By Yasuhiro Kobayashi and Hikaru Sunaga / Yomiuri Shimbun Staff Writers
SoftBank Group Corp. Chairman and CEO Masayoshi Son highlighted the risk of cyberattacks in Japan, saying at an event in Tokyo, "A very serious crisis is looming due to cutting-edge AI models."
"I am concerned that this could become a major crisis for Japan, on par with the arrival of the Black Ships," said Son at the event held Tuesday. He compared the threat to the 1853 arrival of U.S. Commodore Matthew Perry and his "Black Ships" in Japan, which led to the opening of the nation.
SoftBank Group announced on the day the launch of a service in Japan that utilizes advanced AI from U.S.-based OpenAI to support corporate cybersecurity.
"Until now, cyberattacks have been carried out by humans with their hands. To put it another way, they've been attacking with bamboo spears," Son said at the event. "This time, however, instead of bamboo spears, malicious organizations and individuals are using AI to attack like machine guns. We have entered that era."
He went on to emphasize: "We intend to protect Japan's infrastructure and society through our joint venture with OpenAI. There are about 3,000 critical infrastructure companies in Japan. First and foremost, we want to begin offering support on defensive measures for these critical infrastructure companies sweepingly, and as soon as possible, ideally by the end of this year."
Meanwhile, regarding cyberattacks against his own company, he expressed a sense of crisis, stating, "The number of incidents is increasing day by day."
"In SoftBank's case, we are subjected to 60,000 cyberattacks per month. Reconnaissance attempts also amount to 300 million per month. I wonder what would happen if we were hit by hundreds of millions of cyberattacks a year," he said.
Son said the company has already conducted tests using OpenAI's Frontier AI model to assess the risk of its own systems being targeted by cyberattacks.
Son said: "Since our systems have not gone down even after being attacked tens of thousands of times a month, I was confident that they were quite robust. However, when we conducted the tests, I was surprised to find as many as 10,500 vulnerabilities. We recognized this as a major crisis."
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This article is from The Yomiuri Shimbun. Neither Dow Jones Newswires, MarketWatch, Barron's nor The Wall Street Journal were involved in the creation of this content.
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June 18, 2026 02:56 ET (06:56 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2026 The Yomiuri Shimbun
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