Grey zone warfare is here. Britain must catch up

Spectator

10-07-2025

The 'grey zone' is the kind of ominous jargon beloved of the military, but for once it is well named: a wide range of hostile activities between states which stops short of the threshold of full-scale conflict, including espionage, cyber disruption and disinformation. It is a state which is neither peace nor war, and it is expanding all the time.
The House of Commons Defence Committee has just published a report on the subject, Defence in the Grey Zone. It emphasises that, while the vast majority of the population has become insulated from conflict, this kind of activity brings the reality of disruption and violence to our everyday lives and is being exploited by our adversaries, especially Russia. Labour MP Tan Dhesi, chair of the committee, warned:
Are we at war? Yes and no
Grey zone threats pose a particularly insidious challenge – they unsettle the fabric of our day-to-day lives and undermine our ability to respond. Grey zone threats bring war to the doorstep of each and every one of us. These attacks do not discriminate; they target the whole of our society and so demand a whole of society response, in which we all must play our part.
Echoing the language of the recently published Strategic Defence Review, the report concludes that we need a 'whole-of-society' approach to these threats, and that, while the armed forces have a key role to play, they can only be part of a wider part of national security and resilience. It urges the Ministry of Defence (MoD) to engage with business and industry, schools, community groups and society at large to raise awareness of the threat, but also to share technological expertise and experience of crisis management. By spreading the responsibility, the armed forces will then be able to focus on those tasks which only they can carry out, like maritime and air patrol and deterring and defeating traditional military threats.
What are we actually talking about? The report points to critical national infrastructure like undersea cables – around 60 individual cables carry 99 per cent of data to and from the UK – and the protection of shipping lanes, for supply and for the movement of military forces in time of war. It also stresses the vulnerability of many of our businesses and industries to disruption through cyber attack.
These are not hypothetical threats we may have to face at some undetermined point in the future. They are happening now. Remember that in 2018 agents of Russian military intelligence, the GRU, tried to murder Sergei Skripal, a former double agent holding British citizenship, and his daughter Yulia by poisoning in Salisbury; three months later, two more people were poisoned by carelessly discarded traces of the same Novichok nerve agent, and one, Dawn Sturgess, died.
Russian hostile activity goes much further than this. Three men have just been convicted of an arson attack in March 2024 on a warehouse in east London from where humanitarian aid and communications technology were being shipped to Ukraine. They were acting on behalf of the Wagner group, the Kremlin-controlled private military company. And last August I wrote in this magazine about Russian surveillance of military sites in the UK.
It is not just Russia. China is heavily involved in espionage in the UK: Christine Lee, allegedly an agent of the Chinese Communist party's United Work Front Department, spent years lobbying and donating to British politicians until the security service issued an interference alert for her in 2022. The following year, Chinese businessman Yang Tengbo was denied entry to the UK on the alleged grounds that he was using a relationship with Prince Andrew to spy for Beijing.
Are we at war? Yes and no. It would certainly be disingenuous to say our relationships with Russia and China are harmonious; to frame it as neutrally as possible, the governments of both countries are actively involved in undertakings which are harmful to our national interests. That is why the Defence Committee's report is so timely and so urgent.
The committee makes various specific recommendations: there should be a dedicated homeland minister to coordinate action across Whitehall; Royal Navy warships should be equipped to operate for extended periods in the Arctic to support the potential deployment of the Joint Expeditionary Force (JEF) in the High North; we should reinforce the JEF and maintain a more powerful military presence in the Baltic Sea. All these are worth considering.
The most important point comes towards the end of the report:
At societal level, the Ministry of Defence should draw on its understanding of the threats faced to make a greater impact by proactively engaging far more with wider society… to help generate a dialogue around those threats to the UK and build consensus around a common response.
Peeling away the language of a committee: the threat is here, now, and it is substantial. We need to provide the resources to match it, but we also need the mentality to understand that Russia and China are focused on their interests and do not mean us well. Our adversaries have no illusions, and we cannot afford them either.