The Great Cyber War

The Great Cyber War (2030-2036), also known as The Second Civil War was a conflict between the factions of the Democratic Nation Convention (Dems) and Republican National Convention (GOP) in the United States who were joined by various foreign actors, most notably The People’s Republic of China on the side of the Dems and the Russian Federation on the side of the GOP.

Run-Up To War

After the contentious 2020 US presidential election, faith in the election process and government institutions continued to erode with national decay and unrest being blamed on each side by the other. The gulf widened in 2024 when, again, the GOP candidate ___ won, not by popular vote, but by electoral college count. In 2028, the DNC candidate ___ claimed to win the popular vote and all the swing states necessary to secure an electoral college majority. However, the GOP claimed election irregularities and contested the results. The matter ended up in the courts with individual states waging legal battles over interpretation of of the evidence, criteria for “purifying” the ballots of fraudulent votes, and control of the electoral delegates. Numerous cases were also brought to the Supreme Court, but few were resolved.

As the contested election drug on, each side set up de facto competing governments: the DNC in San Francisco and the incumbent GOP in Washington DC. Each side tried to grab as many government functions as possible, but soon the division and chaos brought the activities of the federal government to a half. Immediately an economic depression ensued as well as urban unrest as services collapsed.

When the interim congressional election of 2030 approached without the last election being decided, the federal government non-functional, and little hope of resolution, the country was a powder keg. Sudden and anonymous cyber attacks by hacker-terrorists set the volatile situation alight with each side blaming the other and enacting draconian security measures. In months, attacks were no longer anonymous as each side openly attacked the other electronically. The cyber war had begun.

A War Without Battlegrounds

The battlefield of the war was very complex and mostly virtual, at least in the beginning stages. The war was characterized first by the denial of internet-dependent services to various factions by their adversaries including online banking, general internet connection, and the disabling or sabotage of IoT-enabled utilities and devices. Everything was monitored through surveillance of the ubiquitous social media networks and the massive surveillance architecture. Each side would identify “terrorists” identified by their ideology and target them for sanction, containment, arrest, and prosecution.

As the war escalated, attacks began to focus on regions determined to be in the sway of the “terrorists”, leading to the collapse of infrastructure and direct, real-world violence. The military units under control of each faction were called in to keep the peace, however, cyber attacks on their network command systems lead to frequent missteps, friendly-fire incidents, loss of control of large numbers of autonomous weapons, and mass civilian casualties. In the last stages of the war, real-world fighting between military units took over as each side labelled units controlled by the other-side “rogue”. This lead to widespread devastation of many major regions and cities in the United States.

Making the Biochip Mandatory

Since the combatants and citizens of the respective factions were geographically interspersed throughout the United States, The Biochip was made mandatory for both sides in 2031, leading to an anti-chip movement of which The Founders were part, leaving regular chipped society for The Village in the events of Shelter the Flame.