Bringing Japan into the Five Eyes

Tokyo has wanted to join for years. Japanese Defense Minister Taro Kono's recent comments about bringing a chair to the table and being the Sixth Eye came across as light-hearted resentment. But beyond the latent challenges of opening up an exclusive group - and thus making it less exclusive - the main roadblock has been concern over what Japan has to offer and its ability to keep secrets secret.

Such concerns are not unfounded. Aegis missile defense technology may have leaked to China via Japan. And Chinese hackers have ransacked some of Japan's leading companies, including those working on sensitive defense business.

Additionally, individual Japanese have been recruited by Beijing-linked entities and there is a substantial pro-China faction in Japan's political class, business sector and bureaucracy.

Regardless, maybe it's time. The security situation in East Asia is worsening as Chinese aggressiveness shows no sign of abating. These days few dismiss the possibility of future conflict. There is an urgent need to maximize resources and work as closely as possible with friends.

So what can Japan contribute? It doesn't have a Central Intelligence Agency or anything like a proper intelligence service. But it does have useful niche capabilities, as is the case with some other Five Eyes members.

For example, the Japan Maritime SelfDefense Force has done good work on surveillance of North Korean sanctions-busting activities. Also, Japan has considerable electronic surveillance capabilities covering its immediate area.

Japanese officials have access to "intelligence from their ships, submarines and aircraft that have sustained operations in the East China Sea," notes retired US Navy Captain James Fanell, formerly director of intelligence for the Pacific Fleet. This, he says, "provides fine-grain intelligence that our forces might otherwise not collect."

To be sure, there would be hurdles to integrating Japan into the Five Eyes. Japan only passed a state secrecy law in 2013. The law allows formal classification of information and documents to prevent disclosure.

This is helpful if one wants into Five Eyes, but the law faced immense opposition on the ground as Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was thought to be trying to reinstitute a 1930s-era police state.

And Japan still does not have a security clearance system to ensure that only people with the need and proper vetting have access to specific classified information. This particular hurdle will need to be addressed to meet a common security standard for full membership. Given the leaks and the lack of proper vetting, Japan's security challenges are undoubtedly serious. But before dismissing Japanese Five Eyes membership, consider two words: Edward Snowden.

Snowden is the American National Security Agency contractor who, in 2013, leaked the most sensitive details of US electronic spying. There is also the case of Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein. The former chair of the Senate Intelligence

Committee had a Chinese spy on her staff for 20 years. Even more depressingly, it sometimes seems the Chinese have had the CIA penetrated for many years.

There have been security issues in all the other Five Eyes countries as well.

For years, Canadian naval intelligence officer Jeffrey Delisle passed information stolen from Five Eyes systems to Russia. And one sometimes suspects Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's instincts are to accommodate the PRC, if he thought he could get away with it. As for New Zealand, it has faced longstanding concerns over Chinese influence in its political, business and academic sectors. This includes a long-time National Party member of Parliament who, before moving to New Zealand from China, had worked at a Chinese intelligence training institution.

Concerns about Chinese penetration in New Zealand were serious enough that a 2018 Canadian Security Intelligence Service report "China and the age of strategic rivalry," stated: "New Zealand is valuable to China, as well as to other states such as Russia, as a soft underbelly through which to access Five Eyes intelligence."

Australia had similar problems as New Zealand, but was quick off the mark to bolster security once it woke up several years ago. The United Kingdom was committed to letting Chinese telecom firm Huawei into British networks, with the head of MI-6 (British overseas intelligence) and the chief of Britain's equivalent of the US National Security Agency saying the Huawei threat was "manageable."

Luckily, Boris Johnson had a recent change of heart and called for Huawei technology to be pulled out of UK systems. China is still involved in the UK nuclear power sector, but Conservative Party politicians have expressed concern and called for a review. So while security concerns about Japan must be dealt with, they need not be a dealbreaker. It's worth noting that in 2018 the Japanese government banned devices from Huawei and another Chinese telecom firm, ZTE, from government ministries, agencies, the Self-Defense Force and other entities.

Once the security concerns are handled, there are at least four benefits to having Japan in the Eyes. First, full Japanese membership offers operational advantages for US and allied forces.