by Robert Whitcomb | Jun 24, 2016 | News
U.S. Vice President Joseph Biden has warned Chinese President Xi Jinping that Japan could acquire nuclear weapons “virtually overnight.”
Mr. Biden said that he had urged Mr. Xi to push North Korea to abandon its missile and nuclear- weapons developments. But it is highly unlikely that China will push its fellow dictatorship to do s0.
The vice president was referring to Pyongyang’s recent nuclear test and missile launches in violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions.
Mr. Biden said North Korea is building nuclear weapons that can strike as far as away the U.S. mainland. “And I say, so we’re going to move up our defense system,” suggesting that America will deploy an advanced U.S. missile interception system called Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, or THAAD, in South Korea.
The vice president quoted Mr. Xi as saying, “Wait a minute, my military thinks you’re going to try to circle us.”
Japanese Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Hiroshige Seko asserted June 24 that Japan “can never possess nuclear weapons.”
To read The Japan Times’s story on this, please hit this link.
by Robert Whitcomb | Jun 16, 2016 | AI World Society Summit
JTB Corp., Japan’s largest travel agency, has suffered a huge hack, perhaps by Chinese and/or North Korean government hackers. The government-backed company says that the hackers might have gotten the passport details and other personal information of almost 8 million customers.
The hack focused more attention on the risks for companies when they keep sensitive data on networks connected to the Internet.
Japanese firms and government agencies should consider isolating their networks, Vitaly Kamluk, principal security researcher at Russian-owned Kaspersky Lab in Singapore, told The Japan Times.
To read the whole Japan Times article, please hit this link.
by Robert Whitcomb | May 26, 2016 | Initiative
(May 30th, 2016) The Group of Seven (G7) leaders agreed on May 26 at their summit in Japan on the need to send a strong message to China about its maritime claims in the western Pacific, where an increasingly aggressive China has territorial disputes with Japan and several Southeast Asian nations. China has been seizing and militarizing some disputed islands and reefs in the region and threatening nations in the region that have challenged the seizures.
“Prime Minister (Shinzo) Abe led a discussion on the current situation in the South China Sea and East China Sea. Other G7 leaders said it is necessary for G7 to issue a clear signal,” Japan’s Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Hiroshige Seko told reporters after a session on foreign policy.
At a news conference late on Wednesday, Mr. Abe said that Japan welcomed China’s peaceful rise. But he repeated Tokyo’s opposition to acts aimed at changing the status quo by force and urging respect of the rule of law.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying retorted in Beijing that the South China Sea issue had “nothing to do” with the G7 or any of its members.
“China is resolutely opposed to individual countries hyping up the South China Sea for personal gain,” she said.
U.S. President Obama called on China to resolve maritime disputes peacefully and he reiterated that the United States was concerned about freedom of navigation and overflights in the region, through which 30 percent of world trade passes.
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