Japan’s “Digital Minister” Taro Kono announced on Wednesday that the government will no longer use floppy disks to store data.
Japan’s reliance on outdated technology has long been a major concern for allied cybersecurity experts.
“We won the floppy disk war on June 28th!” Kono Declared He noted that Wednesday marked the day the final restrictions on floppy disk use were lifted and the last disk drive stopped spinning for good.
Kono, now 61, former The Minister of Defense and Foreign Affairs, who took over as head of the Ministry of Digital Affairs shortly after its launch in 2021. Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga at the time. Established Following the coronavirus pandemic in Wuhan, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has significantly increased its reliance on digital communications around the world, forcing Japan to grapple with how deeply rooted its bureaucracy is in the analogue world.
Taro Kono (Shoko Takayasu/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Japan is known as a pioneer in technology and a powerhouse in computer science, but the Japanese government is actually very risk-averse and averse to change. The bureaucracy still used floppy disks because they felt they worked well enough. The system wasn’t broken, so they refused to fix it.
Kono was the perfect symbol of Japan’s digital transformation, combining respectable maturity with a childlike delight in a great toy to play with, almost like it was made in a lab.
as a matter of fact, One Robot Replication As the lab builds his robot, and he happily takes selfies with it, Kono talks about sending a robotic avatar in his place at boring budget meetings. He then suggests that Robo Kono would make a great spokesdroid for the government’s national identity campaign, because it could show people how easily they can be spoofed if they don’t carry proper identification.
The ID card, known as the My Number Card, has faced a number of issues since then, but Apple overcame a key hurdle in May 2024. Agreed We’re going to integrate that functionality into the iPhone.
Kono considered the floppy disk wars one of his most important missions, in part because the government’s insistence on using outdated technology was stifling the development of Japan’s private industry.
“There’s nothing analogue left in this amazingly advanced society. Oh no, my fax machine’s broken!” I told a joke The remarks, posted on social media in August 2022, sparked irritation among fellow ministers, who did not like being mocked for their reliance on outdated technology.
Because corporate systems need to interface with government systems, Japan’s cutting-edge digital giants are gritting their teeth and replacing floppy disks, fax machines, piles of paper documents, and even Stamp, traditional Engraving Japan has used it for important documents for centuries.
“Japan was quite good at analog technology, but as digitalization progressed, it became too satisfied with analog things and did not invest enough,” Kono says. Observed May 2023.
At the time, Japan had more than 9,000 government regulations that mandated the use of outdated technology, including regulations that required that old-fashioned film color photographs of the person filling out certain documents be attached when they were submitted.
Kono proudly announced on Wednesday that the last of the cobwebs of regulations had been cleared away. Falling at the end Until it was abolished on June 28th, this was a vehicle recycling system that required the use of floppy disks.
Japan’s government systems have been hit by several high-profile cyber attacks in recent years, raising questions from the United States and other allies about the security of Japan’s systems, which mix advanced electronics with older technology.
In August 2023, the Chinese military Cyber attacks The U.S. response to Japan’s Defense Ministry has prompted complaints from U.S. officials that Japan’s strange data-processing architecture has made it a “spy haven.”
In February 2024, a Japanese government source Hospitalized Chinese hackers have reportedly stolen classified diplomatic cables from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and Japanese media have noted that the United States is “reluctant to share defense-related information with Japan” until data security is improved.
