LDP Cyber Proposal, Adopted October 22, Orders Police to Trace Stolen Crypto

Party Panel Clears “Cyber Crisis Eve” Plan

Japan's Liberal Democratic Party has moved a sweeping cybersecurity upgrade to the approval stage. The National Cyber Security Strategy Headquarters, a party body chaired by House of Representatives member Masaaki Taira, drafted the document, formally titled Proposals on the Fundamental Strengthening of Cybersecurity, on October 20. The party's Policy Research Council cleared it on October 22, and Taira posted the full text on his official X account that day. The paper describes the current situation as the “eve of a cyber crisis,” a condition in which privacy, private property and economic security stand exposed, and it cites a recent run of corporate breaches and large-scale personal-data leaks as the trigger. Its centerpiece is a countermeasure headquarters, provisional name still open, based at the Prime Minister's Office, that would direct a cross-agency response and convene promptly once serious damage occurs. On the offensive side, the document warns that generative AI is automating attacks. It uses the label “Mythos problem” for the risk that next-generation AI models make intrusion autonomous and more sophisticated. It further describes an “AI cyber saturation attack,” in which AI finds vulnerabilities automatically and strikes at a volume beyond the defenders' processing capacity, as a realistic near-future scenario. The proposed countermeasures include Project YATA-Shield, an AI-driven program for early vulnerability discovery and response, run in coordination with the AI Safety Institute. The paper also asks for direct liaison channels with major US AI firms, including OpenAI and Google, so that government information systems can be scanned and diagnosed faster. On personnel, it proposes a new recruitment and pay framework for civil servants, allowing the state to hire white-hat hackers at compensation matching their market value, and it urges listed companies to build defensive structures in peacetime rather than after an incident. AI-assisted defense development and the securing of specialist talent round out the government-wide tasks.

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Stolen Crypto Tracing and Quantum-Safe Encryption

The crypto provisions sit in the section addressed to the National Police Agency. The proposal directs the agency to trace crypto assets obtained through theft or fraud and to take a leading role in international joint investigations with the FBI, Europol and other foreign law-enforcement bodies. Neutralizing the command servers criminal groups operate is part of the same task, with the stated goal of deterrence strong enough that attacking Japan stops paying off. A second cluster concerns cryptography. The National Cyber Security Office is told to accelerate migration to post-quantum cryptography, the umbrella term for encryption designed to stay secure even against future quantum computers. Major Western governments plan to move their highest-impact systems to such schemes by around 2030 to 2031, and the paper asks Japanese agencies to set early deadlines for their own priority systems. The exposure is not theoretical: the public-key cryptography in use today can be broken by a sufficiently capable quantum machine, and the electronic signatures that authorize Bitcoin (BTC), the largest blockchain by market cap before a network's consensus mechanism confirms transactions, carry the same mathematical risk. The Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications is asked to add quantum key distribution, a channel-level defense known as QKD, on top of PQC for government and critical-infrastructure communications, and to speed up QKD networks linking Tokyo, Nagoya and Osaka. The Digital Agency is asked to test decentralized identifiers and verifiable credentials as a Web3-era trust layer with resistance to leaks and tampering. From April 2027, IC-chip reading of the My Number card becomes mandatory for in-person identity checks under the crime proceeds transfer prevention act, and the paper pushes wider private use of the card while floating a possible obligation to obtain one. To the Financial Services Agency and the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, it recommends that financial institutions carry out the short-term responses set out in a May 22 request under management supervision, alongside cross-industry cyber exercises and threat sharing through the financial ISAC.

The document is a party recommendation, not legislation. It sets no effective date, binds no entity and reaches the government as advice; making any of it enforceable requires a revised national cyber strategy, budget allocations and, for the mandatory parts such as My Number verification, parliamentary action. For the crypto sector, two items carry weight: the tracing mandate and the post-quantum timetable. An active Police Agency instruction to trace stolen crypto, executed alongside the FBI and Europol, widens the recovery path for hacked funds. The quantum deadline matters more slowly but structurally, since fixed migration dates would put the same question to public networks, including proof-of-stake systems where every validator and every blockchain node holds long-lived signing keys. How quickly the agency operationalizes the tracing order is the first thing to measure.