The war that began with strikes on Iran in late February has now run most of this year — paused in May, reignited this summer, and still unresolved as diplomatic efforts continue. The human cost is staggering: thousands dead across the region, millions displaced, hospitals overwhelmed. That toll comes first, and nothing in a business publication should pretend otherwise.
But I run a supply chain company, so let me say plainly what this year has proven about supply chains: the era of assuming stability is over, and American procurement has not caught up.
For two decades, government and industry alike priced goods as if the sea lanes were free, the straits were open, and the tanker always arrived. That assumption was never a fact. It was a subsidy — paid invisibly, in fragility — and this year the bill came due. Commercial traffic through the Strait of Hormuz was paralyzed for months. Shipping rerouted around entire regions. Every fuel rack, freight lane, and commodity price in America felt a conflict fourteen time zones away.
Here’s my opinion, stated as one. Resilience should be a scored evaluation factor in federal procurement — not a talking point, a factor. When agencies award purely on price, they systematically select the most fragile supply chain in the competitive range, because fragility is cheap right up until it fails. A vendor with redundant sourcing, domestic inventory, and documented contingency routing costs more on paper and less in reality. The evaluation criteria should say so, in writing, before the next disruption rather than after it.
And contractors should not wait to be asked. Build the redundancy now. Map your second and third source before the first one fails. Document your contingency plan as if a contracting officer will read it — because increasingly, they will.
Wars end. The lesson should not end with this one. A supply chain that only works in peacetime was never a supply chain. It was a bet — and this year, everyone holding it lost.