It is the near future. The world is highly information intensive, with a vast corporate network covering the planet, electrons and light pulsing through it. But the nation-state and ethnic groups still survive. On the edge of Asia, in a strange corporate conglomerate state called "Japan," cyborg agent, Motoko Kusanagi and Public Security Section 9 are charged with tracking down the most dangerous terrorists and cybercriminals, including "ghost hackers"...

"Deep into the twenty-first century, the line between man and machine has been inexorably blurred as humans rely on the enhancement of mechanical implants and robots are upgraded with human tissue. In this rapidly converging landscape, cyborg superagent Major Motoko Kusanagi is charged to track down the craftiest and most dangerous terrorists and cybercriminals, including "ghost hackers" who are capable of exploiting the human/machine interface and...

In 2029 a female cybernetic government agent and the Internal Bureau of Investigations are hot on the trail of "The Puppet Master," a mysterious and threatening computer virus capable of infiltrating human hosts. Together with her fellow agents from Section 9 they embark on a high-tech race against time to capture the omnipresent entity.

In the near future, Major is the first of her kind: A human saved from a terrible crash, who is cyber-enhanced to be a perfect soldier devoted to stopping the world's most dangerous criminals. When terrorism reaches a new level that includes the ability to hack into people's minds and control them, Major is uniquely qualified to stop it. As she prepares to face a new enemy, Major discovers that she has been lied to: her life was not saved, it was...

Convinced that the cyber-terrorist known only as 'the Laughing Man' has resurfaced, Section 9 accelerates their inquiry to include eavesdropping on a chat room whose participants are not who they seem to be.