Friday briefing: ​After a week of disruption, is living with threats our new normal?

Good morning. A multiplicity of hoax bomb threats divert passenger flights across Europe. A malign cyber-attack targets supermarket fridges in Belgium, Sweden, the UK and – in a sickening escalation – the cold storage facilities of France’s national blood service.

The actors behind this week of chaos and disruption, be they hostile states or criminal gangs – or even enterprising teenagers – are yet to be identified. But what is certain is that they operate in a context of deepening global conflicts, building national threat and an accompanying, pervasive sense of vulnerability.

Welcome to the grey zone – that ambiguous space between routine peace and conventional military conflict, where proxies duck state accountability and cyber-tactics are developing at an alarming rate.