ABSTRACT
Operations in the information environment, as conducted by Russia and China, have become extremely aggressive, and can even rise to the level of pre-conflict shaping operations. These operations, conducted in the Gray Zone of conflict, encompass both technical and cognitive capabilities and effects. This combination makes them more than cyber-attacks targeting infrastructure, propaganda, deception operations, or information operations as we have understood them. These operations are shaping efforts intended to disrupt societies to various degrees in order to weaken their resilience by eroding societal trust in their governing and security institutions and in each other and to affect our decisions and decision-making processes. Recognition of this requires a more expansive understanding and re-examination of our own unconventional warfare doctrine and its definition in order to properly recognize the operations being conducted against us, our allies, and partners, and devise ways to meet this particular threat from these two powers.
