Intelligence, perception and power in the Grey Zone.
Every week, a cold, analytical reading of current geopolitical events, written for leaders navigating uncertainty, focused on power, perception, and emerging trajectories.
Decisions are not made where they are announced and influence rarely signs its name. This is where we read how power actually moves: through systems, people, silences, and perception.
In the Grey Zone, situations are read before they harden into decisions. Not through ideology, not through official narratives.
But through structure and human behavior. Because systems don't act. People do - inside systems.
Some people come here to observe.
Others need to structure what they already sense.
A few apply this work directly in high-stakes environments.
The Grey Zone describes a reality where:
But also where individuals play a crucial role. They carry hidden leverage. From a human intelligence perspective: trust, fear, status, and silence matter more than rules.
Once you understand this architecture, you start seeing it everywhere - in gepolitics, business, negotiations, and personal power dynamics.
This work sits at the intersection of:
Power is never purely systemic. And never purely psychological.
It emerges where both meet.
I've worked in environments where ambiguity, perception, and power are operational constraints.
This site gathers analyses, frameworks, and methods drawn from that reality: intelligence, strategy, and real-world operations - adapted for contemporary power environments.
A structural explanation of freezing, stress, and decision-making in crises
How power, strategy, and structure are misread in unstable systems
Prosperity, longevity, and the silent collapse of transmission
Structure, signal, noise: rebuild your perception.
RUMINT (rumor intelligence) and the new face of deterrence
A Grey Zone intelligence brief on Berlin's blackout and the normalization of degradation in Europe
A Grey Zone intelligence brief on power, oil, doctrine, and the erosion of constraint in 2026.
when a system can no longer hold itself together
or reading through humans, not headlines
You can't moralize your way out of an ontological problem.
I didn't plan this article, but as you know, sometimes I get spontaneous. When I see a signal that makes me stop. Remember, on November 28, 2025, I
Intelligence, influence and power - by Oriane Cohen.
