Cyberpunk 2077 – Netwatch, Cybersecurity & The Blackwall! (Lore!)

Netwatch, Cybersecurity, The Net, Rache Bartmoss and the Black Wall will be the topic of todays Cyberpunk 2077 lore video. Well unpack Netwatch’s role in 2013 and 2020 and move onto what they have transitioned into doing in 2077 with some theorizing to go with it.

Netwatch is a policing organization, which was initially a private entity heavily sponsored by corporations. Founded in 2013 in a joint US & Eurotheatre treaty, NNetwatch is tasked with patrolling the Net in search for illegal activity, rogue hackers and general computer crime. NetCop netrunners work in tandem with corporations, the government and large organizations in this attempt to protect all the beats of the net. These beats have expanded far and wide and cover cities, regions and continents. Arresting anyone associated in illegal activity on the Net is the role of Netwatch, but they are also known to use black programs and malicious software to main their opposition if necessary.

Netwatch operators are paid a base salary but collect bounties on felons captured while on duty. They do have specific titles to distinguish their efficacy including Wolves, Weasels & Icemen. Operating anonymously is important for operators and thus each of their icons are the same within the Net.

Ops typically run in packs of 2-3. If a NetCop is running by himself, he is either very good or very cocky. Just as an aside, Bryce Mosely, the NetCop from the deep dive demo seems to be operating with only the help of The Animals to stop the Voodooboys from breaching the Net, and he also seems to be a Wolf based off of some comments from these gang members.

The job description of Netwatch operators are to immobilize net criminals by involving the local police or sometimes corporate security to go pick them up for arrest after they’ve been tracked down. NetCops can use programs that can freeze a netrunners cyberdeck in a loop, making him or her unable to jack out until the program allows for it. This is the digital equivalent to handcuffs and makes arrests far easier.

When things do not go as smoothly as this, “Net show downs “occur where black ice and malicious programs are traded like gunfire between ops and other Netrunners.

Rache Bartmoss was a particular thorn in the side of Netwatch in 2020, who was coined as one of the greatest hackers in the world and who invented the Demon and Hound series of programs. Rache was a mastermind netrunner and was keen in adding his own digital footprint into the net by creating backdoors and entrances in locations only he knew about so he could traverse the net with covert chaos.

Knowing how risky this was, he set up a deadman switch just incase he got flatlined, that would in tern release a virus known as the Rabbids, a program which released self-replicating rogue AIs into the net. 2 weeks after Rache was actually killed in the early 2020s the switch triggered and the DataKrash occurred.

Whilst AIs can be fairly docile, the Malware unleashed by Rache was far from it and by 2022 78.2% of the net was infected by the DataKrash Virus. Naturally this was a huge security concern for NetWatch and the corporations who had interests in protecting their data and secrets, and although NetWatch attempted to quarantine areas of the net and contain the ability for this virus to spread, By 2045 they had lost the battle. The net is fully sectioned off by 2077 where America now relies on subnets constructed in the 2030s in reclaimed cities. These CitiNets are far more secure than the old net.

Moving on we also have the Blackwall. The Blackwall is a wall of ICE or counter intrusion software enacted to keep the AIs unleashed by Bartmoss isolated within the net.

In 2025 Alt Cunningham, Johnny Silverhand’s ex-girlfriend established what is called the Ghost World in the ruins of Hong Kong, which the Chinese government put a 100 foot-wall around to keep isolated. Last we know about Alt was that her consciousness was absorbed by The Soulkiller, a black program developed by Arasaka to imprison netrunners in oddly the same year NetWatch was founded in 2013.

This is where it gets interesting. By 2026 AIs start to ocassionally creep out of the old net to seek out other AIs to join this “ghost world”. It may seem that leading up to 2077, AIs have been looking to pull other sentient AIs into the ghost world which presumably lies behind the Blackwall for a particular reason. What’s even more intriguing is that at the end of the Cyberpunk 2077 2019 demo, Alt Cunningham herself is trying to breach the Blackwall to meet with Silverhand, V and the Voodooboys.