It's early in the 21st century. The Russians are floundering; the Asians rebounding. The president of the United States is a businessman, elected to deal with the new economic realities of the age. The world is interconnected -- anything can be obtained for the right price on the Web -- and the struggle for supremacy is economic. It would have been America's century to dominate, but the Oakland Quake changed everything. The Silicon Valley is no more, the Japanese have commercialized Virtual Reality, and the Chinese are the new rich. President Miller, is tasked with keeping the US on top of the economic heap and his team is carving out small victories when the Russian president mysteriously dies in a fiery plane crash. A new reactionary government takes over in Moscow and embarks on a last, desperate gamble. They do not understand that the world has changed -- at physical war is a thing of the past. They aim their nuclear missiles at Tokyo and Beijing and the cycle begins. President Miller is caught in the middle and will have a few short weeks to decide the fate of the world.