its…
Original source: https://www.breitbart.com/tech/
