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The Grey Zone

About

My name is Oriane Cohen.

I work on situations where conventional frameworks no longer explain outcomes: where perception, influence, and ambiguity shape decisions more than formal structures.

I am a perception engineer and strategic intelligence advisor.
Former human intelligence operative and war correspondent.
Creator of the Grey Zone™, the Quantum Framework™, and the 4 Societal Archetypes - proprietary frameworks designed to read power in complex environments.

I work with decision-makers operating in high-stakes, high-complexity environments where conventional frameworks fail.

Background

Education

I hold a Bachelor’s degree in Political Science and a Master’s degree (M1 & M2) in International Relations, specialized in Security and Defense, from Sciences Po Bordeaux.

Sciences Po is one of France’s "elite" institutions, training senior civil servants, diplomats, and decision-makers across political, economic, and security domains.

It provides analytical tools, formal models of power, and institutional frameworks for understanding international relations.

This training was fundamental to my work. Not because it explained power correctly, but because it revealed where institutional models systematically fail.

Institutional theory assumes power to be structured, attributable, and governed by explicit decision-making processes. Operational reality rarely conforms to these assumptions.

The tension between institutional theory and real-world dynamics, which I encountered later in the field, became central to my approach.

My academic training gave me the language, models, and reference systems of official power. Field experience later exposed their blind spots: ambiguity, informal influence, perception management, deniability, and non-linear causality.

My frameworks were built from the limits of institutional thinking.

Journalism

After leaving Sciences Po, I became a correspondent in Israel and the West Bank, reporting from one of the world’s most intense geopolitical environments.

There, I learned how narratives shape reality, how information functions as a weapon, and how perception itself becomes a strategic asset.

I built networks across political, business, and technological circles. More importantly, I learned to read what is not being said - omissions, silences, and framing choices that often carry more meaning than explicit statements.

Intelligence and Human Intelligence (HUMINT)

For five years, I worked as a HUMINT operator in the private intelligence sector, engaging in influence operations, sensitive negotiations, and strategic advisory work.

This experience is foundational to everything I build today.

In environments shaped by state-level plausible deniability, this work remains deliberately invisible. It operates in ambiguity, discretion, and indirect influence.

I specialized in Human Intelligence: gathering information through human sources, cultural immersion, and relational dynamics. I developed expertise in perception mechanics, cultural intelligence, and strategic influence in contested environments.

Across academia, journalism, and intelligence work, I observed the same constant pattern:

The decisive layer is rarely visible.
The most important signals are rarely explicit.

That observation became the foundation of my work.

Intellectual contributions

I have developed three analytical frameworks addressing gaps left by conventional strategic thinking:

The Grey Zone™
A systematic conceptualization of contemporary power operating without attribution - not as a military doctrine, but as a structural condition across geopolitical, organizational, and cognitive domains.

The Quantum Framework™
A multidimensional tool for assessing crises and complex situations across kinetic, systemic, economic, narrative, symbolic, ontological, and noetic layers - revealing interactions invisible to single-axis analysis.

The 4 Societal Archetypes
A strategic mapping of emerging post-state meta-structures - technofortresses, econetworks, neo-theocracies, and grey zones - explaining how authority and legitimacy are reorganizing beyond the nation-state.

These frameworks are used by decision-makers navigating contested, unstable, and high-exposure environments.

Current work

Today, I operate across three axes:

My work is global by nature, but deliberately selective.

How to navigate this website

Depending on how you engage, there are four distinct entry points:

Read the Newsletter

Start here if you want to observe.

Weekly analyses dissect real situations where power operates indirectly:
institutions, elites, crises, influence, and structural failure.

Receive the weekly analyses.

Frameworks

The analytical architecture

If you want to understand how this work is built, start here. The frameworks provide the structural logic behind everything published on this site. They are the grammar of the work.

For paid-members only.

Understand the work in depth.

Learn: the Grey Zone™ Protocol

Reading reveals patterns.
Structure turns perception into usable intelligence.

The Protocol is a structured system for those who want to build a strategic mind and operate coherently under uncertainty.

Enter the Protocol.

Advisory: Applied strategic work

For situations where reading and learning are no longer sufficient.

This is where the frameworks are applied directly to high-stakes decisions, complex environments, and moments of strategic exposure.

Work with me.

This site is not meant to be consumed linearly. Choose the entry point that matches where you are:

The logic will hold.