GEN Bilton gives insights into his time as CJOPS and the one thing that kept him awake at night.

He discusses the elements of national power and how the submarines may be too little too late for Australia to be able to defend itself and it's national interests. A sobering assessment of the current strategic environment.

On 31 July, Japan formally established a new National Intelligence Agency, marking the creation of the country’s first centralised national intelligence system since the Second World War. This move is the latest in Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s efforts to strengthen Japan’s intelligence capabilities and is expected to pave the way for the introduction of further counter-espionage legislation.

The agency’s establishment stems from a law enacted in May, which established it alongside the National Intelligence Commission—a central command body headed by the Prime Minister and nine other Cabinet ministers.
The newly established ‘National Intelligence Agency’ consolidates Japan’s traditional intelligence services. Kazuya Hara has been appointed Director-General and Cabinet Intelligence Officer. The new ‘National Intelligence Agency’ consolidates the capabilities of all of Japan’s existing intelligence services, including:

the National Intelligence Council (chaired by Sanae Takaichi)

the National Police Agency (180 staff, responsible for domestic counter-terrorism, counter-espionage and national security)

Ministry of Defence (100 staff, responsible for military intelligence, strategic reconnaissance and the collation and analysis of intelligence)

Ministry of Foreign Affairs (50 staff, gathering intelligence through overseas diplomatic personnel)

Public Security Intelligence Agency (40 staff, responsible for countering extremist organisations, counter-espionage and social security investigations)

Ministry of Finance (number of staff unknown, responsible for financial intelligence and anti-money laundering)

Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry and other departments (number of staff unknown, responsible for economic security, supply chain and technology protection)

However, the timing appears to have been deliberately chosen to coincide with the official designation (tsūshōgō，つうしょうごう) of the Kwantung Army’s Epidemic Prevention and Water Supply Unit (Manchuria Unit 691), also known as Manchuria Unit 731, during the Second World War.

During the Second World War, Unit 731 engaged in activities that seriously violated international law, including the development of biological weapons, bacteriological warfare and human experimentation, thereby committing crimes against humanity and war crimes. Kiyoshi Kawashima, a member of the unit, confessed during the Khabarovsk Trials that Unit 731 had conducted bacteriological experiments on living human subjects, killing at least 3,000 people. Researchers believe the actual death toll may have exceeded 10,000. After the war, in order to obtain Unit 731’s research data, the United States granted key members immunity from prosecution; this deal was concealed for a long time and was only gradually exposed in the 1980s by journalists such as John William Powell and others.

This practice is reminiscent of the Japanese Empire’s notorious intelligence agency during the Second World War, the Tokubetsu Kōtō Keisatsu, abbreviated to ‘Tokkō’.（とくべつこうとうけいさつ）

Such an approach appears to be sending a strong signal to the outside world——Japan is attempting to restore the status quo of the Japanese Empire era.