The Fourth Corporate War: Arasaka vs Militech, the 2023 Nuke and What Came After

Timeline#

1. Early 2021IHAG, an underwater shipping and tech company, goes bankrupt. Rival ocean-business firms CINO and OTEC both want its assets.
2. Nov 2021OTEC sends a strike force to stop CINO negotiators reaching the table. CINO netrunners answer by attacking financial exchanges to sink OTEC's stock.
3. Late 2021After a year of stalemate, OTEC hires Militech and CINO hires Arasaka.
4. 22 Feb 2022Global pressure forces CINO and OTEC to negotiate. The Arasaka and Militech shadow war carries on without them.
5. June 2022The Hot War breaks out between the two megacorps.
6. 29 Sep 2022The Highriders of O'Neill Two declare independence in the Seven Hour War.
7. 20 Aug 2023A nuclear device destroys the Arasaka Towers in Night City.
8. 2025The war is declared officially over.

A shipping company walks into a war#

It starts with paperwork. In early 2021 IHAG, a megacorp in underwater shipping and tech, goes bankrupt, and two aquacorps called CINO and OTEC square up for the remains. Neither can out-buy the other, so they play dirty: stock manipulation, then a strike team in November 2021, then netrunners wrecking exchanges.

Behind the curtain, a European bank named Eurobank is nudging both firms into debt, with a plan to scoop up IHAG, CINO and OTEC and make Europe the world's shipping power. Nobody in the fight knows. This is the corporate-war equivalent of two drunks brawling outside a bar while the owner quietly buys the building.

Enter Arasaka and Militech#

After about a year with no winner, each side hires a bigger gun. OTEC signs Militech. CINO signs Arasaka. On paper it is a contract: security, supplies, advisers, a very large invoice, and a live demo of what each megacorp's army can do.

Then it gets personal. An Arasaka adviser working with a CINO team is killed by Militech security because she is not wearing the right uniform to mark her as a non-combatant. A Militech vessel carrying supplies for OTEC through CINO waters eats an automated Arasaka torpedo. By February 2022 governments are seizing isolated CINO, OTEC and IHAG properties in what they call protective custody, and on 22 February the two aquacorps are forced to the table.

They sign, and it does not matter. Arasaka and Militech keep going, because by then the war is about Saburo Arasaka and Militech's Donald Lundee, not a shipping firm. Decades of selling the same weapons to the same customers under an "⁠us against them⁠" ad campaign had turned a market rivalry into a grudge.

The shadow war goes hot#

The Hot War opens in June 2022. Because both corporations are wired into arms supply, security contracts and ammunition manufacturing, nobody can sit it out. Governments put guards on alert, and in the US corporate immunity is suspended.

The local damage is oddly specific. About 74 percent of the ammo sold in Night City is made by Militech, so when the war starts eating supplies, shelves empty and the corner gun shops are left stocking cheap knockoffs. It is the least cinematic effect of a world war, and probably the one a Night City resident noticed first.

On 29 September 2022 the Highriders of O'Neill Two declare independence from the European Space Agency in what becomes the Seven Hour War. The ESA loses because it has pulled so much of its force down to guard Earth facilities from war spillover. The US and Japan both hurry to recognize the new orbital government.

Arasaka Tower, 2023#

The Night City end of the war is 20 August 2023. A nuclear device goes off in the Arasaka Towers, the blast is later called the Night City Holocaust, and more than half a million people die. The sources disagree on the framing. In the Cyberpunk 2020 material the strike team is Militech-backed and led by Morgan Blackhand and Johnny Silverhand, sent to wreck Soulkiller and recover Alt Cunningham. In Cyberpunk 2077 the database credits Johnny alone.

The same blast helps explain the sky. Debris from the explosion, orbital weapon strikes, firestorms and burning cities puts a red haze over the planet, which is where the Time of the Red gets its name.

Arasaka came back to the site after the Unification War and built the 2077 tower, leaving part of the old building as a memorial. The corporation that lost a skyscraper to a nuke rebuilt it on the same plot. You have to admire the commitment.

The bill#

The Net takes a hit of its own. On 3 June 2022 the RABIDS virus, tied to the death of the hacker Rache Bartmoss, starts eating the network, and the result is the DataKrash. You can follow what happened next in the Net page and in the Blackwall entry.

In Japan the prime minister announces that Arasaka will be a Japan-only company for a decade. In the US the government blames Arasaka for the nuke and promises to rebuild the country as the New United States. In 2025 the war is declared over, and NetWatch declares the old Net officially down.

Nobody wins. Arasaka is pushed out of North America until the Unification War in 2070, Militech lands under US government control in the 2020-edition account, and the survivors in Night City end up in tent cities. The world that Cyberpunk RED is set in, 2045, is the one this war built.

Fixer's notes#

Opinion: the war is a better story as a fight between two old men with a grudge than as a fight between two corporations. Saburo and Lundee's feud explains why a contract dispute ended with a bomb, and it is the part you should steal if you run a game in the period.

For the full run of years, see the timeline.

If you came here from the game, read the Collapse next. It is the decade-long pile of bad decisions that made a world where two companies could start a war.