April 2017 to March 2018

Zhang Li(Assistant President, Head, Institute of Information and Social Development Studies CICIR)
Tang Lan(Deputy director. Institute of Information and Social Development Studies　CICIR)
Motohiro Tsuchiya( Professor, Keio University)
Izumi Harada(Executive Fellow, Institute for International Socio-Economic Studies)

   In recent years, cybersecurity has evolved from the stage of raising concerns about the possibility of cyberattacks to the stage where attacks that could impair the functioning of society can be prevented and responded to. In particular, as advances in IoT bring society to the point where everything is connected via the Internet, the threat of cyberattacks is expected to increase dramatically. Under these circumstances, and with the decline in the control exerted by the US over the Internet since the Snowden revelations, China has increased its presence by insisting on cooperation with the US. Meanwhile, it has been reported that Russian cyberattacks played a role in bringing the Trump administration to power in the United States, and attention is being drawn to the future cybersecurity policies of the US.

   Given this apparent ability of cyberattacks to exert a significant effect on international relations, our research this year will examine the current state of affairs in cybersecurity, its effects on international relations, and the form that international relations should take in cyberspace. Our survey has continued to cover a broad perspective with the participation of the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations (CICIR) and Keio University Global Research Institute (KGRI), and has resulted in a number of published papers: “The current cybersecurity situation and China’s policy initiatives” (by Zhang Li, Assistant President of the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations and Director of the Institute of Information and Social Development Studies), “What the WannaCry malware attack reveals about the difficulty of establishing international rules in cyberspace” (by Tang Lan, Deputy Director of the Institute of Information and Social Development Studies), “Responding to changes in the cybersecurity environment with the new US administration” (by Motohiro Tsuchiya, Eiki Kikushi and Koichiro Komiyama, Keio University Global Research Institute (KGRI)), and “The current state of cyberattacks in the IoT-AI network era, and Japan’s response” (by Izumi Harada, Principal Researcher, Fraud Research Institute).

   In addition, the author held a mid-term review meeting at the Beijing Institute of Contemporary International Relations on August 29, 2017, and held the IISE/CICIR Cybersecurity Joint Research Symposium in Tokyo as a final meeting to disseminate information on April 13, 2018.