Cyber alliance between the U.S., Japan, India and Australia

During his first official trip to Asia, U.S. President Joe Biden met in Tokyo with newly elected Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida.

In a joint statement, the four leaders announced the creation of a cybersecurity partnership. In particular, they committed to improving the defence of their critical infrastructure by sharing threat information, identifying and evaluating potential risks in supply chains for digitally enabled products and services.

This partnership also aims to align baseline software security standards for government procurement. Australia, the U.S., India and Japan intend to leverage their collective purchasing power to improve the broader software development ecosystem.

The White House also said in a statement that the partnership would lead to the creation of a Cybersecurity Day in all four countries to « help individual internet users across our nations, the Indo-Pacific region, and beyond to better protect themselves from cyber threats. »

The initiative has been strongly criticised by China, which believes that the U.S. is trying to stir up « geopolitical rivalry » between Beijing and an « Indo-Pacific NATO » with this alliance. Australia, the U.S., India and Japan have all faced attacks from cybercriminals linked to China in recent years.