South Korea, and Japan due to Japan's formation of an Information Self Defense Force (I-SDF). Considering this to be a violation of Article 9 of the post-World War II Constitution and blaming the I-SDF for information warfare attacks against their countries, Chinese and North Korean forces establish a blockade in the Yellow Sea against Japanese shipping. As Japan is an ally of the United States and, by extension, the NSA's Third Echelon, the US Navy dispatches an advanced warship, the USS Clarence E. Walsh (CG-80), to the Yellow Sea, with hopes that China and North Korea will back down. Sam Fisher is dispatched to a lighthouse on the Talara, Peru coastline, to locate Bruce Morgenholt, an American computer programmer who has been captured by a Peruvian separatist group led by Salvadoran revolutionary Hugo Lacerda. Morgenholt was working on deciphering the "Masse Kernels", highly advanced weaponized algorithms developed by Phillip Masse, whom Fisher had assassinated in 2005. Fisher is tasked with ensuring the Kernels do not fall into the wrong hands. He arrives too late to prevent Morgenholt's death and the release of the Masse Kernels. Fisher boards Lacerda's ship and assassinates him. Unknown parties use the algorithms to blackout Japan and the Eastern Seaboard. Admiral Otomo of the I-SDF warns Third Echelon that North Korea and China are likely responsible. Following a lead discovered in Panama, Fisher travels to New York to investigate Abrahim Zherkezhi, a man who worked with Morgenholt. He finds that Displace International, a US-based private military corporation owned by his old friend Douglas Shetland, is protecting Zherkezhi. Fisher breaks into the Displace offices and learns of Milan Nedich, a Bosnian arms supplier and war criminal, who has relocated Zherkezhi to Hokkaido. There, Fisher meets with Shetland, who claims that Nedich is clean. Fisher infiltrates the hideout that Zherkezhi is being held in, kills Nedich, and witnesses Shetland murdering Zherkezhi. Shetland escapes and goes underground. The US show of force backfires when the Clarence E. Walsh is sunk by a North Korean anti-ship missile on July 4, 2007, bringing North Korea, South Korea, and the United States to the brink of war. Since North Korea claims the missile was launched unintentionally, Fisher is sent to the missile battery that fired it to determine the cause. Fisher discovers that North Korea was telling the truth, but the country suddenly launches a full-scale invasion of South Korea. Fisher heads