Grey Zone Activity

IPSC’s grey-zone measure is a share computed from the mode field, which records whether an event was conducted Overtly, as SubThreshold activity (attributable, deliberately calibrated to stay below armed conflict — coast guard patrols, cyber operations, economic coercion), or Deniably (attribution contested or refused by the acting state). For the August 2026 period that field is coded on 35 of 460 events. The methodology requires 80% coding completeness before a statistic derived from a field is published; this period reaches 8%.

Rather than publish a grey-zone picture built from 8% of the evidentiary base, this cluster is deferred. A share computed over the coded minority would be a statement about those 35 events, not about the period — and a low figure would be indistinguishable from a low reading, when what the register actually holds is an absence of coding. Coding completes in the September cycle, and the August period will be assessed retrospectively in the September edition.

The period’s principal grey-zone developments are covered. They are assessed as events in Indo-Pacific Chokepoints — the Scarborough Shoal nature-reserve administrative framework, militia-escorted survey operations, and CCG patrols east of Taiwan — and in Taiwan Strait Contingency, which covers blockade and quarantine exercise integration. What is deferred is the aggregate measure, not the underlying evidence.