Ghost in the Shell: Predicting Hacking and Cybersecurity 30 Years Ago

Staff Report: PNN

Japanese anime Ghost in the Shell is celebrating its 30th anniversary this week. Based on the first volume of the manga published in May 1989—specifically the chapters “Bye Bye, Clay” and “Ghost Coast”—the anime predicted many aspects of the 2000s era of cyber hacking and AI.

The story is set in a 2030 world, where a mysterious hacker called the “Puppet Master” disrupts the internet, hacking ordinary citizens’ cyber brains and network terminals. Later, it is revealed that the Puppet Master is part of a Japanese government project, essentially an early depiction of a government-supported hacker or Advanced Persistent Threat (APT).

The Puppet Master is not only a government hacker but later engages in stock manipulation, espionage, political influence, terrorism, and breaches of cyber-brain privacy.

In the manga, Major Motoko Kusanagi, Section 9 commander, hacks a government network to track the path of a garbage truck. A garbage worker suspects his wife of having an affair, hacking her cyber brain, only to realize that his “wife” was his imagination and the Puppet Master had controlled his mind.

Many elements of the story closely align with today’s cybersecurity realities, including government hackers infiltrating networks to monitor targets, malware profiling, heuristic signature creation, and using fake information or intermediaries to attack real targets.

The manga and anime take creative liberties, depicting the Puppet Master as a conscious AI controlling human minds and proposing a fusion with Kusanagi’s “ghost.”

Analysts note that when Ghost in the Shell was published in 1989, cyber security and hacking were largely unknown to the public. Real-life government hacking, such as Clifford Stoll’s The Cuckoo’s Egg, which involved Soviet KGB-related cyber operations, was cited as precedent. Creator Masamune Shirow may not have drawn directly from real events but accurately captured nuances of the future cyber world unknown to most people at the time.