Supply Chains in the Line of Fire

What if I told you that the next global war has already started, and your supply chain is directly in the line of fire?  

The recent port strike you worked around, the closed shipping lane that forced you to shift to air transport, the bridge that blocked a port, even the grid brownout that slowed down your manufacturing may have seemed like random disruptions, but let’s take a closer look.   

The next attack on our country will not be a sudden airstrike with drones dropping bombs on California or Virginia. It will be quieter and more insidious, and it is already happening both inside and outside our national borders. It is an attack on the flow of commerce and our way of life. 

Ask yourself who owns the company that operates the port and airports you use? Who made the switchboard that powers your nearby grid? Who pays the crew of the ship that blocked your shipping lane? Once you start digging underneath the surface explanations, you will see the true battle. 

You may want to dismiss this as a conspiracy theory, but with my long history as a national security leader, I know our government is blind to most of these threats and it does not have a coherent plan to prevent or respond to the long war currently unfolding.   

This exact type of commercial warfare happened in Eastern Europe, before Russia invaded Georgia. Pre-invasion cyberattacks disrupted everyday life in Georgia, including what appeared as random phone service interruptions, ATM malfunctions, and electrical brownouts. Coordinated social media posts spread rumors about product shortages, alarming the public.  

The same thing happened in Ukraine before the Russian invasion. Information and commercial attack operations like this are designed to upset systems of belief and systems of commerce to create chaos, distrust, and societal breakdowns.  

Let’s get back to your supply chain, and why my thoughts on this issue matter to you.  

China is a timely example. A large quantity of pharmaceutical APIs and organic chemicals are exported from China. Electronics manufacturing is still largely based in China. China controls rare earth materials including cobalt, graphite, and lithium ion. China is also connected to everything we use to move commercial products and materials. In synchronization with their exports, the Chinese government uses soft power to provide direct aid and investment to over one hundred countries. Chinese companies have invested heavily in transportation, logistics, and energy infrastructure all over the world.   

Think about that for a minute. The U.S. government would not tell General Electric to shut down a power grid they run in Asia or ask Ports America to purposefully slow operations in Savannah, GA. This quiet weaponization of commerce is not in the U.S. playbook and our ability and desire to project soft power has diminished for decades. China does not have that kind of separation between government, national security, soft power projection, and commerce. It is all part of the long war. 

The threat is not hypothetical. An example sits fifty miles from U.S. shores. The Freeport Container Port (FCP) is one of the largest trans-shipping locations in the Western Hemisphere. I guarantee you that a significant percentage of your ocean shipments move through FCP to be offloaded to smaller vessels for delivery to U.S. ports. FCP is not owned by the Bahamians; it is owned by a private company run by Hutchinson Port Holdings (HPH). HPH is controlled by CK Hutchison Holdings, a conglomerate corporation based in Hong Kong and operating in over fifty countries.   

You are already on the front lines. Long before a traditional war, there will be supply chain disruptions and shortages. Most will be insidious and are already occurring. A work slowdown, a strike, two port cranes broken, three bridges blocked on a key cross border trucking lane, random runway closures, or quality problems with raw materials. The attack vectors are broad. People will not be able to get medicines, batteries, electronics, or palm oil. Prices will fluctuate wildly.   

Although China dominates the current news cycle, there are other state and non-state actors that follow the same pattern of attack. Even more concerning is that most long-tail support for traditional military operations move and stage via commercial means. Unfortunately, we remain myopically focused on the small sliver of owned and operated military logistics assets and flows.  So, what can you do to protect your business and help protect our way of life?    

Companies must continually accomplish automated analysis on their global flowing and fixed business network. They need a precise and intelligent solution to predict, plan, and execute with optionality for ports, airports, rail lines, roads, and other locations owned, operated, or influenced by global government threats.  Companies must automate their replanning based on the rapid changes in these threats over time. They need to marry these living global threat and risk layers with what is static or flowing through their supply chain network now, tomorrow, and next month. 

Commercial supply chains are a matter of national security. They are central to the next war. We must respond with continuous risk, context, impact, and prioritization intelligence coupled with an automated means to proactively avoid or rapidly recover.