Three areas of the world are of particular interest from an economic and supply chain perspective as international conflicts remain active, an official with a military college said.
Speaking to FreightWaves CEO and founder Craig Fuller at the company’s Future of Supply Chain conference in Atlanta on Wednesday, Jonathan Hoffman, The Citadel’s communications and marketing vice president, said he is watching activity in Russia and Ukraine, Israel, and China. Hoffman, an expert in national defense and homeland security programs, discussed the state of national security.
The war between Russia and Ukraine has been ongoing since 2014 but escalated in February 2022 when Russia invaded Ukraine in the largest attack on a European country since World War II. Europe has the third-largest economy in the world.
“If Ukraine was to fall, there’s a chance that Russia could continue [on] to disrupt Europe,” Hoffman said.
In the Middle East, the Red Sea crisis began in October, days after the U.S. State Department-designated terrorist group Hamas, which has ruled the Gaza Strip since 2007, attacked Israel. The Iran-backed Houthi rebel movement has launched strikes against commercial shipping in the Red Sea in response to Israel’s actions following the Oct. 7 Hamas attack.
Container prices are soaring due to low capacity paired with high demand, according to Container xChange’s latest forecast. Red Sea diversions have stretched carriers thin by forcing them to deploy additional vessels.
Hoffman said he has his eye on China as well due to the country’s ability to interfere with the South China Sea trade. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and hasn’t ruled out taking the island by force if necessary. The United States doesn’t have formal diplomatic ties with Taiwan — which operates as an independent country and considers itself as such — but is bound by U.S. law to provide the island with support to defend itself.
Invading Taiwan would decrease the quality of life for Chinese citizens and carry environmental and economic repercussions, Hoffman said.
“The big thing is that things are not getting calmer,” he said of global relations.
Container prices in China jumped by 45% in May, Container xChange reported, linking the ballooning costs with issues in the Red Sea for carriers wanting to maintain their Asia-Europe routes.
Hoffman also discussed Chinese-owned TikTok, a popular social media video app. U.S. lawmakers passed a measure to ban the app, which is owned by Beijing-based company ByteDance. President Joe Biden signed a law giving ByteDance up to a year to sell the app or face a ban in the U.S.
The Pew Research Center found that more than 30% of Americans under 30 years old regularly consumed news from TikTok last year.
“I don’t know of any other country that would basically allow a foreign adversary to have a direct conduit into forming the intellectual, emotional and policy views of the next generation,” Hoffman said. “We have a firehose from China that’s pumping propaganda into people on TikTok.”