What did we learn, the day the first American-Israeli strikes hit Iran, that we did not already know?

That oil is a weapon. That straits are chokepoints. That war always returns.

All of this, we already knew. Thucydides had articulated it. Braudel had mapped it. Kissinger had theorized it. And yet, when the Supreme Leader was killed, when the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps declared the Strait of Hormuz closed to Western vessels, much of the business world reacted as though the unthinkable had just occurred.

Nothing unthinkable occurred. In truth, this is precisely what one could have expected.
Within days, traffic through the Strait of Hormuz came to a near standstill. Not because of a conventional naval blockade or maritime mines, but for a far simpler – and more revealing – reason: drones. A handful of targeted strikes were enough to drive insurers away, disrupt shipping companies, and ultimately empty the strait.

The lesson is striking. A state with no significant navy or air superiority can now disrupt, even block, a critical node of global trade with relatively limited means. The cost of these systems is measured in thousands of dollars, while their effects are strategic. This represents a profound shift in the way power is projected – and its implications extend far beyond Hormuz alone.

In this context, the price of Brent crude quickly crossed the one-hundred-dollar mark, at times reaching levels not seen since the 2022 crisis.

The International Energy Agency released hundreds of millions of barrels of strategic reserves – the largest coordinated intervention since 1974 – but these reserves, by definition, run out. QatarEnergy, which supplies one-fifth of the world’s liquefied natural gas, declared force majeure. The Houthis resumed their attacks in the Red Sea. Semiconductors, whose manufacturing depends on helium and bromine that partly transit through that same strait, saw their costs rise by fifteen to twenty-five percent.

But the most revealing point might be elsewhere. Hormuz isn’t completely closed – it depends on who you are. In reality, Western traffic is the one most affected. Chinese vessels still pass through, as do Indian tankers, while Saudi ships negotiate their way case by case. The strait is no longer just a trade route; it’s become a tool for geopolitical sorting. The idea that maritime routes are neutral spaces, protected by international law, is giving way to a much harsher reality: they can be used as leverage, and those who control them ultimately decide who gets through.

What’s happening here goes far beyond Hormuz. It’s a sign of a deeper shift.

We may be seeing the end of an era – the one that took shape after 1989, built on the belief that expanding trade would reduce the chance of conflict, that economic interdependence would help maintain peace, and that supply chains could be endlessly optimized in a relatively stable world. For years, companies acted as if geopolitics no longer mattered, or barely did.

Produce in China, assemble in Southeast Asia, ship through Suez or Hormuz, deliver to Europe or the Americas – keep inventories minimal, cut lead times, squeeze every bit of efficiency.
Just-in-time as doctrine. Efficiency as the sole horizon. Geopolitics as background noise.
That era is over. And it must be said plainly: it is not coming back.
Because this is not an isolated shock we are living through. It is the convergence of five simultaneous ruptures – and it is their conjunction that makes this period a tipping point in contemporary economic history.

The first shift is the deepening rivalry between the United States and China. This is no longer just about trade, or even technology in a narrow sense – it’s really about power. China has gradually shown that it can disrupt entire parts of Western industry simply by limiting access to key components that few had seriously thought to diversify. With more than 90% of global rare earth processing under its control, it has turned this position into a clear strategic advantage – and it doesn’t seem particularly concerned about hiding it.

The second shift is the increasing unpredictability of the rules. Companies can no longer take the framework of international trade for granted – it can change almost overnight. The tariffs introduced by the U.S. administration are a perfect example, marking one of the steepest increases relative to GDP in decades. One day the courts suspend them, the next the executive branch reinstates them. In an environment like that, planning, investing, or even securing contracts becomes much more difficult.

A third shift has to do with maritime routes, which are becoming more exposed and less reliable. Hormuz is under mounting pressure, the Red Sea has effectively turned into a conflict zone, and the Panama Canal faces both climate-related challenges and political tensions. It’s rare, in recent history, to see all three of these critical chokepoints under strain at the same time.
The Hormuz situation also makes a subtler point clear: a strait doesn’t need to be fully closed to become a serious strategic problem. It is enough for it to be politicized – for passage to become negotiable, almost like diplomatic currency.

The fourth is geoeconomic fragmentation. Trade flows no longer follow economic rationality: they follow lines of political alliance. The World Economic Forum identifies this trend as one of the major risks of the decade. The Centre for Economic Policy Research documents it with precision. What is happening at Hormuz is its most brutal illustration: the same strait, open to some, closed to others, depending on the geometry of alliances.

The fifth rupture stems from the concentration of critical resources in the hands of a small number of countries – often unstable or in rivalry – and their transportation along increasingly contested routes. Helium and bromine, essential to semiconductor manufacturing, partly transit through the Strait of Hormuz. Copper and lithium, indispensable to the energy transition, rely on supply chains that each crisis makes a little more fragile. In reality, much of the resources underpinning our digital economy depends on actors capable of restricting access overnight.

These five ruptures are not independent of one another. They are mutually reinforcing. Each conflict fuels protectionism, each protectionist measure accelerates the competition for resource access, and that competition in turn hardens alliances. We are facing a cumulative dynamic – and in geopolitics, this kind of dynamic rarely tends to resolve itself on its own.

Some companies recognized these shifts before others did. Take Siemens, for example: it had already started repositioning its inventories closer to key U.S. markets, was running digital twin simulations to anticipate potential disruptions, and had made energy security a central focus of its strategy. The Siemens Infrastructure Transition Monitor 2025 – a survey conducted every two years with roughly 1,400 executives and officials across 19 countries – makes this shift clear: what was the third priority in 2023, energy security, had risen to the number one concern by 2025.

When the Hormuz crisis hit, Siemens already had concrete plans in place. Many of its competitors did not.
That’s really where the line is drawn. Not between those who were affected and those who weren’t – everyone was – but between those who had prepared and those who are now scrambling to respond. Between companies that had already stress-tested their supply chains against a more fragmented world, and those still operating under the now outdated assumption of smooth, uninterrupted global trade.

This kind of crisis, however, also creates opportunities – though they tend to be visible only to those who can look past the immediate uncertainty. Mexico, for instance, is attracting tens of billions of dollars in manufacturing investment every half-year. At the same time, the technological decoupling between the U.S. and China is opening up significant space for European firms able to position themselves as reliable partners. The long-awaited agreement between the European Union and Mercosur, concluded after twenty-five years of negotiations, is a clear sign of that shift. And the energy crisis itself reminds all those who had forgotten that energy autonomy is no longer an environmental question: it is a matter of economic survival. Countries investing in renewables, in nuclear power, in diversifying their sources are not doing so out of idealism – they are doing so because they have understood that depending on a strait means depending on someone else.

There are three questions every executive team should be asking – not just to check a box, but because getting them wrong could have serious consequences.
Where do our critical supplies actually move, and what would happen if those routes were suddenly blocked – not in theory, but within the next forty-eight hours? Who is really producing the components that go into our products, and do we truly have a clear understanding of that? And have our investment decisions been tested against a fragmented, unstable world, or are we still relying on assumptions that no longer hold?

But these questions, however necessary, are not enough. The real question is about the model itself. As it stands today, can an executive committee – operating quarter after quarter, driven by financial dashboards and optimization KPIs – really deal with geopolitical challenges? Or do we need to acknowledge that geopolitics follows a different rhythm, requires a different way of thinking, and reshapes how risks should be prioritized? In other words, it’s no longer just one risk among many to keep an eye on, but the broader context in which competition itself now unfolds.

And ultimately, the question remains: are we going to stay ahead of these shifts, or simply let crises dictate our decisions? Or will we finally decide to anticipate the world that is coming?

The age of complacency is over. The age of action has only just begun.