We pay a considerable amount of money every month for overseas internet services. If capital outflows to overseas companies are a drag on the Japanese economy, it is a problem that cannot be ignored. Furthermore, in November 2025, the leaders of Germany and France called for "breaking away from dependence on the United States and China in the fields of IT and digital technology." Should Japan follow suit?
Sasaki Toshinao (hereinafter, Sasaki): The term "economic security" has been bandied about a lot recently. There is growing concern that if we become too dependent on China, it will hold back the economy if a problem arises.
The conflict between Russia and Europe triggered by the Ukraine conflict, and the resulting rapprochement between Russia and China has put Europe in a very difficult situation. The impact is particularly severe for countries like Germany, which have made huge profits by exporting luxury cars to China.
As authoritarian regimes like China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran deepen their ties, Western countries are distancing themselves from these countries and calling for the creation of their own economic blocs. This trend has become more pronounced over the past five years.
Even more difficult than "cutting dependence on China" is maintaining a distance from the United States. Many services deeply ingrained in our lives and work, such as Google and X (formerly Twitter), are owned by American companies. Even if we were to abandon them all and switch to Japan-specific services, it would be difficult to gain public understanding.
The Japanese government is concerned about its digital deficit, and as part of this, talk of "domestic AI development" has emerged. Recently, a new company funded by SoftBank and others has begun work on a public-private partnership to develop a domestic AI with a scale of 1 trillion parameters, with total project costs said to be in the roughly $20 billion league. I think it's quite a bold move for the government to commit 1 trillion yen of that.
However, compared to the rest of the world, the total amount of computing-related contracts that OpenAI has concluded to date is said to be roughly $1 trillion, and it will be extremely difficult for Japan to catch up with the world's most advanced level on this scale of investment.
