GW

The GW server room, housed within Outer Haven, in 2014.

GW was an optic neural AI designed to maintain the Patriots' system of control over the United States. Named after the first U.S. President George Washington, the AI was programmed to censor all forms of digital information, including communications, Internet traffic, and media broadcasts. It could also control all weaponry, nuclear and conventional, of the four branches of the U.S. military through a tactical computer network. As of 2009, GW was said to be the only system in the world with a parallel processing capacity of 980 trillion hammets.

History

Early construction

GW's development was commissioned by Zero following the events of the Zanzibar Land Disturbance, after having lost faith in his human subordinates' capability to follow through with his will. The first steps in the creation of GW's data management system came about during the turn of the century, when the Patriots issued a supposed countermeasure program to deal with the Y2K problem. Using the internet at full capacity, the program was distributed to every governmental organization and key facility throughout the world, and was included within an OS application for distribution among the public. Everything supplied from that day onward contained the same program, secretly housing a sub-system that would be activated at a later date, once GW's development had been completed.

Prior to GW's development, a similarly named AI, GW-Pupa 5000, had previously been created in order to operate the Pupa unmanned weapon, in the early 1970s. In addition, AI researcher Dr. Strangelove once alluded to the concept of an AI system that could disseminate and filter data, and act as a hive mind in order to control society, similar to GW. However, she expressed disinterest in the concept due to such an AI not having "a shred of life to it."

The Manhattan Incident

See also: Tanker Incident and the Big Shell Incident

In 2007, former NSA computer programmer Emma Emmerich was assigned to create the GW AI as part of the Arsenal Gear project, which would be housed aboard the titular submersible warship. GW would also control the mass-produced Metal Gear RAY units that would be employed to defend Arsenal Gear. Meanwhile, the Big Shell offshore cleanup facility was constructed to conceal the development of Arsenal Gear in the Manhattan Bay. It would be another two years before GW would enter the final testing stages.

In 2009, Solidus Snake's Sons of Liberty initiated an armed takeover of the Big Shell. However, the Patriots had engineered the entire incident and manipulated it from behind the scenes, in order to provide complex data for GW to study, giving it the factors necessary for judging situations. The AI did this by tricking special forces operative Raiden into carrying out the Patriots' bidding, by feeding his anticipations and impersonating Colonel Campbell (and, at certain points, his girlfriend Rosemary). Raiden thus believed himself to be a member of FOXHOUND, and was effectively "molded" into the next Solid Snake as part of the S3 Plan. As such, Ocelot was led to believe that it was Raiden himself who was the end product of the simulation.

The Colonel AI.

The S3 Plan involved GW being infected with Emma's worm cluster, in order to mimic the effects of the FOXDIE virus from 2005. The virus corrupted the AI and caused its systems to fail, resulting in the Colonel beginning to act strangely, and Arsenal's mass-produced RAY units to go haywire. However, Liquid Snake (in Revolver Ocelot's body) intentionally caused Arsenal Gear itself to crash into Manhattan so that he could later recover the damaged AI on board. Although the virus apparently managed to cripple GW, the Colonel AI on the Master AI system, when communicating to Raiden shortly before the fight with Solidus, indicated that GW was also perfected as a result due to the S3 Plan.

Post-Big Shell

At some point between 2009 and 2014, Raiden used data obtained from GW to discover the location of Big Boss's comatose body. He later supplied this information to the leader of the Paradise Lost Army, Big Mama, in exchange for information and help relating to rescuing the late Olga Gurlukovich's daughter, Sunny.

Guns of the Patriots Incident

See also: Liquid Sun, Solid Sun, Third Sun, Twin Suns, Old Sun, and Naked Sin/Naked Son

GW's mainframe.

The remnants of the damaged GW AI were eventually pieced together and installed on board Liquid Ocelot's warship, Outer Haven. In 2014, Liquid used GW to take control of the Patriots' SOP System, with the supposed intention of assuming JD's place as the head AI.

Infiltrating the AI's server room on board Outer Haven, Solid Snake and Otacon uploaded the FOXALIVE worm (created by Naomi Hunter and Sunny) into the restored GW, which the program then used as a conduit into the other AIs (TJ, TR, AL, and JD), thus removing their rule over the United States.

System

GW's (and by extension Arsenal Gear's) security system is similar to the antibiotic function of an organism's immune system. The surveillance of the inner system is handled by periodic scans using a number of agents with the capacity of detecting data that doesn't belong in the system. Once the agents detect any invading, foreign data, the information relating to the invading data is passed on to an antibody production system. After that, a program known as an antibody agent is autonomously produced to neutralize or eliminate the invading data. There is also a solid barrier separating GW's optic neural net; its physical and logical base, and the other general nets. The barrier, known as the Bit Brain Barrier, is a filtering system for preventing the infiltration of foreign data, which makes it very difficult to penetrate GW's system from the outside without proper preparations. Also, because its fiber-optic neuro AI processors are highly vulnerable to heat, it is kept in a low temperature environment that is comparable to a refrigerator.

Personality and traits

GW, as evidenced by its interactions with Raiden as Colonel, utilized a mission-based tone of formality, largely because of its role in guiding Raiden through the S3 Plan. It is not known whether it was aware of the rest of the AIs' full plans for the S3 Plan being to have Raiden confront Solidus, due to it trying to stop Raiden from proceeding to Solidus' chamber by claiming that Rose had been kidnapped by him or the Sons of Liberty.

Behind the scenes

The original script for Metal Gear Solid 2 states that it was in fact Liquid Snake who caused Arsenal Gear to crash into Manhattan, though the accompanying dialogue was cut from the final version, along with the destruction scene itself, following 9/11. The novelization keeps the accompanying dialogue as well as the destruction scene itself. The Metal Gear Solid 4 Database erroneously claims that Solidus Snake was responsible for crashing Arsenal Gear into Manhattan, despite claiming in another article that he lost control over it. In Metal Gear Solid 4, Otacon states that the Patriots had caused Arsenal to "go berserk," though whether they had intended for it to crash, as Liquid had, remains unclear.

A map displayed during the Twin Suns briefing showed GW near Newfoundland/Laborador. Big Mama also revealed that Raiden found the information about Big Boss's location from data retrieved from GW, although exactly how Raiden managed to locate the data inside GW was never explained.

Gallery

GW Top

GW pylons

GW's pylons being seen as a graveyard.

GW after being shut down by FOXALIVE.

Appearances

• Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty
• Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots