How Geopolitical Tensions Are Forcing a Global Supply Chain Overhaul

According to The Supply Chain Xchange, economist and futurist Jason Schenker argues in an excerpt from his new book Cold War Two that geopolitical tensions and conflicts are pushing companies to fundamentally reconfigure their global supply chains. The argument matters because supply-chain strategy is moving beyond the familiar trade-off between cost and speed: political exposure, visibility, compliance, and continuity are becoming part of the same operating calculation.

From efficiency to exposure

The central shift is structural. A global supply chain is no longer assessed only by how cheaply or quickly it can move products. The relevant question is whether the network can continue operating when geopolitical conditions change.

That does not automatically mean abandoning global sourcing. The available material does not establish a specific model of reshoring, regionalization, or supplier relocation. It does, however, identify the pressure: conflicts and geopolitical tensions are forcing companies to reconsider how their networks are configured.

This distinction is important. Reconfiguration is not a single decision. It affects sourcing, manufacturing, logistics, inventory positioning, and coordination across business partners. A change at one stage can create friction elsewhere. Moving suppliers may alter lead times; increasing inventory may protect availability while raising costs; adding compliance controls may improve traceability while slowing execution.

The result is a supply chain managed less as a linear pipeline and more as a network of linked decisions. That description also appears in Shopify’s 2026 guide to consumer packaged goods, which emphasizes the interaction between sourcing, production, fulfillment, inventory, and compliance.

The operating system is visibility

Shopify describes CPG supply chains as systems that must continuously balance cost, speed, availability, and compliance. It also identifies limited visibility, demand volatility, and expanding traceability requirements as persistent operational problems. In the source material, US business logistics costs reached $2.6 trillion in 2024.

The significance of that figure is not that it predicts the next phase of supply-chain policy. It shows the scale at which operational inefficiency compounds. When decisions across suppliers, warehouses, retailers, and direct-to-consumer channels fall out of sync, the effects appear in inventory, service levels, and cost.

That creates a feedback loop. Geopolitical uncertainty increases the value of information about suppliers and routes. Better visibility makes it easier to identify concentration risks and monitor performance. But the same visibility requires data, controls, and coordination across organizations that may not share systems or incentives.

The source cluster points toward technology as one response. A Pulse 2.0 item focuses on an interview with Interos.ai CEO and board director Ted Krantz about AI-driven supply-chain risk intelligence. The title alone does not establish the technology’s performance or adoption rate, but it does show where the risk-management conversation is moving: from periodic assessment toward continuous intelligence.

What companies should watch

The immediate signal is not a single disruption. It is the convergence of several pressures: geopolitical tension, supply-chain delays, weak new orders, persistent inflation, and rising demands for traceability. A KuCoin headline on the US July PMI specifically flags those conditions, although the available material does not provide the underlying PMI data or further detail.

For companies, the practical test is therefore network resilience rather than a headline decision about globalization. The relevant checks are straightforward:

• Which suppliers, routes, and production stages represent concentrated exposure?
• How quickly can the business detect a disruption or a deterioration in supplier performance?
• Where do inventory and fulfillment decisions depend on information that arrives too late?
• Which compliance and traceability requirements are embedded in daily operations rather than handled as a separate reporting exercise?

The Cold War Two thesis is ultimately a claim about operating architecture. Geopolitics is becoming a catalyst for redesign, but the redesign will be executed through ordinary systems: procurement rules, inventory controls, supplier data, logistics planning, and risk intelligence. The companies best positioned for the next phase will not necessarily be those with the largest networks. They will be those able to see how changes in one part of the network produce cascading effects across the rest.