# The Corporate Warfare Convention: Rules of Engagement

## Overview

The Corporate Warfare Convention (CWC) is a multilateral agreement between the world's major corporate city-states that establishes rules governing armed conflict between corporate entities. Ratified in 2170 following the Border War of 2163, the CWC is the closest thing to international law that the corporate world recognizes — not because the signatories believe in humanitarian principles, but because unrestricted corporate warfare would destroy the global economic system that all of them depend on.

## Key Provisions

### Prohibited Weapons
The CWC prohibits: **memory weapons** (attacks on BCI memory systems), **kill switches** (remote BCI termination), **biological weapons** (engineered pathogens), **atmospheric weapons** (attacks on atmospheric processing systems), and **infrastructure weapons** (attacks on water, power, or food production systems serving civilian populations). These prohibitions exist because the weapons they ban threaten the infrastructure on which the corporate economy depends — attacking a competitor's atmospheric processors doesn't just damage the competitor; it potentially destroys a market of millions of consumers.

### Civilian Protection
The CWC requires that corporate military operations minimize civilian casualties — a provision that the signatories interpret elastically. In practice, "minimize" means "keep below the threshold that generates public outrage sufficient to affect consumer behavior." This threshold varies by city-state and by the visibility of the casualties. Casualties in the Shelf generate less corporate concern than casualties on Mirror Mile.

### Proportionality
Military responses must be proportional to the provocation. Espionage is countered with counter-intelligence, not military force. Border incursions are met with equivalent force. The destruction of corporate infrastructure is met with equivalent destruction. Escalation beyond proportionality triggers diplomatic consequences — economic sanctions, trade restrictions, and the collective disapproval of the signatory city-states.

### Prisoner Treatment
Captured combatants must be treated humanely and repatriated within 90 days of hostilities ending. This provision was inspired by the Border War of 2163, where Bellerophon personnel captured by Arcturus were held for eight months in conditions that generated significant negative publicity. The provision does not apply to corporate detention of civilians — a loophole that Nia Okafor-Bright describes as "the convention's moral black hole."

## Enforcement

The CWC is enforced by reputation and reciprocity. There is no international court, no enforcement body, no mechanism for compelling compliance. The convention holds because each signatory understands that violating its provisions would invite reciprocal violations — and in a world where every city-state has the capability to deploy memory weapons, kill switches, and infrastructure attacks, mutual restraint is self-interested rather than principled.

## Sergeant Major Tanaka's Case

The CWC's prisoner treatment provision has been cited in Tanaka's legal challenge against Arcturus — her involuntary upload occurred during a military operation and could be characterized as a violation of the convention's requirement for humane treatment of combatants. Arcturus argues that upload is not a violation because Tanaka is not a prisoner — she's an employee, albeit a dead one. The legal distinction between a consciousness uploaded against its will and a prisoner held against its will is the question that will determine whether the CWC's protections extend to the digital realm.