Assessing China's grey zone tactics and Australia's countervailing options: the ICAD (Illegal, Coercive, Aggressive, Deceptive) framework

Hostile grey zone activities conducted by state actors such as the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and Russia have intensified in recent years. These actions, deliberately calibrated to remain below the threshold of open conflict, pose strategic challenges to Australia’s national interests and its vision of a free, open, and prosperous Indo Pacific. As grey zone tactics become more sophisticated, understanding their nature and developing effective responses has become an urgent priority for Australia and its partners. Despite extensive attention on the surge of grey zone activities, definitional ambiguity persists. Grey zone activities are often conflated with or compared to related concepts such as hybrid warfare. While this conceptual plurality reflects the complexity of contemporary statecraft, it also risks diluting the analytical utility of the term.
The recently developed Illegal, Coercive, Aggressive, and Deceptive (ICAD) framework provides a promising avenue for addressing this gap. By focusing on the nature and intent of grey zone actions rather than their operational domain, ICAD offers a clearer lens through which to identify, classify, and counter malign state behaviour. This report argues that adopting the ICAD framework can help Australia and like minded nations develop more coherent, practical, and targeted strategies to respond to grey zone challenges that undermine the post war liberal, rules based order.
To demonstrate the utility of ICAD, the report applies the framework to three key case studies: the India–China border disputes, Chinese grey zone activities in the Taiwan Strait, and maritime competition in East Asia. These cases illustrate how China applies grey zone tactics to contest the regional status quo and highlight lessons that can inform Australia’s strategic planning, resilience building, and responses to these ongoing challenges.