How should the U.S. military adapt its long-term theater posture and contingency plans in the Middle East to account for a regional environment where China increasingly translates its economic influence into strategic access and military advantage? Can this shift in posture and planning apply to other regions where China is growing its influence, such as Africa and South America?
To fully account for this growing strategic access across these theaters, it is critical to understand the specific tactics China uses to entrench itself. How can the United States counter PRC gray-zone activities within the territorial borders of the United States or allied and partnered nations? Examples of these critical gray-zone operations include PRC land purchases near Department of Defense/Department of War facilities, bases, and critical infrastructure, as well as the PRC exploiting U.S. and allied academia and economies—including companies and infrastructure—to steal technology and undermine Western businesses.
Ultimately, how can the military and its partners mitigate the risks of these gray-zone economic activities to protect its facilities and critical infrastructure, while simultaneously adapting its long-term theater posture globally to counter China's expanding influence?
- Arbuckle, Lt. Col. Alissa L., "Access to America through the Southern Border: A Foothold in the Great Power Competition," AFGC thesis, 2025.
- This paper examines how the PRC leverages illegal immigration across the U.S. southern border to passively infiltrate American society, identify exploitable weaknesses, and conduct technological and economic espionage. To counter this gray-zone exploitation within U.S. borders, the author proposes a three-pronged approach: educating the American public about the PRC’s intentional exploitation of U.S. intellectual property, securing the border to stem the flow of undocumented migrants, and instituting state and federal agency programs to identify and extradite illegal Chinese operatives responsible for stealing critical data.
- Auten, Lt. Col. Graham C., "Harmonious America: The Tentacles of the Leviathan," AF Fellows (Department of State), 2025,
- Auten explores China's gray-zone tactics starting in the business sector and expanding to the broader population, aiming to manipulate core identity formulation and infiltrate national infrastructure. The paper notes that China weaponized ideology, as outlined in the military text Unrestricted Warfare, to attack the American-built world order through interconnected global systems and unconventional means. To counter this infiltration across U.S. sectors, the author asserts the United States must understand that China uses the vectors of a connected world against it and must proactively defend its institutional foundations and international systems from CCP manipulation.
- Babb, Wallace, "Alternate Procurement Methods for Mitigating China MCF Strategy," AFGC thesis, 2025.
- This research addresses how the PRC exploits U.S. academia and private industry through its Military-Civil Fusion (MCF) strategy, which systematically acquires the intellectual property, research, and technological advances of the world's citizens and businesses to advance the People’s Liberation Army. To counter this massive theft and gray-zone acquisition of emerging technologies, the paper recommends the DoD deliberately leverage alternative, agile procurement methods—such as Commercial Solutions Openings (CSOs), Other Transaction Authority (OTA), and Prize Competitions. By partnering more rapidly with the private sector, the U.S. can outpace China's technology theft and secure a technological advantage in areas like quantum computing and artificial intelligence.
- Babcock, Maj. Christopher, "Cyberwar Theories for Conflict in the Indo-Pacific," ACSC PACAF 2026.
- Babcock addresses this by applying cyber persistence and offense-defense balance theories to analyze the PRC's long-running espionage and network intrusions targeting the U.S. defense industrial base. To counter these persistent gray-zone intrusions, he argues that the U.S. must stop treating cyber defense as static and instead engage in its own continuous, integrated defensive campaigning. By heavily investing in defending industrial base networks, utilizing deception to obscure vulnerabilities, and clearly signaling this defensive competence, he contends the U.S. can raise the perceived costs for the PRC and effectively deter further cyber theft.
- Barnes II, Maj. David J., "Weaponized Economics: A Military Evaluation of Chinese Power Projection," AFGC thesis, 2022.
- Evaluates China's weaponization of economics and its Military-Civil Fusion strategy as a substitute for military power, detailing how Beijing uses legal transfers and relationships to gain access to US experts, foundries, and businesses to steal intellectual property and erode American competitive advantages. To counter this cyber-enabled economic warfare, the paper suggests that the US must firmly prosecute intellectual property infringements, strengthen economic alliances, and persistently promote open markets. Furthermore, it emphasizes that US defense and political leaders must comprehensively understand China's economic tactics and integrate economic statecraft into military planning to successfully defend the American homeland from these business-centric gray-zone assaults.
- Cox, Maj. Christopher A., "Military Acquisitions in a World with Rising Chinese Control," AF Fellows, 2021.
- Addresses the PRC's exploitation of US academia and the economy by detailing China's comprehensive national strategy to acquire critical technologies through both licit and illicit methods, including infiltrating American universities, research labs, and utilizing foreign investment to access sensitive intellectual property. Noting that Chinese nationals have successfully stolen plans for advanced military systems like the F-22 and F-35, the paper explains that this gray-zone espionage costs US industry over $600 billion while eroding the joint force's lethality. To counter these activities, the author highlights the necessity of the Protecting Critical Technology Task Force and recommends aggressively exercising existing authorities, such as the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), to halt the transfer of critical technology and protect strategic domestic supply lines from adversary exploitation.
- Hasson, Lt. Col. Kathleen, "The Chinese Communist Party's Insidious Infiltration," AWC SSP, 2021.
- This paper examines the CCP's "insidious infiltration" using economic coercion and malign influence to interfere in the domestic affairs of the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia. Hasson highlights how the CCP targets unsuspecting citizens and institutions, explicitly noting the infiltration of universities and Wall Street investors, to further its grand strategy of national rejuvenation. To counter this gray-zone activity, the paper recommends implementing a united, intergovernmental, and inter-institutional posture that champions transparency and shares information amongst democratic entities to expose the CCP's intentions. It argues that open democracies must rely on free, rules-based diplomacy and robust communication to expose and deter the CCP's covert manipulative methods without compromising their own values.
- Hillerman, Maj. Peter, "Non-State Actors in the Great Power Competition: Huawei Leads the Charge," AFGC thesis, 2025.
- This study examines the gray-zone exploitation of Western businesses and economies by analyzing how China uses ostensibly private conglomerates, like Huawei, as "non-state actors" (NSAs) to conduct espionage and defraud the U.S. of intellectual property while maintaining plausible deniability. To counter the infiltration of these state-controlled entities into global infrastructure, the author recommends the international community establish a clear classification system to formally tie these NSAs to their adversarial state sponsors. This legal and policy classification would enable targeted prosecution, regulate their use in cyberspace, and protect the free and fair global market from entities with ulterior motives.
- Lisenbee II, Lt. Col. Caleb S., "LinkedIn Espionage: Foreign Adversaries Recruiting Current & Former DOD Members under the Guise of Consulting on LinkedIn," AWC SSP, 2024.
- This paper explores how the PRC exploits the U.S. economy and steals technology by targeting current and former DoD personnel, particularly those in the defense industrial base, via virtual espionage on platforms like LinkedIn. These low-cost, low-risk gray-zone operations allow adversaries to leapfrog the U.S. in technologies like AI and quantum computing. To counter this threat, the author argues that the U.S. must deliberately increase awareness and place greater emphasis on educating the workforce about this specific virtual espionage threat, thereby protecting critical technological advancements from being stolen and used to accelerate the PRC's military capabilities.
- Matthys, Maj. Shawna, "China's Hidden Talent: The Thousand Talent Plan," ACSC EL 2022.
- This paper specifically focuses on the PRC's strategy of exploiting U.S. academia and the commercial sector through the Thousand Talents Plan (TTP) to steal intellectual property for China's economic and military gain. Matthys details cases where scientists and engineers within the United States, including those working at major corporations or on taxpayer-funded research at National Labs, covertly transferred proprietary technologies to Chinese businesses to compete globally against American markets. To counter this gray-zone theft, the paper emphasizes that the U.S. government must apply significantly more scrutiny to the over 200 active foreign talent recruitment programs to protect domestic jobs, commercial technology, and military advantages.
- Norris, Lt. Col. Victor, "Countering Unrestricted Warfare: Preparing to Compete against China's Actual Strategy," AWC SSP, 2020.
- This paper addresses how China exploits U.S. academia and the economy through intellectual property theft, the Thousand Talents Program, and the United Front to systematically erase America's technological and military advantages. To counter these gray-zone activities, Norris recommends creating a specialized inter-agency counter-influence organization—similar to the Cold War-era U.S. Information Agency—with experts ranging from cultural anthropologists to technologists. This organization would monitor Chinese comprehensive coercion and create multiple dilemmas for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) by targeting their information control vulnerabilities, leveraging avenues like 5G infrastructure and international students to push strategic communications to previously unreachable audiences.
- Randall, Justin, "National Instruments of Power at Risk: Mitigating the Effects of China's Cyber Strategy on National Security," AFC thesis, 2024.
- This paper answers the question by analyzing how China's strategic cyber initiatives and state-sponsored actors threaten U.S. critical infrastructure sectors (like communications, energy, and transportation) using "living off the land" techniques to evade detection. To counter these gray-zone cyber operations, the author recommends mandating strict federal oversight and control for defending all critical infrastructure systems, increasing investments in cyber resources and training, and aggressively fortifying alliances by providing developing nations with trusted alternatives to Chinese-developed digital investments.
- Reynolds, Rachel L., "Leapfrogs and Shortcuts: Paths to Technological Performance on US and Chinese Strategic Evolutionary Landscapes," SAASS thesis, 2024.
- Reynolds conceptualizes China's illicit technology transfer strategy as an "evolutionary landscape" where China trades inputs of time and money for increased risk to steal militarily critical technologies from the United States. The paper points out that China operates with near impunity by targeting struggling U.S. startups in bankruptcy courts or acting as a cash investor, bypassing traditional oversight systems like the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) that are not resourced to pursue cases beyond major defense purchases. To counter this economic gray-zone strategy, the author recommends the United States shift from a broad defensive stance of strict regulation to a targeted approach that disrupts the specific balance of skills and resources China relies on for high-risk technology transfers, using this landscape model to perform center of gravity analysis.
- Strohmeyer, Col. Matthew D., "Making Sense of Data Collected in the Grey Zone," AF Fellows (CSIS), 2022.
- Addresses how adversaries like China and Russia exploit gaps in US authorities, use First Amendment protections to mask domestic operations, and hop from foreign networks to domestic US infrastructure to blind intelligence services. To counter these stealthy gray-zone activities, the paper recommends utilizing commercial space remote sensing, open-source intelligence (OSINT), and cloud-based Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning (AI/ML) architectures—such as the Global Information Dominance Experiments (GIDE)—to aggregate siloed data. By integrating global commercial sensing data, the US can detect subtle anomalies and shifts in patterns of life, uncover denial and deception efforts, and generate actionable intelligence to warn of and deter gray-zone activities before they achieve their strategic objectives.
- Torrenter, Maj. Mariani B., "Assessing the Character of Modern and Future Warfare: A Defense Proposition," AFGC thesis, 2025.
- This paper answers the query by directly addressing China’s gray-zone efforts to secure land and influence in U.S. and allied territories through economic and infrastructural avenues like the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). To counter Chinese investors from purchasing land or securing critical infrastructure stakes, the author suggests a "defend forward" strategy, which includes imposing sanctions on nations involved in the BRI to deter them from selling land to Chinese investors. Furthermore, the paper recommends countering China's economic gray-zone tactics by supporting import substitution programs, achieving self-sufficiency in critical defense-related industries to decrease reliance on foreign components, and actively participating in establishing international technology standards to align global development with U.S. values
- Truong, Ryan T., "Upgrading Cyber Security Protection of the Defense Industrial Base Small and Medium Companies to Protect against Cybersecurity Threat," AFGC thesis, 2020.
- Focuses specifically on the vulnerability of small and mid-sized Defense Industrial Base (DIB) companies to Chinese nation-state hackers seeking to steal Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI), trade secrets, and military blueprints like those for the F-35 and C-17. Recognizing that these companies often lack the financial resources to independently secure their networks against advanced persistent threats, the paper recommends that the Department of Defense implement and fund a centralized, cloud-based cyber safeguarding framework. By upgrading and subsidizing the cybersecurity infrastructure of its vulnerable defense contractors, the US can effectively eliminate a major avenue of Chinese gray-zone technological theft.
- Wetherell, Maj. David, "State and Private Capital Allocations in China, as Strategic Intelligence," ACSC EL, 2023.
- Examines how China uses Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) and its Military-Civil Fusion (MCF) strategy to embed the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) into seemingly private businesses to conduct corporate espionage and steal intellectual property. The paper argues that mirror-imaging Western commercial-government relationships onto China blinds the US to how the CCP exploits civilian technologies for military applications. To counter these economic gray-zone activities, the author recommends that the US Intelligence Community prioritize monitoring state and private capital investment flows. Tracking these financial allocations acts as a forecasting mechanism for adversarial intent, allowing the US to craft preventative counter-policies, increase interagency cooperation, and proactively expose coercive corporate relationships before they undermine Western businesses and infrastructure
- Wetzel, Lt. Col. Tyson et al, "Seizing the Advantage: A Vision for the Next US National Defense Strategy," AF Fellows (Atlantic Council), 2021.
- Argues that the US must take the offensive in gray-zone competition to counteract China's hybrid warfare, which currently includes the theft of trillions of dollars in US intellectual property, cyberattacks, and economic subversion. To combat these activities within the homeland and allied nations, the paper recommends establishing a centralized cross-agency authority to manage day-to-day competition and developing a "defense playbook" for hybrid warfare that outlines creative, cross-domain responses. Additionally, the paper suggests employing a whole-of-government toolkit that includes securing and diversifying US supply chains, freezing or seizing the financing of malign cyber actors, expanding foreign direct investment to allies as an alternative to China's Belt and Road Initiative, and leveraging targeted sanctions to punish illicit gray-zone behavior.