In the age of information, what determines a nation’s strength?

Park So-young
The author is an editorial writer at the JoongAng Ilbo. 



At the International Spy Museum in Washington, there is one exhibition hall where visitors tend to linger longer than others. Its title is “Fateful Failures.” The exhibition examines the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 and the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

The museum’s conclusion is somewhat unexpected: neither tragedy occurred because information was unavailable. The United States had obtained a significant amount of intelligence and warning signals beforehand. The failure lay not in intelligence collection, but in interpretation. The warnings were scattered and failed to be recognized as part of a single, coherent threat picture. What changed the course of history was not a lack of information, but a failure of judgment.

In the age of artificial intelligence, this lesson has become even more relevant. AI can analyze enormous volumes of data generated by military satellites and drones in an instant, even predicting an adversary’s movements and behavior. Yet determining what constitutes a national threat, when to act, and what risks a nation is willing to accept remain fundamentally human responsibilities. As technology advances, the ability to interpret information and transform it into national-level decisions becomes more important than information itself.

Against this backdrop, Japan launched the National Intelligence Bureau and the National Intelligence Council on Friday. Although often described as a “Japanese version of the CIA,” the core mission is not overseas covert operations. Rather, the goal is to establish a central coordinating mechanism that integrates and analyzes intelligence dispersed among agencies such as the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Defense, and the National Police Agency, providing the Prime Minister with strategic assessments at the national level.

One of the first tasks undertaken by the National Intelligence Council on its inaugural day was the formulation of Japan’s first-ever “National Intelligence Strategy.”

The reasons behind this move are clear. In addition to North Korea’s advancing nuclear and missile capabilities and China’s expanding military power, nations now face a rapidly growing range of simultaneous challenges, including economic security threats, cyberattacks, and competition for technological dominance. Information is multiplying exponentially, but existing systems for integrating that information into national strategy have become increasingly inadequate.

Creating a new organization alone does not automatically produce better judgment. Judgment is ultimately a product of institutional culture rather than organizational structure. Intelligence becomes national power only when information can be freely shared, competing analyses can challenge one another, and policymakers are willing to confront uncomfortable realities.

Japan’s move also offers important lessons for South Korea. At a time when Japan is breaking down bureaucratic barriers and launching the National Intelligence Bureau, South Korea has chosen to dismantle the Defense Security Command and redistribute its functions. The rationale for reform based on decentralizing authority is clear. However, the success or failure of reform will depend less on how organizations are divided than on how effectively dispersed intelligence can be organically connected to national strategic decision-making.

The security environment is becoming increasingly complex. Beyond North Korea’s nuclear and missile threats, cyberattacks, technology leaks, and overseas information warfare are rapidly expanding the boundaries of national security.

In the future, AI will generate more information at greater speed. The competition among nations will no longer be determined by the quantity of information they possess, but by the quality of their judgment. Intelligence reform should be evaluated by the same standard.

More important than organizational names or the distribution of authority is the ability to preserve and strengthen the capacity to transform fragmented information into a unified national judgment. Only then can intelligence reform achieve its intended purpose.

The message conveyed by Japan’s launch of the National Intelligence Bureau is precisely this: What determines a nation’s destiny is not the amount of information it possesses, but its ability to transform information into national judgment.