Executive summary:
Gray zone warfare has moved from a theoretical concern to an active strategic erosion. Each successful campaign achieves immediate objectives and validates strategies that exploit gaps in American deterrence.
Our adversaries coordinate these campaigns because they face minimal consequences. While America's conventional military strength deters traditional aggression, it provides little defense against systematic technology theft, economic coercion, or influence operations. Recent successes demonstrate that effective deterrence is possible, but the United States needs a more coherent deterrence doctrine to discourage gray zone aggression.
This article presents a comprehensive framework for restoring credible deterrence in the gray zone. By combining strategic ambiguity about specific responses with certainty about detection capabilities, we can alter adversary risk calculations. But this requires immediate action to build the doctrine and technical foundation for effective deterrence.
Cognitive Hive AI (CHAI) is a MOSA-compliant framework for AI deployment, and we believe it’s the future for gray zone detection and attribution. To learn how Talbot West can help you design and deploy a CHAI ensemble, contact us for a free consultation.
Gray zone warfare encompasses actions by state and non-state actors that fall between peace and outright war. Operating through economic pressure, information warfare, cyber operations, and other sub-threshold tactics, adversaries advance their interests without direct military confrontation. This deliberate ambiguity complicates detection and response.
The appeal of gray zone tactics lies in their ability to exploit vulnerabilities in Western societies while sidestepping traditional deterrence mechanisms. As Elizabeth Braw, a prominent gray zone scholar, writes:
The primary reason gray zone aggression is an attractive option for countries seeking to increase their power at Western expense is that the West’s traditional deterrence policy—based on conventional military strength and ultimately backed by nuclear weapons—has been successful in deterring traditional military aggression.
Since kinetic conflict would incur a terrible toll on the aggressor, “gray zone aggression persists because it is not deterred—perpetrators have been confident they can get away with impunity.” (Braw, “Countering Aggression in the Gray Zone”)
Our adversaries are not just continuing gray zone campaigns—they're actively coordinating and accelerating them.
The pace of gray zone innovation is outstripping our defensive adaptation. While we debate definitions and jurisdictions, our adversaries are developing new hybrid and multivector tactics that exploit the seams in our security architecture. Each successful campaign achieves immediate objectives, validates strategies, and encourages bolder action.
This acceleration creates a compounding effect. Technology theft diminishes our ability to detect future intrusions. Economic coercion reduces our leverage for imposing costs. Information operations erode our capacity for collective action. Without decisive intervention, these reinforcing tactics will steadily degrade America's strategic position.
Gray zone activities threaten American interests as much as conventional military aggression. Yet without credible deterrence, these campaigns continue unchecked.
America's gray zone deterrence gap has already inflicted significant costs:
Without credible deterrence, we face death by a thousand cuts, the gradual erosion of American power through accumulated gray zone losses.
The damage compounds over time, and each successful campaign encourages bolder action. Economic coercion gradually reshapes trade relationships. Technology transfer steadily diminishes America's competitive edge. Influence operations slowly corrode institutional trust. Without effective deterrence, adversaries can achieve strategic gains that would be impossible through direct confrontation.
The stakes extend beyond immediate losses. When gray zone aggression succeeds, it demonstrates the vulnerability of open societies and market economies. This emboldens additional hostile actors and validates their strategies. America's position as a global leader depends on our ability to defend not just our territory, but our economic, technological, and democratic foundations.
An effective gray zone deterrence strategy requires a multifaceted approach to prevent adversaries from exploiting vulnerabilities below the threshold of open conflict. Four core pillars—deterrence doctrine, detection and attribution, denial of access, and appropriate responses—form the foundation of this approach. Each pillar supports the others for a credible and flexible deterrent structure that reinforces U.S. security interests without over-escalating.
Together, they guide how the U.S. anticipates, identifies, and responds to gray zone threats for a unified and adaptable response in an inherently ambiguous space.
These pillars create a balanced approach to gray zone deterrence, offering a structured, adaptive framework that addresses defensive and responsive measures. Each pillar reinforces the others to create a credible deterrent in a domain that lacks clear lines.
A deterrence doctrine brings the same clarity of purpose to gray zone competition that nuclear deterrence brought to the Cold War. Such a framework can transform our strategic position. We need a doctrine adapted for an era of persistent, multi-domain competition below the threshold of armed conflict.
Effective deterrence starts with understanding the strategic calculus of our adversaries. They calibrate each gray zone campaign to test our boundaries while maintaining deniability. Individual actions rarely merit major response. This deliberate ambiguity has become our adversaries' shield against meaningful consequences.
An effective approach must focus on patterns rather than incidents. When correlated across time and domain, seemingly disconnected actions can reveal sophisticated campaigns to undermine American interests. Consider
China's systematic technology theft. Any single case of intellectual property theft might seem insufficient to trigger serious consequences. But when analysts correlate thousands of incidents across multiple vectors, the strategic damage becomes devastatingly clear.
This pattern-based perspective enables responses to campaigns rather than components. Instead of assessing whether each incident crosses a response threshold, the focus shifts to how it fits into broader patterns of behavior, identifying campaigns that deliberately operate below traditional trigger points.
Cross-domain flexibility represents another vital principle. The most effective responses often come in unexpected domains. Economic pressure can answer information warfare. Diplomatic isolation can counter technology theft. Cyber operations can respond to maritime harassment. This flexibility prevents adversaries from accurately calculating risks or preparing for anticipated responses.
The U.S. financial system's role in imposing costs on Russia after its invasion of Ukraine demonstrated cross-domain flexibility. Though the military threat came in one domain, the most effective response leveraged Western financial dominance. The same cross-domain approach proves equally powerful against gray zone campaigns.
Time itself becomes a strategic variable. By decoupling the timing of detection from the timing of response, deterrence gains significant strength. Adversaries often calibrate gray zone activities to weather an expected reaction period. When the timing of consequences becomes unpredictable, hostile actors face extended risk horizons and a much greater risk profile that forces them to rethink their strategy.
The Justice Department's handling of indictments against Chinese intellectual property theft illustrates this temporal flexibility. Rather than immediately exposing all cases, prosecutors strategically timed releases to disrupt other Chinese operations. This demonstrates a sophisticated understanding of adversary activities while preserving uncertainty about future revelations.
Transforming these principles into effective deterrence involves specific reforms across government and industry. The National Security Council is central to establishing clear communication about capabilities and resolve. Adversaries benefit from understanding that coordinated campaigns will be detected, even when individual components maintain deniability. Yet while detection capabilities warrant clarity, specific consequences benefit from strategic ambiguity.
This messaging balance mirrors traditional nuclear deterrence—absolute clarity about detection paired with studied uncertainty about exact consequences. The attribution of gray zone activities to sponsoring states regardless of proxies used parallels how nuclear materials are traced.
A dedicated gray zone coordination center within the NSC would synchronize detection and response. Congressional authorization of flexible response options would enable rapid action while maintaining appropriate oversight.
Recent successes demonstrate how these reforms deliver results. When 28 nations simultaneously expelled Russian intelligence officers after the Salisbury poisoning, it showed sophisticated coordination while complicating Moscow's reactions. Treasury's collaboration with financial institutions to implement sanctions while identifying evasion attempts illustrates effective public-private partnership.
Several existing programs provide foundations for enhanced deterrence. The Department of Defense's Defend Forward strategy in cyberspace shows how persistent presence enables early warning and flexible response options. This model translates effectively beyond cyber through standing multinational task forces and joint detection capabilities.
Public-private partnership scales naturally to technology transfer monitoring, supply chain security, infrastructure protection, and maintaining economic leverage through strategic resource access.
FBI-led counter-foreign influence task forces highlight the benefits of cross-agency integration and industry collaboration. Regional fusion centers, industry working groups, and international partnerships multiply collection and enforcement options while accelerating detection and attribution.
Deterrent effects multiply through coalition action. A framework for shared early warning systems, pre-negotiated response options, and protected communication channels enables rapid coordinated responses. Strategic messaging alignment presents unified positions that amplify deterrent effects.
Private sector integration proves equally vital since most gray zone activities target commercial assets and infrastructure. Two-way threat-sharing mechanisms protect sensitive information while enabling coordinated defense. Joint assessment teams combine government and industry expertise for more effective response planning.
Near-term priorities center on establishing foundational coordination mechanisms and basic detection capabilities while initiating key relationships. Medium-term objectives involve deploying advanced detection systems, implementing response frameworks, and expanding coalition coordination.
Long-term success requires achieving full spectrum awareness, enabling real-time response, completing capability integration, and maintaining technological superiority. Every day, adversaries refine gray zone tactics while degrading defensive capabilities.
America possesses immense potential deterrent power against gray zone aggression. Our economic might, technological leadership, and alliance networks provide powerful tools for imposing costs on hostile actors. Converting this potential power into effective deterrence represents one of our most pressing national security imperatives.
Even the most robust deterrence framework fails without the ability to rapidly identify and confidently attribute gray zone activities. When we cannot quickly trace actions to their source, adversaries face no real risk of consequences.
This creates an urgent requirement for advanced detection and attribution capabilities. The key to deterrence is simple: we cannot deter what we cannot detect. Building credible gray zone deterrence requires not just doctrine and will, but the technical means to strip away adversaries' cherished ambiguity.
We’ll look closely at detection and attribution in the next article of our series.
Deterrence begins with denial—demonstrating that hostile campaigns will fail to achieve their intended effects. This defensive foundation makes other deterrent measures more credible.
Denial involves societal resilience, which requires a systematic approach across multiple domains. Critical infrastructure must be hardened against cyber intrusion through advanced monitoring systems, redundant capabilities, and regular security assessments. Supply chains need strategic diversification to reduce economic leverage, with critical components sourced through multiple channels to prevent coercion.
But individual defensive measures matter less than collective resilience. A determined adversary can eventually overcome any single defense, so protection must operate at a societal scale. This means building redundancy and resilience into core systems while developing rapid recovery capabilities. When critical functions can quickly be restored after disruption, the strategic value of gray zone attacks significantly diminishes.
Adversaries must understand that their gray zone campaigns will face multi-layered resistance that adapts faster than their tactics. This perception of futility —that hostile actions will fail to achieve meaningful effects—creates a powerful deterrent.
Resilience also requires new forms of public-private partnership. Much of America's critical infrastructure and technical capability resides in the private sector. Building effective denial strategies means aligning government and industry approaches to gray zone defense. This includes shared threat assessment, coordinated defensive measures, and joint recovery planning.
Most importantly, denial strategies must constantly evolve. Adversaries will probe for new vulnerabilities and develop novel attack vectors. Defensive capabilities must rapidly adapt to emerging threats through regular assessment, capability enhancement, and strategy refinement. This defensive agility demonstrates that gray zone campaigns face not just current resistance, but an adaptive response that will counter future innovations.
The cumulative effect of robust denial capabilities can fundamentally alter adversary calculations. When gray zone campaigns face robust defenses, uncertain outcomes, and limited strategic effects, the cost-benefit analysis shifts against aggression. This defensive foundation makes other deterrent measures more credible while directly reducing the appeal of gray zone tactics.
While gray zone deterrence remains challenging, recent successes demonstrate effective approaches. Three cases, in particular, illustrate how coordinated detection and response can impose meaningful costs on adversaries while strengthening future deterrence.
The SolarWinds response marked a turning point in cyber deterrence. When Russian operatives compromised the software supply chain to penetrate thousands of organizations, the traditional playbook would have yielded months of investigation followed by limited sanctions. Instead, a new model of public-private collaboration enabled rapid attribution and coordinated response. Private sector threat intelligence and government signals intelligence quickly established Russia's responsibility. Rather than immediately announcing attribution, the U.S. and its allies quietly prepared a multilayered response.
When attribution was finally announced, it came with the coordinated expulsion of Russian intelligence officers from 28 countries, targeted sanctions against key technology companies, and selective exposure of Russian cyber infrastructure. These actions were timed to disrupt other Russian operations that planners believed were imminent. This demonstrated not just attribution capabilities, but a deep understanding of adversary operations. Subsequent analysis showed a marked decrease in Russian cyber operations against Western targets in the following months.
China's systematic technology theft faced similar coordinated pushback. After years of treating individual cases in isolation, Western nations began correlating patterns of acquisition across multiple vectors, from academic recruitment to corporate joint ventures to cyber espionage. This comprehensive picture revealed the scale of coordinated technology transfer and enabled a targeted response.
Rather than broad tariffs or general investment restrictions, allies implemented precise countermeasures against specific acquisition programs. Key research partnerships were quietly suspended. Particular joint ventures faced new scrutiny. Select technology licenses were delayed or denied. While China publicly dismissed these actions as insignificant, internal communications revealed genuine concern about Western capabilities to detect and disrupt technology transfer campaigns.
Information operations provide another example of effective deterrence through advanced detection. When intelligence indicated Russia was preparing another influence campaign targeting Western elections, a combination of public exposure and private warning proved potent. Technical capabilities demonstrated Russia's preparatory actions in detail, while strategic ambiguity about potential responses introduced cost uncertainty.
The public component exposed specific tactics, alerting citizens and media organizations to watch for particular behaviors. The private component conveyed a more detailed understanding of Russian operations while leaving uncertainty about how that knowledge might be leveraged. The result was a significant reduction in Russian influence activities during subsequent elections.
These cases share several crucial elements.
These examples prove that while perfect deterrence may be impossible, effective deterrence is achievable through coordinated effort and modern capabilities. They provide templates for strengthening defense against future gray zone campaigns. The key is building on these successes to establish comprehensive deterrence against the full spectrum of gray zone threats.
America possesses immense potential deterrent power against gray zone aggression. Our economic might, technological leadership, and alliance networks provide powerful tools for imposing costs on hostile actors. Yet without a doctrine to employ these advantages and capabilities to enable rapid response, this potential power remains largely theoretical.
The cost of continued inaction is mounting. Each successful gray zone campaign encourages bolder aggression while demonstrating the vulnerability of open societies. Restoring effective deterrence requires strategic clarity and technical capability starting with the collective recognition that our current approach is failing to protect vital American interests.
The path forward involves strengthening gray zone deterrence along the following priorities:
1.Establish the technical foundation.
2.Reform organizational structures.
3.Strengthen allied coordination.
4.Enhance strategic communication.
The cost of delayed action grows daily. Each successful gray zone campaign validates adversary strategies while degrading our defensive capabilities. The time for decisive action is now.
Traditional military deterrence relies on the threat of overwhelming force. Gray zone deterrence must instead counter ambiguous, multi-vector campaigns that deliberately remain below military response thresholds. While conventional deterrence focuses on preventing war, gray zone deterrence aims to prevent strategic erosion through accumulated sub-threshold actions.
Yes, but we face inherent challenges. Authoritarian regimes can act quickly and secretly, while democracies require consensus and transparency. However, democracies possess significant advantages—such as control of key financial systems and technology platforms—that can create powerful deterrent effects when properly leveraged.
Predictable, narrowly focused sanctions allow adversaries to calculate and prepare for consequences in advance. Effective deterrence requires a credible threat of unpredictable responses across multiple domains. When hostile actors cannot reliably assess potential costs, gray zone aggression becomes riskier.
Generative models (such as large language models) are a type of artificial intelligence capable of generating novel outputs. In the context of RAG, they access external data sources and analyze and contextualize the information. You can query a generative model about your proprietary data and have it provide insights, much like a fast and competent research assistant.
By establishing that we can detect patterns of activity and that they will trigger consequences. Just as nations understand they'll be held accountable if their nuclear materials are misused, they must understand they cannot escape responsibility for gray zone campaigns by hiding behind proxies or maintaining thin deniability.
No. When properly implemented, strategic ambiguity strengthens deterrence by forcing adversaries to consider worst-case scenarios rather than simply preparing for predictable responses. The key is maintaining certainty about our capability and will to respond while preserving uncertainty about the specific form, timing, and domain of consequences.
By communicating that initial success leads will lead to significant, uncertain costs. If adversaries achieve immediate objectives but face unpredictable consequences months later through seemingly unrelated channels, the long-term cost-benefit calculation shifts against gray zone aggression.
Allied coordination multiplies available pressure points and complicates adversary efforts to circumvent consequences. When partners align on detection thresholds and coordinate responses, they can impose costs far exceeding any nation's capabilities.
We can focus consequences on specific patterns of hostile activity rather than broad confrontations. The goal is not to deter legitimate competition but to establish credible costs for gray zone aggression. This allows continued cooperation in other areas while maintaining clear deterrent threats.
This concern often paralyzes responses, but controlled escalation can strengthen deterrence when properly managed. The key is establishing escalation dominance at the response level while clearly signaling limits. This demonstrates resolve while preventing uncontrolled escalation.
The private sector controls much of America's critical infrastructure and technical capabilities. Effective deterrence requires public-private coordination on detection, resilience, and response options. However, this coordination must respect commercial interests while advancing national security.
Talbot West bridges the gap between AI developers and the average executive who's swamped by the rapidity of change. You don't need to be up to speed with RAG, know how to write an AI corporate governance framework, or be able to explain transformer architecture. That's what Talbot West is for.
