IDEX: Conference focuses on supply chain disruption

The IDC conference, entitled “Defence Reimagined: Innovation, Integration and Resilience” saw moderator, Bilal Y Saab tell the audience: “What we are dealing with today is the likelihood and complexity of those disruptions often occurring at the same time, even if by different things.

“Pandemics like COVID-19, national disasters, ransomware, cyberware issues, conflicts, and sanctions have all played their part. Often the need to be more resilient to this, is to work collaboratively, but that isn’t happening,” Saab said.

If that wasn’t enough, general (retired) Hulusi Akar, chair of Turkey’s national defence committee in Turkey, said: “Today tariffs between the US and others including Canada, Mexico, China and the EU, as well as the crises in Ukraine and Gaza, could impose delays and blockages.”

One of the panellists, professor Manmohan Sodhi, of Bayes Business School, wrote the first paper on supply chain risk and disruptions as well as the first books on the topic in the early 2000s, and he said, “People are still talking about the same things we were talking about 20 years ago!”

He continued: “But there are two new things – supply chain interdiction and supply chain infiltration that have appeared this year.”

The professor then looked at some topics and challenges that US president Trump is taking on.

”Chemicals from India and China, are going through Mexico, where it’s been repackaged and entering the US as fentanyl.”

“If you look at what the Israelis did with the explosive pagers, that’s also infiltration. That’s a new threat, and a downstream one,” he said.

“Look at the potential hijacking of supply chain routes. Think what’s common between the Panama Canal and Greenland sea routes. Greenland is the location of future seagoing over the North Pole with the ice caps melting, while Gaza is just 18 miles from the Suez Canal.”

The message from the speakers was the world has to be watchful on who is controlling these global sea routes, and the IDC conference raised issues that some may have not understood or even realised were out there.”