1. Short title (a) Short title This Act may be cited as the Gray Zone Defense Assessment Act . (b) Table of contents The table of contents for this Act is as follows: Sec. 1. Short title. Sec. 2. Findings. Sec. 3. Sense of Congress. Sec. 4. Statement of policy. Sec. 5. Evaluation of national capacities for conducting gray zone operations. Sec. 6. Report on Department of State capacity to respond to gray zone aggression. Sec. 7. Expansion of intelligence community assessment regarding gray zone assets. 2. Findings Congress finds the following: (1) In 1948, George F. Kennan observed that, In broadest definition, political warfare is the employment of all the means at a nation’s command, short of war, to achieve its national objectives. . (2) Today, this coercive activity is referred to by many names within the United States Government and the academic community, most notably gray zone operations. (3) Although increasingly employed as a means of political warfare, the full contours of gray zone operations remain ambiguous. However, central features of gray zone operations include that they are ultimately directed by state actors, consist of efforts not associated with routine statecraft, and are intended to advance a country’s objectives at the expense of a rival, without crossing a threshold that results in kinetic military conflict. They include such operations and tactics as the following: (A) Information warfare, including conducting disinformation campaigns or the spreading of propaganda. (B) Encouraging internal strife within target countries. (C) Subversive economic practices, such as economic coercion, systematic IP theft, blocking international shipping lanes, and overproduction of commercial commodities. (D) Cyber operations, below the threshold of conflict, aimed at coercion, espionage, or otherwise undermining a target. (E) Support of domestic or foreign proxy forces. (F) Coercive investment and bribery for political aims. (G) Industrial policy designed to monopolize a strategic industry or to destroy