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Comment by Vegenoid | Hacker News Reader

This is the very top of the "Description" section of the Wikipedia page for "Grey-zone (international relations)"[0]:

> Use of the term grey-zone is widespread in national security circles, but there is no universal agreement on the definition of grey-zone, or even whether it is a useful term, with views about the term ranging from "faddish" or "vague", to "useful" or "brilliant"

It goes on to say:

> Grey zone warfare generally means a middle, unclear space that exists between direct conflict and peace in international relations.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grey-zone_(international_relat...

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OP maligns people for not knowing what it means, but it seems like it’s a nebulous term with no concrete meaning.

Saying people don’t know something is not maligning. Most people don’t know most things.

"You don't know this thing that nobody knows either" is not very informative. Though to be fair "grey-zone" is a bit like obscenity: you know it when you see it.

I don't think obscenity has any sort of consensus, it's based on arbitrary morality.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_know_it_when_I_see_it

So it's pretty much a cold war, but we don't want to say that?

I guess "The Cold War" is very specific to a historical period, and the term "grey zone conflict" is a generalization of what went on there. Also the Cold War involved lots of proxy wars, not thing "grey zone conflict" necessarily does.

Also, I'm starting to feel like the vagueness of "are we at war or not?" is an intentional feature that gives people in power leverage to gaslight the public. That applies to both cold war and grey zone conflict.

Beijing understands very well how TikTok can be used. It’s been banned in Hong Kong since the 2019 protests.

I don't understand your comment. Beijing controls TikTok and understands how it can be used, yet bans it in Hong Kong to prevent it from being used to fuel the independence movement. Aren't those statements contradictory?

Those who control TikTok certainly have more power than the users.

Because during the Cold war information was able to be more efficiently split up between different mutually independent spheres. Now it's more of a free for all because of global Internet access. So yes, you could call it a "cold war", but it's really a more generalized version of that concept.

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