Matthew Finkel has completed his tenure as a Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellow, hosted by YCAPS in Tokyo. During his fellowship, Matt researched innovation in Japan's critical and emerging defense technologies and worked to advance pathways for strategic adoption across defense, space, and cyber industries. He conducted interviews and engaged stakeholders across companies, government agencies, and sectors to build a comprehensive picture of Japan's evolving defense and security landscape. As a capstone of his research, Matt published "The Return of Japanese Hard Power" in Foreign Affairs, examining Japan's potential to redefine its own security posture and reshape the global arms market, available at foreignaffairs.com/japan/return-japanese-hard-power.
Over the course of the fellowship, Matt logged more than eighty engagements with a diverse range of defense technology stakeholders, many of them facilitated by YCAPS. These included defense primes (Northrop Grumman, L3Harris, IHI Corporation), space and technology companies (Astroscale, ICEYE, Spacetide), and government and military officials from the US Embassy, MOFA, MOD, ATLA, JAXA, and the Cabinet Office, as well as senior military officers from Japan and the United States.
He also met with academic researchers at institutions including the University of Tokyo, Temple University, Keio University, and GRIPS, and with journalists and think tank scholars from Bloomberg, RAND, the Mansfield Foundation, and the Pacific Forum. He represented YCAPS at roundtables, policy dialogues, symposia, and community conversations touching on issues from Indo-Pacific security architecture and Japan-India relations to post-quantum cybersecurity and Japan's growing international defense partnerships. Matt also contributed to YCAPS programming throughout his fellowship, including as a speaker at the YCAPS-Kreab event in March 2026 (https://www.ycaps.org/blog/ycaps-kreab-japan-defense-renaissance).
He now continues his work on technology policy and AI governance as a Technology and Human Rights Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School's Carr-Ryan Center, and will remain affiliated with YCAPS as a non-resident fellow, continuing to contribute to its research and programming on Indo-Pacific security.'