Grey-zone

I do think we would've seen continued Russian meddling in those cases.

But again, the argument that I would make is that for NATO as an organization, admitting some of these states did not necessarily improve the security of existing members, and for Europe as a whole, you know, you have to ask yourself, again, this is a counterfactual, would we have rather had a Europe with a major land war in Ukraine with all this, you know, these weapons being spent, these lives being spent in the biggest land war that we've had in Europe basically since World War II, or would we rather have had more of, let's say, a gray zone between Russia and the West, where some of these states perhaps did not have the full freedoms that they might have if they were members of, of NATO, but where, you know, perhaps it would not have been as prone to conflict? And I think, again, it's a, it's an unpleasant counterfactual, but it's one worth making.

And I just disagree with it.

I wanna be clear about it.

So I just think you can't jump from that.

There, you gotta have a causal argument there, which I just don't think is there.

And then the gray zone thing, I think we need to be really clear about this.

The gray zone is exactly where all the conflict has been.

For decades, US military thinking focused heavily on land warfare and counterinsurgency, Iraq, Afghanistan, urban warfare.

But now, strategic planners increasingly see maritime spaces as future battlegrounds, not just traditional naval warfare, but gray zone conflict, conflict between-- below the threshold of conventional war, the sabotage of ports, attacks on shipping infrastructure, narco trafficking, illegal fishing fleets, energy choke points like the Strait of Hormuz.

Roughly ninety percent of global trade moves by sea, which means maritime disruption creates economic shockwaves almost immediately, and the adversaries know this.

One reason this new command matters is because maritime threats are evolving faster than most people realize.

Drug cartels now use semi-submersibles and narco submarines, and some are astonishingly, astonishingly signif- sophisticated.

Meanwhile, geopolitical rivals increasingly test maritime boundaries using civilian looking vessels like fishing fleets, research ships, commercial shipping fronts.

This is ex- what exactly security analysts often call gray zone coercion.

Ambiguous aggression, hard to classify, hard to legally respond, and the Coast Guard sits directly inside that ambiguity.

And of course, I realize, feel free to answer this in broader terms.

Broader sweeps as well because there was a Coast Guard and Gray Zone activities playing to this as well.

But just a few numbers just to start things off for those who may be less familiar.

The Center for Strategic and International Studies, CSIS, a little while ago they published a compendium of the incredible growth and just a few numbers for the PLAN, the Chinese Navy.

A third camp says a court will never give a definitive answer because the moment it does, it will own the next war.

So we live somewhat in a gray zone.

The law is on the books.

Presidents treat the core limit as optional.

A conflict that lasts half a year with a blockade, repeated strike campaigns.

Well, we're starting to get into that zone.

But if it's stopping and restarting, we're still in that gray zone about whether a Congress should have to vote on something like this.

We should be able to say the word.

They cover both defensive cyberspace operations and offensive cyberspace operations.

And there's also the concept of the cyber gray zone, which is where a lot of the real action happens, covert activities that influence outcomes without escalating into open warfare.

The cyber gray zone.

Oof.

That's a term I want to sit with for a second, because it implies that a lot of what's happening isn't technically war, but it's definitely not peace either.

In hypersonics, it's about leaders who can navigate both technical and policy complexity.

In autonomous AI, it's about people who can maintain meaningful human accountability in systems that are designed to act faster than humans can react.

And in cyber, it's about people who can operate in ambiguity, in that gray zone, without clear rules of engagement.

The word on the street is that even by the end of this month, potentially Russia could escalate against Ukraine.

And again, this is just speculation, but you see people talking about not just massive missile attacks on Ukraine to deliberately try and break them over winter, which is really going to hurt their economy and their population, but to do gray zone attacks on Europe, to maybe even transgress and do something against NATO, like the Baltics, just to see if NATO is prepared to say we're going to fight.

questionable whether they actually would that's the whole point or even talk of a nuclear weapon a tactical nuclear weapon just to say hey guys we have these you know we'll let one off against a in a field over there in ukraine just to show you that we've got them because that's how serious this is i don't think china wants russia to do that but you can't rule anything out if russia keeps getting its oil refineries smashed the way the ukraine is doing at the moment So that's geopolitically.

And of course, the two would happen together.

want to end it on Europe.

What is going to happen with Europe? We can tie this into everything.

Obviously, you just mentioned Dark Horse, Russia, Baltics, Gray Zone area in Europe.

On the financial side, Van der Leyen coming out.

mode.

Well, before I played Tarkov, I had played Grey Zone Warfare, which is, like...

Tarkov light.

Yeah.

So a little hypocritical if you ask me.

But this brought to mind this story of John Ratcliffe, other stories of John Ratcliffe, including this from the Gray Zone.

Trump official to the Gray Zone, CIA's Ratcliffe acts as a Mossad stenographer.

on Iran.

So this is from June of 2025.

But Trump official tells The Gray Zone that Israel's Mossad is using CIA Director John Ratcliffe and U.S. CENTCOM's General Michael Carrillo to influence Trump with cooked intelligence on Iran's nuclear program.

Inside the White House, dissenters have been isolated, setting the stage for a regime change war that could cost Americans lives.

Now, obviously, that eventually came to fruition.