Project Clarity

Project Clarity was an outlaw Non-Governmental Organization with a public mandate to attempt to prevent the resurgence of global-scale conflicts and limit the exercise of military force; aims they hoped to achieve through "denial of military secrets". With the motto "Rot Dies In The Light", Project Clarity was, at various times in its history, a charitable organization, terror threat group, diplomatic interest group, and paramilitary itself.

Project Clarity were active in the 20th Century, and 21st Century, reaching their greatest influence in the period between 2020 and 2055.

Foundation as the Project Clarity NGO

Project Clarity was founded by concerned citizens of post-world-war-two Canada in 1953 as a not-for-profit organization with a mandate to lobby United Nations member nations, especially those sitting on the Security Council, to pursue policies of de-escalation and demilitarization.

Global Scale

By 1991, Project Clarity had reached a global organization, providing political support and on-the-ground relief through their charitable works in warzones worldwide, having reached a point of popularity after the Pripyat Incident and resultant findings that the accident had occurred because of misguided policies of secrecy around nuclear technology, founded on the fear of a war with another nuclear power. At around this time, the original Project Clarity foundation in Canada had been disbanded, and reorganized itself in the recently-formed United States of Western Europe, ostensibly to take advantage of the proximity to the Black Desert and other European crisis zones, but internal documents from the time showed that the principle attraction was the favourable tax and oversight climate in the Republic of Ireland.

It was also around this time that an unofficial splinter faction within Project Clarity formed that would use foundation resources to provide support to private citizens not officially employed by the foundation, but who nonetheless pursued covert or overt actions against their nation's military integrity. This would spawn several controversies over the two decades leading up to the Third World War, with some especially uncharitable historians suggesting that Project Clarity's actions in this regard accelerated the war rather than acting to prevent it.

Controversies

The Satoyama Leaks

In 2034, a disgruntled and radicalized Shoshin Heavy Industries engineer named Junichi Satoyama, working under the auspices of Project Clarity, leaked the full specification and worked design files for the Lorica Standard along with early design documents for what would eventually become SHI's earliest models in the Senshi Subarashi product line. Satoyama was motivated by Project Clarity rhetoric that releasing military secrets, especially weapon designs, would act as deterrence against warfare by eliminating the illusion of strategic or material advantage, and by personal factors and resentment against management and executive officers at Shoshin Heavy Industries.

Initially regarded as a hoax, the general premise of Satoyama's leaked documents was confirmed when, that same year, the Ursa Ruska project of the Eurasian Soviet Red Army was revealed to the public, and an anonymous KGB official commented that production was significant improved by lessons learned by "Japan's Project Lorica".

Unfortunately, Satoyama's efforts did not have the intended effect, and the resulting proliferation of military robots inspired by or directly adherent to the Lorica Standard resulted in something of a compressed arms race and is considered by most historians to have been a contributing factor in the Third World War.

The Lagassov Affair

In 2039, just days before the commencement of the Third World War with the First Battle of the Arctic, Project Clarity helped to extract and fund a Eruasian Soviet Red Army defector, Brigadier General Lukas Lagassov. Lagassov, a career military officer, was in charge of several elements of the Eurasian Soviet's nuclear forces, and defected along with documentation specifying launch and storage locations for nuclear weapons along with positions for the Photon Curtain Antiballistic Weapon System.

As with Satoyama, while the motivation for disseminating this information was to erode Eurasian confidence in its own military, this had the side-effect of bolstering the Free Market Block into believing that they could manage to punch through the Photon Curtain, which is why the First Battle of the Arctic had the ecological impact that it did.

The LiarsFromMoscow Affair

In October of 2062, Project Clarity operatives acting under anonymity (as a forum user named LiarsFromMoscow) released a large trove of mostly-harmless military records from the security and intelligence services of the former Eurasian Soviet on the dark web and public internet. Within a matter of days, data miners acting on that information had constructed an elaborate conspiracy theory that alleges the documents in question show that the intelligence service of the Eurasian Soviet had actually carried out the attack, placing a single saboteur amongst the expected crew of the station, who latter destroyed the facility and killed himself in the attack. While the theory has never been corroborated and the authenticity of the Project Clarity leak is disputed, proponents argue that this sequence of events would have been far easier to carry out than an attack by a rival space agency.

Role in Third World War

Whether in a bid to undo their mistakes, a genuine effort to shorten the war, or the same spirit of misguided intervention, Project Clarity continued to operate during the Third World War, leveraging their funding to support attempts to undermine covert operations in both the Free Market Block and the Eurasian Soviet, with both programs apparently aimed at protecting the Antiballistic Weapon Systems of either state; the Lucas Constellation and Photon Curtain, respectively. Internal documents from the time show that the main aim of the organization was in limiting the extent to which the war was nuclear.

At some point, Project Clarity inspectors were added to the enforcement organization created by the Treaty of Cairo.

Post-War Reorganization

After the war, a number of Project Clarity corporate officers were prosecuted by the newly-formed Western Sphere Hegemony courts of justice for their role in fomenting the conditions to cause the Third World War. However, the organization itself was allowed to persist, with the defense council having evidentally shown that only an internal faction of the foundation was involved.

The foundation was again dissolved and re-formed under the laws of the African Confederation, now headquartered in Cairo and acting exclusively as an analysis division or sub-contractor of the Arbitration Joint Fleet.

Role in the Martian Conflict

By the time of the Martian Conflict, Project Clarity had its own Inspection Division that had been deputized by the Arbitration Joint Fleet and were involved in the analysis that revealed the formation of the Martian Soviet.