This is part one of a 3-part series by Cipher Brief Expert and former Assistant Director of CIA for South and Central Asia Dave Pitts, who also serves as a member of The Cipher Brief’s new Gray Zone Group.
EXPERT PERSPECTIVE — Ten thousand North Korean soldiers arrive in Russia to attempt to drive the Ukrainians from Russian soil, although North Korea isn’t at war with Ukraine.
China conducts persistent and aggressive Coast Guard incursions into Taiwan’s territorial waters to attempt to extend and normalize control over the Taiwan Strait, while also trying to intimidate the Philippines to give up its presence in the Second Thomas Shoal.
Russia, China, and Iran use cyber and disinformation operations to attempt to interfere in U.S. elections, a clear violation of U.S. sovereignty and political independence.
Russia is conducting sabotage operations across Europe targeting critical infrastructure to destabilize NATO allies and disrupt their support for Ukraine.
Pyongyang conducted 97 cyberattacks between 2017 and 2024 with total damage of around $3.6 billion.
Welcome to the Gray Zone.
The consequences of the military escalation of great power competition can be severe, and great powers will go to great lengths to avoid direct conflict, given the potential for devastating losses. The reality is that this shadowy gray zone has become a space of increasing activity by U.S. adversaries.
What is the Gray Zone?
The gray zone is the geopolitical space between peace and war where nations conduct activities to advance their national interests and weaken their adversaries without triggering a military response. Gray zone activities may also set the conditions for a future war but remain below a threshold that would provoke an immediate military response.
As the U.S. and its allies seek to maintain the world order that has been in place since WWII, Russia and China, often working together (and supported by nefarious actors such as Iran and North Korea) have sought to diminish the influence and standing of the U.S. in favor of their own ascent and their authoritarian views.
The gray zone isn’t just one aspect of great power competition—it’s quickly becoming the dominant space where that competition plays out. Gray zone activity is increasing because great power competition is intensifying.
The Gray Zone Offers Unique Opportunities
Countries often need deniability in order for gray zone activities to be successful, even if only a fig-leaf of deniability in some cases. Gray zone activities can span the spectrum of attribution from attributable (overt) to unattributable (covert), or misattributable (false flag).
Advances in technology, particularly in AI, and evolving warfare tactics like the ones we are observing in real time in Ukraine, (advances in drone technology, for example) are providing new capabilities to nations that have the ability to ‘level the playing field’ in some ways.
AI is also bolstering both the reach and impact of cognitive warfare tactics, providing new methods of persuasion, coercion, and manipulation. And because countries want to avoid a costly war, there is a high threshold, as well as general uncertainty, on how to respond to gray zone activities.
Using these advantages, smaller countries, like Iran and North Korea, can today attempt to make strategic gains against the U.S. and the West, either alone or in alliance with Russia or China, that would be unachievable in a conventional war. The gray zone provides options to nations that otherwise may have none.
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There are a few additional considerations for truly understanding gray zone operations.
First, determining what is gray zone activity versus normal statecraft can be difficult and confusing given the often-tense relations between nations. Some of what we consider as operations in the gray zone may simply be harsh diplomacy. There’s room for debate there, but we should avoid the urge to label every aggressive action our adversaries take as being ‘in the gray zone’.
There is also some thought that adversary activities have to be covert or ambiguous to be considered gray zone activities. That probably aligned well during the Cold War, but maybe less so today.
Some gray zone activities require varying levels of ambiguity or covertness, but not all. Some gray zone activity is meant to have an audience, such as China’s aggressive gray zone actions in the South China Sea.
What common strategies or tactics do our adversaries employ?
There are several tactics used by our adversaries that make deterrence and effectively responding to gray zone activities more challenging.
The first, “salami tactics”, speaks to the use of small, incremental encroachments or actions that don’t merit a response, but that are often followed by similar small encroachments or actions that in sum, change the status quo over time. It’s hard for nations to know how to respond to this approach.
The second, “fait accompli” refers to bolder actions that are taken quickly with the calculation that a military response would be too escalatory or risky.
Russia likely calculated that its plan in 2022 to quickly decapitate Ukrainian leadership and take the country in a matter of days—along with some saber rattling and threats—would have made the takeover of Ukraine a fait accompli that was too risky for U.S. and NATO intervention.
Unlike in 2014 in Crimea, that strategy by Moscow failed in 2022.
One key attribute of gray zone activities is that the fear of the consequences of 21st century conflict, and particularly conflict that can draw in countries with powerful militaries, restrains responses to gray zone activity.
Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea watch U.S. responses closely, and a lack of response or inconsistent responses, encourages additional gray zone action.
Are we already in a ‘Gray War’ with China and Russia?
Given the growing intensity and systematic use of gray zone activities by U.S. adversaries, it is worth considering whether we are now in a “Gray War” with China and Russia. And is that Gray War being supported by help from Iran and North Korea?
Consider that a Gray War would take place entirely in the gray zone and would be well beyond the periodic use of gray zone activities by our adversaries to gradually erode U.S power and influence.
A gray war could be defined as the systematic and coordinated use of gray zone activities by our adversaries to achieve the same strategic results as a conventional war, without the risks of direct conflict.
The question now is whether China believes that it can strategically defeat the U.S. – using Russia as a primary surrogate – so that it can take Taiwan and establish itself as the dominant global superpower without direct superpower conflict.
Instead of China using the gray zone to gradually weaken the U.S. and to help set the conditions for a future war, the new reality is that the gray zone may now be the place where the next war is already being fought.
This is part one of a 3-part series by Cipher Brief Expert and former Assistant Director of CIA for South and Central Asia Dave Pitts, who also serves as a member of The Cipher Brief’s new Gray Zone Group.
Read the next installment of Pitts’ Gray Zone series next Wednesday exclusively in The Cipher Brief. And join Pitts and other Cipher Brief Experts in a series of live conversations happening in 2025 led by former Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence Dr. Michael Vickers.
Subscriber+ Members, check your email for an exclusive invitation to register for the first session on Wednesday, January 22 at 1:30p ET. Not a member? We can help with that.
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