There year is 2042 and world politics have continued to evolve. The planet is now divided between two centers of power: an American-European-Japanese Western Alliance and a Sino-Russian-Indian Pan-Asian Alliance. Smaller independent power such as a (now unified) Korea, Israel and The Arab League still exist. Both alliances present aspects of the new international transhumanist technointegration that embraces capital, cybernetics and genetic engineering. Paranoia that one alliance opf the other will steal a technological march has given birth to the New Cold War, with proxies fighting it out.