From Risk to Readiness: A Strategic Blueprint for Supply Chain Resilience

The past five years have laid bare a fundamental truth: modern supply chains are astonishingly efficient but dangerously brittle. In just the last five years, COVID-19 shuttered factories and severed transportation links. A single container ship blocked the Suez Canal for days, sending ripples across economies. Drought strangled throughput at the Panama Canal. And a shadow fleet of 700 Russian-affiliated tankers now challenges regulatory enforcement in global shipping lanes.

Governments are waking up to the reality that supply chains are not just a business concern, but a matter of national security. As President Biden emphasized in Executive Order 14017, “The United States needs resilient, diverse, and secure supply chains to ensure our economic prosperity and national security.”

The same could be said for any major economy in today’s volatile geopolitical landscape.

This whitepaper outlines the evolution of supply chain resilience from a niche operational concern to a strategic imperative — and how technology, especially maritime AI, is reshaping the way governments must prepare.

For decades, supply chains were optimized for efficiency. Just-in-time inventory systems and reliance on single-source suppliers minimized costs but introduced fragility. Disruptions were typically viewed as isolated events, such as a port strike, a hurricane, or a factory fire, with contingency plans designed to restore operations quickly and inexpensively.

That mindset no longer suffices. Today’s risks are systemic, simultaneous, and often long-lasting. A pandemic can halt production across continents. A geopolitical flashpoint can reroute global energy and commodities flows overnight. Infrastructure sabotage can sever communications and financial transactions in an instant.

A recent study by Cambridge’s Institute for Manufacturing highlights the need to treat supply chain resilience as a dynamic capability. This means enabling systems not only to recover but to evolve in response to threats; to design supply chains that can absorb disruption, maintain continuity, and respond decisively under pressure.

This shift is reshaping the role of supply chain management from a cost center to a strategic function that now plays a central role in national security planning.

Economic Imperative

At its core, supply chain resilience protects economic sovereignty. As the International Monetary Fund warned, increasing fragmentation of global trade due to geopolitical rivalry could lower global GDP by up to 7%. That’s not a forecast — it’s a red alert. In sectors like semiconductors, pharmaceuticals, and energy, even short disruptions can spark inflation, unemployment, and political instability.

Security Imperative

More than 90% of global trade by volume moves by sea. And yet, the maritime domain — including ports, vessels, and undersea infrastructure — remains underprotected. Recent incidents include suspicious sabotage of power cables in the Baltic Sea and data cables in the Mediterranean. NATO has launched new initiatives to monitor these critical systems, but it’s not enough.

As one Newsweek investigation found, at least 11 sabotage incidents involving undersea cables occurred in just 15 months — likely the tip of the iceberg. Governments can no longer treat maritime infrastructure as a civilian concern. These are strategic assets that require national defense-grade protection.

Government leadership is essential in addressing systemic risks that no private firm can manage alone.

Public agencies can set cybersecurity standards, fund infrastructure upgrades, stockpile critical materials, and coordinate multinational responses. They can also leverage technology platforms like Windward’s Maritime AI to gain continuous, real-time visibility into global maritime supply chains.

By doing so, governments can proactively simulate port closures, export bans, or regional conflicts and assess their impact on critical imports. This intelligence enables smarter policy: rerouting strategies, infrastructure investment decisions, and inter-agency coordination.

The CHIPS Act in the U.S. and similar initiatives in Japan and the EU are examples of how governments are reshoring manufacturing and diversifying dependencies. While these moves may appear to be trade policy adjustments, they are, in fact, national defense strategies in disguise.

Underwater cables carry 95% of global internet traffic and support trillions in financial transactions daily. Yet, they are protected by fewer than 20 specialized naval vessels worldwide. According to Euronews and Reuters, suspected Russian vessels have repeatedly been spotted near European cables. In one recent incident, Poland deployed an aircraft to intercept a shadow fleet vessel operating near a sensitive underwater cable. 

As a Windward report highlights, these incidents often go unmonitored until damage is done. Governments must integrate AIS-based surveillance, satellite imagery, and seabed sensors to protect these critical arteries of global commerce.

To operationalize resilience, governments should pursue a multi-pronged approach. Here is a clear blueprint to help government leaders move from risk to readiness:

1. Map and Monitor Supply Chain Vulnerabilities

Use AI-powered platforms like Windward to:

• Identify chokepoint dependencies (e.g., Suez Canal, Taiwan Strait). 
• Monitor behavioral anomalies (e.g., AIS spoofing, clustering, unscheduled stops). 
• Simulate disruption scenarios (e.g., port closures, embargoes). 

2. Protect Critical Infrastructure

• Invest in protecting ports, cables, and maritime infrastructure from sabotage or cyberattacks. 
• Integrate seabed sensors, surveillance tools, and predictive alerts to secure undersea cables. 

3. Deploy Early Warning Systems

• Forecast port congestion using real-time data on vessel behavior and turnaround times. 
• Anticipate volatility in high-risk corridors like the Red Sea and the Cape of Good Hope. For example, between May 12–19, 2025, Windward’s platform detected a 24% surge in traffic around the Cape of Good Hope — with 840 vessels recorded, compared to the 676 expected. 
• Leverage maritime intelligence to detect anomaly patterns before crises escalate. 

4. Monitor Geopolitical Risk

• Track sanctions, political instability, and naval activity that may trigger regional disruptions. 
• Use real-time alerts to understand how evolving conflicts may affect vessel movement or key imports. 

5. Establish Cross-Functional Task Forces

• Unite defense, trade, cyber, and transportation agencies to align strategy and intelligence. 
• Coordinate national and cross-border response capabilities. 

6. Support Private Sector Compliance

• Introduce resilience benchmarks and offer incentives for adoption of AI-powered visibility tools. 
• Encourage diversified sourcing and increased transparency through public-private collaboration.

In early May 2025, Windward’s anomaly detection identified a notable rise in port call durations for chemical tankers at U.S. ports. Specifically, between May 4-11, the median port call duration surged to nearly 30 hours, approximately 33% above typical expectations. This anomaly involved a significant cluster of 46 unique vessels (see image below).

Extended port stays can rapidly cascade into broader supply chain disruptions. Leveraging Windward’s maritime intelligence platform, we quickly identified the subsequent destinations for these delayed tankers, with most vessels bound for Houston, New Orleans, and South Louisiana. Equipped with this actionable insight, logistics and supply chain professionals can proactively manage resources and adjust schedules, significantly mitigating the impact of these delays on delivery timelines.

Resilience is no longer a luxury or a buzzword. It is a blueprint for survival in a world where geopolitical rivalry, technological dependency, and climate instability are the new constants.

Governments that embrace this reality and act on it with intelligence, investment, and international collaboration, will not only protect their economies but shape the future of global trade. The rest will be left reacting to crises they could have seen coming.