Binderburg - Background Briefing

Background Briefing for Trusted Clients
Cypher Key #TI-347JD950EVT239#
Security Level: 4
Last Updated:  21.4.2421
Access granted by: EDL (FA-SE)

With its corporate roots planted firmly in space-habitation and agriculture, there is hardly a station in the galaxy that doesn't rely on food or living accommodations produced by the Binderburg Conglomerate. Binderburg’s profit-driven corporate culture is masked by its public facade of a jovial, philanthropic farming organization. Under the motto "Growing the Future", this happy-go-lucky exterior hides one of the most advanced and secretive research organizations in the galaxy: Binderburg Research & Development.

Colloquially known within Binderburg as 'the Department', Binderburg R&D is protected by possibly the best information security network in the galaxy. So effective has the conglomerate been at concealing the Department’s role that most of Binderburg’s competitors, and even most employees, are liable to dismiss it as inconsequential. For the few who know better, the Department’s importance to the conglomerate is clear.

Binderburg’s stated goal is to dominate the space-agriculture and habitat markets. However, over time the conglomerate has invested a considerable amount of resources into other fields, and its operations in most are flourishing.

Almost unknown outside of Binderburg's upper management, one of the conglomerate’s principal goals is to keep Binderburg R&D fueled with anything it needs, regardless of cost. Sharp-eyed Binderburg employees will soon begin to realize that everything outside the Department (including themselves) is expendable. Regardless of success or profitability, if R&D wants a project discontinued, a product dismantled, or information disseminated, that is exactly what happens. The only exceptions being Binderburg’s root industries: space-agriculture and space-habitation.

In essence, Binderburg is an organization consumed by its primary purpose: to sustain the perpetual growth of Binderburg R&D and its mysterious inquiries and projects.

Binderburg’s core branding evokes the image of the space farmer, one who takes responsibility for the growth and delivery of food in the harsh conditions of space. Their preferred colors (greens, blues, and browns) contribute to this presentation. Within the company, there is a culture of almost obnoxious happiness required from employees, including mandatory meditation programs and AI-run nutrition advisories to raise morale. Binderburg Human Resources runs under the motto “Sustainability of Smiles", and its primary function is to ensure unwavering positive presentation among staff. Workers who make negative or lukewarm public statements about the company, or even express personal doubts in their digital social spheres, find themselves facing severe repercussions at work.

On a management level, Binderburg is anything but humanely focused, with an intense focus on preserving its prestigious status. Those having direct contact with Binderburg are often shocked by the difference between its public-facing image and its assertive, often ruthless business practices behind closed doors. While the conglomerate's PR Department puts a great deal of work into focusing positive media attention on Binderbug's many acquisitions, it is not unusual for the acquired companies to be quietly dismantled as soon as the attention dies down, usually purely for the purpose of destroying a rival. Internally the conglomerate employs incredibly competent security forces to prevent public dissent, and its storied R&D division remains focused on obscure, and often shadowy projects. There have been several cases over the past 200 years of journalists suddenly disappearing after attempting to whistleblow on these practices, though these incidents have never been brought to widespread public attention, for obvious reasons.

On the other hand, it is widely agreed that Binderburg has the best employee healthcare of all the major megacorporations, as well as a generous retirement package.

The Binderburg Conglomerate is a vast, bureaucratic organization that includes countless major and minor legal entities connected in a dizzying web of production, treaties, and commercial activities. The centerpiece of this conglomerate, the Binderburg Trust, owns a controlling stake in the corporation, often acting as a direct supervisor for its operations. The Trust is a locus for the distribution of its enormous profits among stakeholders. The Board of Trustees functions as the effective leadership of the conglomerate.

The conglomerate and its leadership often seems to be divided into two camps, each focused on one pillar of the corporation. On the one side is Binderburg Space Agriculture (BSA). The original source of the Binderburg fortune and still one of its major pillars, BSA serves as a steady source of income and comprises a traditionalist old guard within the organization. On the other side is the far more ruthless and driven Binderburg Research and Development, which has become a major driver of the conglomerate's corporate success. Information on the latter is significantly more difficult to come by, as unlike BSA, only a portion of their management is publicly known, even to stakeholders outside the Trust.

Binderburg has access to a great deal of reliable and high-quality technology in the fields of space habitation and agricultural production. As such their ships are uniquely well suited for long space voyages, a skill that was admittedly much more impressive prior to the development of faster transportation methods such as the Dyson Spheres and Tenebris-Rosen Bridges. Years of research and development have also enabled the conglomerate to carve a niche as an infrastructure provider in its own right, although their focus remains on the habitation aspect rather than resource extraction and refinement.

While in recent history it has been a rare occurrence for pilots to battle Binderburg forces and survive to report their observations, the Conglomerate has been known in the past to possess surprisingly bleeding-edge weaponry. This is no doubt due to the specific influence of Binderburg R&D, whose current focus seems to be on the development of a new form of drone specializing in [Information has been restricted]