Executive Summary

This report is based on the views expressed during, and short papers contributed by speakers at, a joint workshop organised by the Department of National Defence as part of its Mobilizing Insights in Defence and Security (MINDS) program and by the Canadian Security Intelligence Service as part of its Academic Outreach and Stakeholder Engagement (AOSE) program. Offered as a means to support ongoing discussion, the report does not constitute an analytical document, nor does it represent any formal position of the organisations involved. The workshop was conducted under the Chatham House rule; therefore no attributions are made and the identity of speakers and participants is not disclosed.

Overview

Grey zone strategies employ a range of tactics in the political, economic and military domains which fall below the threshold of war. They are calculated to appear incremental and unrelated, but collectively constitute a coordinated and sustained attack on the strategic interests of a targeted state.

To further obscure attribution and accountability, proxies, including non-state actors, are used to give plausible deniability and avoid provoking a punitive response. Targeted countries need to understand the impact of hybrid tactics and employ effective countermeasures to deter and defend against the threat.

Although their geopolitical objectives differ, both China and Russia use hybrid strategies to pursue their strategic interests. China has declared its intention to be a global superpower. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is using a sophisticated mix of hard and soft economic power, technological supremacy, military modernization, and influence campaigns, to compel and coerce other countries to serve its strategic objectives. Russia, for its part, seeks to discredit and destabilize Western democracies and alliances, particularly the United States (US), which it views as a threat to its own security and as trying to contain its efforts to re-establish itself as a great power with a recognized geographic sphere of influence.

China: Moving to Global Dominance

China’s goals are clear and openly declared. Economic growth and material prosperity are necessary for the CCP to maintain its legitimacy and power. Prosperity generates funding for both hard power options, and China’s interpretation of soft power. China actively rejects the rules-based international order and uses coercive diplomatic, economic and military tactics to force countries to accept its foreign policies and narratives.

• China allocates extensive resources to the United Front campaign. Principally through itsembassies and consulates, and supportive members of the Chinese diaspora, United Front proponents take control of ethnic organizations and media, support agents of influence, contribute to political parties, and organize lucrative posts for influential foreign leaders.
• China acquires foreign technology and/or intellectual property through a combination of illegal and unethical practices, including: forced sharing of proprietary technology; participation of researchers in university graduate and research programs; direct funding of technology research; and, the massive and successful use of cyber and other espionage programs to steal military and commercial technology.
• China has a strong influence on many Western universities. Tuition from Chinese students has become an important source of income. Funding from Chinese benefactors, often first-generation immigrants, funds research institutes, and extensive financing from Chinese companies such as Huawei provides grant programs for advanced technological research. Many Chinese researchers in Western universities have undeclared links to CCP or Peoples Liberation Army (PLA) educational institutions. Confucius Institute language schools directly support CCP messaging. Chinese students are carefully watched, and actively used to advance Chinese narratives.
• The Belt and Road Initiative, an all-encompassing foreign policy tool, has mobilized Chinese capital to build transportation, port, and telecommunications infrastructure all along the extended sea and land trade routes on which China depends. China has been criticized for using debt trap diplomacy to gain greater foothold in sensitive critical infrastructure and to extract Beijing friendly economic and political policies from participating countries.
• The growing use of Chinese transportation and information technology by other countries gives China the potential to impair or shut down their critical infrastructure during a confrontation.

Russia: A Perpetually Weak Great Power

Russia sees itself as a great power entitled to its historical sphere of influence across neighbouring countries. Russia believes that the US and NATO pose a critical threat to its security and have contributed to geopolitical instability by extending the boundaries of the Alliance. President Putin sees the US as an aggressive advocate of regime change. Although Russia is weak financially, and its political system finds few admirers, it is adept at undermining the political systems of its rivals. In doing so, Russia employs a whole-of-society approach which leverages military, intelligence, media and other non-state actors to sow discord between and within states. While many Russian operations are aimed at populations abroad, messages about Russian greatness and the failings and hypocrisy of democracies are aimed at the internal population.

• RT and Sputnik news networks broadcast a distorted view of reality, combining actual events with partial or complete falsehoods. This hybrid news makes extensive use of social media to spread falsehoods, exacerbate social and economic tensions in Western countries, and directly generate political demonstrations and destabilizing controversies. Cyber penetration is used to steal embarrassing documents which are then released through third party proxies such as WikiLeaks.
• Russia’s state and social media influencing capacity has been used against several countries to directly interfere in elections, with the specific goals of either electing politicians more sympathetic to Russia or generating chaos and confusion among electorates.
• Russia has been effective in using its national military and military technology to support rogue regimes, but it also makes use of Private Military Companies (PMCs). PMCs are cultivated by the state for use as paramilitaries, geopolitical security experts, and geostrategic actors. They are a tool in hybrid conflict where the Russian state wants impact without accountability. They are “dual use” in that they function both as private for-profit contractors, and state-sanctioned irregulars.
• Russia’s Grey Zone tactics combining cyber sabotage, fake news, political interference and physical attacks by non-state actors are malicious tools not available to Canada’s military, or those of other Western countries who follow established international rules and norms.

Responding to Hybrid Threats

Hybrid threats are difficult to assess. Means and ends are deliberately hidden so that the threat is not completely clear. If the ultimate purpose of a tactic is misunderstood, the debate over possible responses is misdirected. Russia is probing election systems in every US state with the objective of sowing voter confusion and anger, and undermining voter trust in the outcomes of political processes. Contested elections will not produce leaders accepted as legitimate, which decreases the national will to respond decisively to provocations. In a similar vein, fake news is misleading about the facts and causes of real events, but the ultimate objective may be to discredit all news so that populations disbelieve everything.

The debate over Huawei’s participation in 5G networks is mostly focused on data loss, but the real danger may be the potential for future network disruption. Similarly, China’s growing competitiveness in high technology rail cars threatens the national control and integrity of transportation networks.

To defend against grey zone tactics, countries need to clearly identify their national interests and establish “red lines”, ensure an integrated view of the overall strategy of hostile state actors, and develop the ability to rapidly and holistically respond to these threats in a calibrated and coordinated manner. As such, responding to hybrid threats requires a whole-of-nation approach, which leverages the participation of private industry, academia, and all levels of government.

As it stands, Western governments are ill-equipped and inadequately structured to coordinate effective responses. Measures which could improve the Government of Canada’s ability to respond to or deter hybrid threats include:

• Governance structures and strategies which enable coordinated responses;
• Measures to expose coordinated hostile acts;
• Cooperation between the public and private sectors;
• Guidelines for universities which interact with potentially hostile actors intent on gaining access to sensitive or dual technology;
• Pressuring social media companies to discourage the malicious use of their platforms by
• foreign actors;
• Building redundancy into vulnerable IT networks;
• Defining and protecting critical sectors;
• Facilitating domestically funded innovation;
• Expanding the capacity to analyze the activities of hostile Grey Zone actors;
• Establishing enforceable red lines, raising the costs of below-the-threshold-of-war
• tactics; and
• Showing firmness in protecting fundamental values.

Outlook

Hybrid tactics represent an unbounded, unconventional and potentially unlimited threat to Western allies. These tactics take advantage of the openness of democratic systems. Specifically, collaboration in the fields of innovation and research are being exploited to build the capacity of hostile militaries and state-enabled enterprises.

Canada’s advanced technological capacity has made it a key target of hybrid strategies. The freedom and openness of its democratic institutions are threatened by foreign influence and disinformation campaigns, and individual citizens are subject to an onslaught of online deception.

Along with its Western partners and allies, Canada will continue to face threats to critical aspects of its national security. The best response to deception, disinformation and diffusion is coordination, cooperation and firm countermeasures.