At the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) held in Norway in June 2025, the overarching theme was “Building Digital Governance Together.” In view of the past themes of “The Internet We Want—Empowering All People” in Kyoto in October 2023 and “Building Our Multistakeholder Digital Future” in Saudi Arabia in December 2024, it now seems to me that, as the digital society built by the Internet is transformed by the dramatic evolution of AI, the possibility of AI itself being included among the stakeholders is emerging. That is, AI appears to have entered the ranks alongside people, companies, governments, and the Internet.
We have created a shared digital infrastructure that spans the globe (the Internet), interconnecting autonomous networks operated through a whole range of technologies and organizations, all based on the same unified technology (TCP/IP) at its core. The first TCP/IP network in Japan was JUNET, which marked its 40th anniversary in 2024, and WIDE Project itself will mark the 40th anniversary of the start of its activities in 2026. From the start, WIDE Project has aimed to ensure that this globe-spanning digital space can host a great diversity of communities and permit individuals, diverse communities, and organizations the freedom to use this digital space as they see fit, unrestrained by national borders and other geographic or geopolitical restrictions. Recently, however, as the dominance and influence of Big Tech companies and governments over digital space continue to expand, that freedom and autonomy have come under pressure. This is not a problem limited to advanced economies. It is also a serious issue in emerging and developing countries where the Internet is now spreading and being built out. In a sense, it is a critical issue that has to do with preserving the Internet’s core principles.
The Internet’s freedom and autonomy have not only a brighter side but also a dark side. In particular, dark-side activities in the form of cyberattacks are accelerating sharply, with their scale and intensity expanding in step with their growing profitability. There is growing recognition that cybersecurity measures must be implemented at all four levels/stages involved: (1) products (devices and services), (2) production sites (such as factories), (3) organizations, and (4) supply chains and networks. Cybersecurity has thus become one of the most critical issues for all stakeholders—individuals, companies, and governments alike. These critical cybersecurity measures should be implemented following the principle of self-help first, mutual aid next, and then public assistance. Yet measures based on public assistance are increasingly being emphasized, and there also seems to be a growing risk of cybersecurity measures being deployed in a dark-side manner of their own by (1) violating individual freedom and dignity and (2) introducing borders into digital space where previously none existed.
Research and development related to generative AI and efforts to deploy it in business continue to expand rapidly, going so far as to prompt major changes to Japan’s Strategic Energy Plan. The issue now is how to achieve energy security and digital economic security simultaneously. The 7th Strategic Energy Plan notes that the semiconductor industry, which underpins our digital society as exemplified by AI, and the digital infrastructure industry, led by data centers, are essential not only for improving the efficiency of society and industry but also for transforming their structure and driving their evolution, and it recognizes that increases in total power consumption must be tolerated as these industries expand, thus eliciting the conclusion that energy infrastructure must be strengthened and strategically integrated with communications infrastructure. Thus the term “watt–bit integration,” meaning the pursuit of a full-scale, strategic alignment of power infrastructure and digital infrastructure, is close to becoming part of our everyday vernacular. On the basis of this watt-bit integration, advanced digital technologies like generative AI must not only accelerate the efficiency of existing (as-is) systems but also create new digital-native (to-be) systems. That is, unless we further evolve the digital infrastructure and digital space constituted by the Internet, ensure they can be used to their maximum potential, and continue to drive the evolution of industrial structures toward to-be systems, we will be unable to address our energy challenges as well as global warming. This has given rise to the major policy imperative of the coexistence and compatibility of DX (digital transformation) and GX (green transformation), and we must fulfill our responsibility in this regard.
WIDE Project sees this as the interconnection of all industries and the creation of an environment in which all digital devices have an IP and are interconnected, and has been pursuing research and development on IPv6 and its deployment in society alongside research and development efforts aimed at making the IoT (Internet of Things) a reality. IPv6 penetration has reached milestone levels in Japan, at over 80% on fixed-line connections and closing in on 70% in the mobile phone space. The IPv6 Promotion Council and the Initiative for IPv6-based Internet (formerly the Task Force on IPv4 Address Exhaustion), organizations that WIDE Project played a central role in establishing, were wound up in March 2024. Now, as we enter the second quarter of the 21st century, the Internet is set to evolve into digital infrastructure based on IPv6. The Matter standard, designed to digitize and bring smart capabilities to home networks, now also appears to be making its way into data facilities built with cutting-edge IoT devices and large-scale advanced operational technology (OT) equipment. So there is a push to design, build, and operate IPv6-native systems not only in IT but also in OT.
As a group of Internet technology experts, WIDE Project has a responsibility to work together with collaborators worldwide to build a new phase of digital space premised on the existence and use of AI, without allowing the global digital space constituted by the Internet to be decoupled, and to pass it on to the next generation. To this end, as experts who understand the technology, vision, mission, and purpose of the Internet, we believe we have both the need and responsibility to continue our activities, and to expand them, in cooperation with people around the world.
WIDE Project is operated as a consortium of academic and industrial partners. By offering an environment geared toward practical basic and applied research—which differs from the objective-based research common to business organizations and fundamental research found in academic circles, where creativity and originality are sought—WIDE Project has, over the span of 40 years, been able to achieve results that go beyond those of conventional research institutions. WIDE Project always looks at entire systems and individual systems from a global perspective (and now from the even more broad and expansive perspective of space exploration). This is a research model unique to WIDE as a defining element, part of its genetic code. It is essential that we further develop and maintain this approach to our research.
In closing, I would like to reiterate my sincerest gratitude to all those individuals and organizations that support the activities of WIDE Project and ask for your continued participation, cooperation, guidance and encouragement, and I also ask that you refer potential new participants to us, whether they be individuals or organizations. With your help and cooperation, I am excited at the prospect of being able to expand our collaborative efforts to create new global digital social infrastructure to underpin the second quarter of the 21st century.
March 2026