John West
You may quote from this text, provided you mention the name of the author and reference it as a new Strategic Assessment Memo (SAM) published by the Global Ideas Center in Berlin on The Globalist.
There is lots of speculation about the risks of China and the United States going to a hot war. But a close examination suggests that China has already been in a “gray war,” a cyberwar, with the United States for several years now.
What is the gray war? It is obviously between black and white. We should not think of war and peace in binary terms, but along a spectrum where there are degrees of war and peace.
Propaganda and disinformation, the key instruments of the grey war, have always been features of international relations. But China and other authoritarian regimes also buckled down on efforts to destabilize the United States and other democracies by propaganda disseminated through social and other media.
China’s narrative of dominance
China’s gray war narrative is that it is on an unstoppable path to overtaking the United States. It is trying to demoralize the United States and the West. The Chinese want the United States to believe it is in irreversible decline, and the United States should not even try to contain China. It should just accommodate China.
China is highly motivated because it sees the very ideas of democracy and freedom as a regime threat. China is keen to create a world that is safe for the Chinese Communist Party.
It is of course deeply ironic that China and other authoritarian governments are often using U.S. technology to defend and export autocracy around the world.
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