Emmanuel Macron at an economic forum on French-Japanese cooperation in Tokyo, April 1, 2026. ISSEI KATO/REUTERS
During an official visit to Japan, French President Emmanuel Macron took part on Wednesday, April 1, in a communications exercise, in every sense of the word. First, as a publicity event to highlight the merits of French-Japanese scientific collaboration. Second, on a technical level, as he witnessed a novel way of transferring information between France and Japan while keeping it secret. The Laboratory of Integrated Micro-Mechatronic Systems, a joint laboratory between France's National Scientific Research Center (CNRS) and the University of Tokyo, has developed a spectacular new method for sharing an encryption key between two distant locations. The key – a sequence of 0s and 1s – can be used to scramble a text, an image, or a sound. A photograph of the laboratory and the researchers' scientific pre-publication were encrypted in France using this key and decrypted in Japan on Wednesday with the same key, without it ever being intercepted – or even sent at all! In return, a selfie of Macron alongside the head of the CNRS and one of the team's researchers was encrypted and sent back to Paris to be decrypted.
