Weaponization of Global Supply Chains in Strategic High-Tech Industries: State-Level Benefits and Supply Chain-Level Impacts

The concept of supply chain weaponisation refers to the active use of global supply chains and economic dependencies by nation-states as competitive tools to achieve political, security, or geopolitical objectives, often leading to significant disruption for businesses.

Photo by Kurt Cotoaga on Unsplash

About the project

Supply chains increasingly become tools of diplomatic statecraft. Nation-states are leveraging their supply chains, particularly in strategic dual-use high-tech industries such as semiconductors, space, and advanced materials, as competitive weapons to achieve their geopolitical objectives and thereby influence the global balance of power.

However, weaponization introduces trade-offs, disrupting globalised supply chains' operational and economic efficiency.

This project integrates Supply Chain Management (SCM) theories, which focus on operational efficiency and resilience, with International Relations (IR) theories, which analyse states' struggles for power and motives, to examine the benefits states derive from weaponizing supply chains and the impacts of weaponisation on supply chain operations, efficiency, and design, on the example of the space and semiconductor industries.

Current SCM literature generally overlooks a geopolitical perspective, while IR scholarship rarely addresses supply chains' operational challenges.

Research team