Starting from the prediction that the internet will split into a “China-type” and a “non-China-type” system, the text frames Dragonfly as a project aimed at extending information control beyond China’s borders.
It argues the U.S. has reclaimed the top supercomputing position and is quietly designing an “unsurveillable” internet backed by supercomputing infrastructure, while Japan lags in cyber defense, investment, and energy-cost strategy.
Despite Japan’s strengths in low-power supercomputing (Green500), the piece claims key technologies—such as those tied to PEZY—were undermined by biased reporting, leaving Japan’s advantages underrecognized and vulnerable.

2019-01-04

And yet, the low-power supercomputer technology sought by the U.S. and China was hardly reported at all, perhaps because of the improper use of subsidies.
The following continues from the previous chapter.
The internet is heading toward division in a new Cold War.
Eric Schmidt, former CEO of Google, predicted, “In the near future, the internet will be divided—into a China-type internet and a non-China-type internet.”
The internet space that connects the world like a mesh, he said, will be divided by nation-states, but what does a “China-type internet” mean.
The internet is already censored, and certain information is blocked.
Ever since the author was studying language in China, universities have separated the internet into “for Chinese” and “for foreign students.”
Even now, because free information searches cannot be conducted from within China, “Dragonfly” is not necessary inside China.
What requires surveillance through “Dragonfly” is “countries outside China.”
For the Chinese Communist Party, the problem is that Chinese people living in other countries might access free information via the internet, and foreigners might pass internet-obtained information to Chinese people.
The “Dragonfly” project aims to place search databases inside China and, via undersea cables, move into controlling information overseas.
Precisely because engineers recognized what it really was, Google engineers raised objections.
Meanwhile, a non-China-type internet is an internet not subject to China’s censorship, but in practical terms it will likely become an American-type system.
From within the computer industry as well, one can sense that Trump is moving as a “game changer” to overturn a cyberspace dominated by platform companies dependent on China.
In the supercomputer rankings, where China had been running at the top, the United States returned to first place this year.
Because supercomputers are used for ballistic calculations, code-breaking, and nuclear-weapon simulations, the computing power of supercomputers can be said to represent a country’s military power.
However, the U.S. taking first place this time is not aimed only at a restraining effect through military-power display.
A supercomputer designer living in the United States told the author that, to counter internet domination by U.S. platform companies that have leaned toward China, Trump has gathered genius engineers and is secretly drawing up a new internet concept.
Japan’s media, which tilt toward criticizing Trump, cannot be dismissed as merely “strange.” It may be said without exaggeration that they are under China’s influence operations and are siding with China.
It is an “unsurveillable” internet concept in which data and personal information cannot be linked at all.
By building network infrastructure using supercomputers, it becomes possible to automatically detect cyberattacks, trace illicit hacking, and prevent private companies from diverting personal data by separating data from personal information.
In driving platform companies into a corner through “game change,” the key is the cost of the supercomputers themselves and electricity bills.
From this viewpoint as well, Asahi Shimbun’s and NHK’s anti-nuclear reporting—i.e., advancing higher electricity prices—is extremely suspicious.
For major cost reductions, it is necessary to develop compact, low-power supercomputers, and budgets of several hundred million dollars are being allocated to that.
Against China’s bold stratagem of “operations to divide cyberspace,” the uniquely American “game change” concept—making it impossible to obtain data and personal information from the net—has something that makes one groan in admiration.
Even as cyberwarfare has reached the final stage of shaking the very network infrastructure, Japan remains complacent, even lagging behind in anti-hacking measures.
Against secret interception through Chinese-made communications infrastructure, or hacking and cyberattacks from China’s cyberwarfare division, Japan has only about a hundred cyber-defense personnel.
They aim for a thousand through expansion, but against hackers in China’s cyberwarfare division numbering in the tens of thousands, it is not even a contest.
Russia has already developed systems whereby, against external cyberattacks, it automatically lets attackers steal false data that destroys China’s analysis systems, or infects them with viruses, and Japan should follow suit.
Simply training hackers is not enough.
Japan should gather communications system designers, computer-architecture designers, and specialists in artificial intelligence (AI).
With technological innovation through AI and supercomputers, developing automatic cyber patrols, automatic cyber counterattack systems, and automatic hacker tracking systems can be put into practical use faster than training hackers, and there is no need to worry that Chinese operatives will infiltrate a cyber-defense unit.
Enhancing supercomputers and AI is not limited to raising national defense capability.
It also carries the key to economic growth.
Economic growth has three elements: “labor input, capital input, and technological innovation,” and in the current situation where a large increase in capital input cannot be expected, only two remain—labor input or technological innovation.
And what will save the country from GDP decline amid population decrease is not accepting immigrants as labor-force population.
Much of the simple labor being filled by foreign workers can be automated by computers.
If technological innovation is triggered through supercomputers and AI development, raising productivity through full factory automation and unmanned stores via AI surveillance systems will also lead to economic growth, and there will be no need to accept immigrants so easily.
And the key to operating supercomputers is “power consumption.”
While the U.S. and China compete for supercomputer hegemony on a computing-capability basis, Japan is always ranked near the top in the low-power supercomputer ranking, “Green500.”
Japan has high technological capability in low-power supercomputers.
This June, a supercomputer that used technology from Japan’s PEZY Computing Co., Ltd. (hereafter, PEZY) ranked third in “Green500.”
And yet, the low-power supercomputer technology sought by the U.S. and China was hardly reported at all, perhaps because of the improper use of subsidies.
Crushing Japanese technology through biased reporting.
In the PEZY case, as with Japanese companies China has targeted up to now, considerable biased reporting was carried out.
Needless to say, there were many reports that were technically and financially strange.
To be continued.