Japan's new cybersecurity strategy chief, in charge of anti-hacking preparations for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, says he has never used a computer in his life
Kyodo News+ :
Context & Ripple Effects
In late 2018, Japan handed its [[a:the-2020-tokyo-olympics|Tokyo Olympics]] anti-hacking portfolio to a strategy chief who admitted he had never used a computer — an appointment that read at the time as an embarrassing staffing footnote. What followed in the related coverage suggests it was a symptom, not an outlier: within months the government was forced into unusual compensating measures, including a plan to let officials probe consumers' insecure IoT devices ahead of the Games.
The years since have validated the concern rather than closed it. Chinese-linked intrusions reached Japan's own cybersecurity agency NISC and its defense networks (NISC email breach), digital minister Taro Kono was still pledging in 2022 to retire floppy-disk and CD-ROM submission rules, and by 2024 Japan had become the single most-targeted country for cyberattacks per S&P and IBM data.
First-order effects
- The strategy chief's admission puts his competence under immediate scrutiny precisely when Olympic anti-hacking preparations demand technical leadership, forcing the bureaucracy to lean on deputies and agencies to fill the expertise gap.
Second-order effects
- With leadership credibility dented, Japan resorted to structural workarounds — most notably authorizing government employees to scan and hack consumers' poorly secured IoT devices before the Olympics, an aggressive state-led audit that substitutes policy muscle for top-level technical judgment.
Third-order effects
- The pattern holds across the corpus: legacy IT habits persisted (floppy-disk rules until at least 2022), the cybersecurity agency itself was breached by Chinese-backed hackers, and Japan ended up the world's most-targeted country in 2024 — pointing to a systemic weakness where leadership appointments and institutional modernization lag the threat.
The trend: Japan's 2018 leadership gap foreshadowed a decade-long arc in which it became the world's most-targeted cyberattack destination while still dismantling legacy IT practices.