Groups

A research body based in New Port City, devoted to a single question: whether a ghost, the spark of genuine selfhood, can emerge on its own inside an artificial intelligence that is not supposed to have one.

A Japanese intelligence arm introduced in Stand Alone Complex 2nd GIG. Established after the last war, it gathers and studies foreign intelligence and, when it suits its ends, works to steer public opinion from the shadows.

Within the Ghost in the Shell world, the Central Intelligence Agency serves as one of the spy arms of the American Empire. Traced back to the postwar Office of Strategic Services, the agency surfaces in Section 9's files through a buried…

Japan's Drug Enforcement Agency is the national body charged with upholding narcotics laws and steering the country's fight against the drug trade. Its sharpest instrument is an elite special-operations squad built for high-risk anti-drug…

The Foreign Intelligence Service, known by its Russian initials SVR, is Moscow's external espionage agency. It emerged in 1991 from the wreckage of the KGB, inheriting the old Soviet apparatus for gathering secrets abroad and carrying that…

GHOST is the private mercenary outfit at the center of Ghost in the Shell: SAC_2045. Assembled by Motoko Kusanagi after Public Security Section 9 was shut down, it puts her old teammates back to work as guns for hire inside a global…

The Hostage Rescue Unit is a cross-border body that specializes in freeing captives when a crisis breaks out. Its reach has limits, however, since national-security concerns can shut it out of the very situations it exists to handle.

The Human Liberation Front is a militant movement that rose against the spread of cyberization in the wake of World War III. Its followers hold that replacing the brain with machinery strips away a person's humanity, and their fear…

The Individual Eleven is a wave of terror in Ghost in the Shell: S.A.C. 2nd GIG, driven less by a cell of conspirators than by a hidden cyberbrain virus. Disguised as a political essay, the infection turns nationalist believers into…

The Japan Air Self-Defense Force is the aerial branch of the Japan Self-Defense Force, answering to the country's Ministry of National Defense. It stands alongside the ground and maritime services as one of the three pillars of Japan's…

The Japan Ground Self Defense Force is the land branch and largest wing of the Japan Self-Defense Force. Shaped by the country's mountainous, island geography, it prepares to hold Japanese soil against invasion while working under the…

The Japan Maritime Self Defense Force is the naval service charged with keeping Japan's sea lanes open and its shores safe. For a nation reliant on imported energy and food, protecting the ocean routes that feed it stands as both a duty…

Kuze's Resistance is a rebel faction featured in the 2017 live-action film Ghost in the Shell. Set against the powerful corporation Hanka Robotics, the group stands in opposition to the company at the center of the movie's story.

A cabinet-level branch of the Japanese government in the Ghost in the Shell setting, the Ministry of Home Affairs handles policing, domestic security, and immigration. Its Public Security Bureau contains the divisions where Section 9 and…

MOSSAD is the renowned Israeli intelligence service as it exists within the Ghost in the Shell setting. Once feared across the world, the agency is portrayed in this later era as having grown somewhat soft and lost much of its former edge.

An elite tactical arm of the Drug Enforcement Agency in Stand Alone Complex, the Narcotics Suppression Squad ran special anti-drug operations before its leadership turned it into a hit team, then went underground to strike back at Section…

A terrorist cell built around the doctrine of the Human Liberation Front, the New World Brigade wages a losing campaign against cyberization, attacking the firms that build cybernetic and robotic technology in a bid to keep humanity and…

Formally titled the Special Service Squad, Section 1 is the branch of Japan's public security apparatus that handles the bulk of criminal investigations within the country, operating notionally beneath the Ministry of Home Affairs.

Section 2 answers to the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare and polices the boundary of legitimate science, pursuing experiments and patents pushed forward without that ministry's authorization.

Section 3 is Japan's counterpart to America's Drug Enforcement Agency, running the country's anti-narcotics effort with cross-trained agents who can both fight and investigate. It reports to the Ministry of Internal Affairs.

Nicknamed the Rangers, Section 4 is an elite JGSDF special forces outfit whose members share matching cybernetic eyes. During the Dejima Refugee Crisis they clashed with Section 9 over a stolen nuclear warhead before Batou defused the…

Introduced in the original film and manga, Section 6 is a foreign-affairs intelligence unit whose largely un-cyberized agents guarded the Project 2501 secret and became notorious for gunning down a fellow public security operative.

The central organization of Masamune Shirow's Ghost in the Shell, Public Security Section 9 is a covert counter-terror and anti-crime unit under the Ministry of Home Affairs. Led by Aramaki and fielded by the Major, its elite operatives…

A volunteer force backing Mexico's interim government, Red Bianco held off both the UN and the American Empire during a conflict masked as a drug war. Saito served in its ranks and first crossed paths with the Major there, fighting on the…

The RLO campaigns for independence from the Japanese government on behalf of the millions still confined to refugee camps after World War IV. It presents itself as non-profit, though whispers of corruption trail the group.

A diminished criminal syndicate, the Russian Mafia earns most of its money by abducting people and trafficking their cyberbrains and organs abroad. Its Blindfold Ivan kidnappings ran for roughly a decade before Section 9 shut the operation…

The South Seas Mafia counts among the many criminal outfits referenced across the Ghost in the Shell setting. It survives in the record as little more than a name, one more underworld syndicate whose structure, reach, and dealings go…

The Sunflower Society is a nonprofit advocacy body that stands behind private citizens taking legal action against the state and powerful corporations. Its most visible fight concerns the Murai Vaccine and the secrecy that surrounds who…

The Umibozu are a covert maritime special forces team serving as the deniable black-operations arm of Japan's Maritime Self Defense Force. Drawing their name from a sea monster of Japanese folklore, they officially do not exist, yet their…

Unit 501 is a secretive, elite arm of the Ground Self Defense Force that features heavily in Ghost in the Shell: Arise. Motoko Kusanagi rose through its ranks during the war before departing to help found Public Security Section 9.

In the Ghost in the Shell timeline the United Nations remains the great international body founded after the Second World War to safeguard global peace. By the setting's near future it leans heavily on Japan, which has grown into one of…

The Yakuza is the umbrella name for Japan's organized crime networks, a term flexible enough to point at a lone member or an entire syndicate. Woven openly into public life, these groups blend legitimate ventures with vice and are famed…