Lisbeth Salander is a self-reliant and gifted researcher at Milton Security. With her tattoos, piercings, and punk aesthetics, she is an irreverent nonconformist who challenges people’s assumptions about her. As a world-class hacker, she thrives in secrecy and is fiercely private, but her solitude is not merely occupational. Salander also lives in social and emotional isolation, often shunning friendships and feeling like an outsider. Her traumatic past and the abuse she experienced through the social welfare system left her with a deep distrust of others and difficulty in feeling safe. Declared “legally incompetent” by the courts, Salander struggles to find agency in a network of institutions that fail to represent and protect her.

For her code of ethics, Salander follows her own eponymous set of principles. She believes that those who harm others have lost their rights and deserve punishment. Without legal recourse, she retaliates against injustices on her own terms, with plenty of rage and little remorse. For Salander, the law is not objective, and neither is she. She guides her decisions by invoking an “analysis of consequences”—her version of risk assessment. Salander studies when to comply with certain laws and social expectations to avoid being re-institutionalized, and just as importantly, when not to.