Thinking Ahead in the Grey Zone

Readers who have recently begun to consider the implications of grey zone conflict or hybrid warfare for their own companies, law firms, or other organizations could be forgiven for seeing the entire subject as startling if not downright alarming. But some of our colleagues in this issue, notably Chris Corpora and Anne Leslie, have taken pains to point out how hybrid warfare could be seen instead as merely the latest and most technologically sophisticated version of attempts to undermine other countries which go back millennia. And the specific techniques that might help your company-or law firm, municipal government, university or whatever other kind of organization you work with-respond with something more organized and proactive than a desperate "all hands on deck" reaction, to an attack that has just occurred, are not all new either. There is a case to be made that much of the necessary agenda is a logical extension of practices of conflict preparation and prevention that are now increasingly well understood, and which have become a sophisticated practice in at least some domains of corporate conflict.

We will make that case here.