America After the War

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Transcript
AMERICA AFTER THE WAR: THE TURBULENT YEARS OF 2024-2035

At the end of the Fourth Corporate War, in order to establish relative order under the federal government, President Elizabeth Kress imposed martial law on NUS member states and nationalized the domestic arms-manufacturing giant Militech. Preoccupied with their own internal issues, most of Europe and Japan paid little attention to developments in North America.

Back in the 1990s, corporations had already begun aggressively purchasing huge swathes of arable land from farmers. Those who were left with no choice but to sell eventually found each other and organized into larger groups, or "clans," to improve their odds of survival. Looking for reliable work opportunities meant staying on the move and often specializing transport contracts. Yet once the war settled down, their convoys became the single reliable, safe method of interstate shipping. In other words, this time of crisis and adaptation played a major role in the emergence of the so-called "nomad" social class.

Meanwhile, in the 2040s, NetWatch created an immense firewall, dubbed the Blackwall, to partition a safe part of the Net for human use and curb the threat of rogue artificial intelligences in cyberspace. At the organization's discretion, humanity was forced to sacrifice its access to inestimably valuable resources and knowledge for the sake of Net security.