Navigating Geopolitics of Supply Chain Resilience with Köse Advisory

Speaker A: Summer is finally here and so are the savings. Save 15% on all ASCM certifications and certificates. Use promo code SUMMER2026 at checkout.

Speaker B: And I always say the CEO orchestrates the organization, but isn't the expert of the dynamics necessarily of the function that you provide? And as a C SEO and a CPO, you provide a function that goes across the entire value creation chain and you're actually asking for a seat at the table while you are the owner of the room where everybody congregates anyways. So stop trying to get into a boardroom when you actually have the room where everybody has to come to anyways when they want something in the value creation process.

Speaker C: Welcome to the Chain Podcast. Today we're digging into one of the biggest shifts reshaping global supply chains. And that's the move from efficiency driven networks to supply chains built for resilience, intelligence and strategic advantage. Joining me today is Corey Kosei, founder and Chief Analyst for Kosei Advisory, where he advises global executives, investors and policymakers alike on geopolitics, AI, uh, and supply chains. With more than 20 years of experience, from the Federal Reserve to C suite roles across industries like automotive, defense and tech, Corey brings the strategic and operational, uh, insight. He also serves as an advisor to ODI Global, he's a Senior Fellow at Globsec Geotech center, and he also participates in NATO's 2030 dialogues. Additionally, he teaches MBA programs at Hult as well as Northeastern. A Forbes Technology Council member and published author, his work was also informing National Security Intelligence Community forums and has been featured in major outlets including the New York Times, Bloomberg and the Economist. Corey, it's a pleasure to have you join us today.

Speaker B: Thank you Abe for having me and hopefully, uh, uh, going into a very interesting conversation together. I'm uh, convinced about that and hopefully for the audience as well.

Speaker C: Absolutely. Quite a background. I think you can offer quite a bit of insight. Uh, so let's set the stage. Corey. Uh, historically we have built supply chains for cost and speed. Uh, that was the hallmark for the most efficient supply chains. How fast can you get it to me and how efficiently can you get it to me? When you say supply chains are no longer a back office function but strategic infrastructure, what does that shift really mean for business leaders today and specifically for boardrooms?

Speaker B: I think first and foremost, uh, it was never incorrect to drive supply chains based on the key performance indicators that you also listed because we were powering really the profitability of a company and uh, the viability of it for many, many years. In an environment that was more stable after World War II. And quite honestly even during the Cold War, we had two poles really managing uh, economies differently, but uh, in a very stable format. Now that change of course, um, and we went into a uh, globalization phase where cost optimization and making it cheaper was mainly looking east. Uh, and we were de. Industrializing our manufacturing base and re industrializing our consumption base or economy in a very different way into a service economy. And within that environment, of course those KPIs were critical for companies to report to stakeholders and to make sure that you get enough financing and actually, you know, the valuation of your company upwards. Now when we're talking about resilience and why we're thinking that supply chains are actually the core to prosperity economics and also policy makers success is when we're seeing uh, supply chains now being utilized and weaponized in that context. And that requires you to be not only aware of it, but not only think about how can I run this more efficiently, but how can I defend my supply chain in case of uncertainty. But also unexpected, unexpected disruptions that can come from adverse uh, effects that ah, are driven from different angles. And one of that is actually policy, uh, making. Think about the recent sanctions, tariffs, but also uh, export controls in that context. And when we think about that and our visibility into supply chains uh, being not great, we have exposure that now trickles up from the lower tiers to your own enterprise and can literally take you down and not only expose you for a little while, but literally impede you from continuing your business. And that's where we see resilience not as a defensive strategy, but as an operating model and part of your business strategy going forward, more importantly implemented today.

Speaker C: It's interesting point. Let's dig into it a little bit more Corey. When you, you're suggesting that there are more instruments of geopolitical leverage, that there's ways that supply chains can be, to your point, weaponized or used. Beyond the cost and speed, what are some of the ways that you're seeing it show up inside sourcing production or logistics today? What are some of the indicators that you're looking at?

Speaker B: So we're literally looking at indicators like cost fluctuation as one where you can predict commodity price fluctuation based on dependencies that have a lag between one indicator being impacted versus the other. Um, just look at the recent um, flight ticket prices as one example. Right? So the oil price went up, the flight ticket prices didn't go immediately up, but it trickles down and takes four to six weeks to now see, uh, even on your vacation plans that suddenly the flight cost has doubled. And not because the airlines are hedging against something, but the airlines actually feel those costs being now downward translated into their own cost structure that they need to recuperate. So the time lag in between is something that you can actually look at data and predict those things to come down. And the faster you do those analytics and react to that, the better you are situated versus your competition. So that's one financial, ah, indicators. The other one is actually policy and statecraft that is um, been put into law and then takes 12, 24, 36 months to come, uh, to fruition in the western world, in the eastern world or more autocratic system, it takes actually only one to three months. It's not overnight very often. It's not like, okay, some of that is like sanctions, but even in sanctions until they really are in motion, meaning like even the government is prepared to run this. Um, it takes a couple of weeks in autocratic systems. Um, so you have always actually an ability to digest the information that comes from those different, uh, sources of information. That's why I say like you need to create awareness in the way you interpret policy or even intelligence or open source intelligence and make it part of your business strategy. So policymaking is the second pillar of those, I think indicators. And the, the last one is actually just without anything like the visibility that you have into your supply chain. And do you run those independent of what is happening? Do you literally know the third or fourth tier? And there's a variety of data out there, but um, some very optimistic ones say 56 of organizations know down to tier three. Uh, other data says actually only 4% of companies know down to tier three. So anywhere in between is the truth. Probably every company has its own percentage there. But um, quite honestly you don't have to wait for disruption to run, for instance, that kind of an indicator test and then run a project to improve that.

Speaker C: Interesting point you're making, Corey. I mean we haven't walked away from the key metrics that organizations have historically focused on between cost efficiency, logistics. Those are still, you know, the price of entry into the marketplace today. The, what we're seeing right now is quite a bit of, you know, um, friction between the chief supply chain officer and the chief financial officer. Obviously for the cseo, I want optionality. I, uh, want redundancy. I want safety stock, uh, from the cfo. I want less inventory. I want committed contracts, I want fixed pricing. There's a tug of war going on Right now in terms of resiliency and you know, what does it take to be resilient as an organization? From your point of view, what does it take to go one step further from supply chains into a cost function, into a strategic advantage? Because I think that's the uh, you know, sort of the destination we'd like to get to. How does that occur when we're dealing in this turbulent environment today and you're having this friction between the chief financial officer and the chief supply chain officer.

Speaker B: Yeah. So I, I like to have the CFO and the CPO live in the same timeline and time zone and dimension sometimes. And unfortunately historically they live in different dimensions and they live in different time zones and timelines. So a little bit like back to the future, um, CPOs and CSLS live in the timeline that is, I would say intrinsically longer. And they're pushed into the short term thinking of a CFO which is quarter to quarter. And hence they look at the cost, every material purchase, uh, is in their uh, PNL and say this is too high or this is, is not competitive. Whereas then they forget about the future timeline where we see unplanned disruption can cost organizations on average 11% of their revenue. The problem is the CFO does not necessarily connect those losses directly to supply chain issues that are structurally been self inflicted and self inflicted because the CFOs you know, requirement of year over year savings that we understand in automotive come through productivity gains. But those productivity gains are not infinite productivity gains. Hence you just play a certain, I mean, sorry to say it out loud, but a Ponzi scheme where you fool yourself until the bigger problem comes around and then the smaller problems gets forgotten and then you are in the reactive, uh, let's say, um, firefighting mode. And quite honestly we have to think more about the fire prevention mode. And that requires that mindset change. But then also we need to bring them back in to live in the same dimension and the same time zone. And when we do that, and you see that in very uh, successful companies, resilience is a business strategy component that has not a cost associated with it, but an investment. And that investment ROI then is being looked at on continuity of revenue, the growth of revenue without disruption, the ability to have resilience when there is a disruption. Meaning look at your competition, how many got disrupted? If you didn't get disrupted but your piece price was higher, it can actually make up two days or three days of revenue will make up for the cost difference that you have carried for three years and that kind of, uh, rethinking, um, also in the stakeholder environment where the investor looks at it and says we will finance that because it protects our overall investment, is something that we see change. But the problem is the CFOs still also not that they are causing it, they're also bound to those short term P and L gains. So it's not like they're the evil people in the room. Right? Um, it is the dynamics that as a ecosystem has, uh, to change. And that's where we are positioning policymaking, technology changes and supply chain changes and the evolution of the almost, I would say the function into one interdependent environment and not silos.

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Speaker C: It's interesting some of the implications, as you're pointing out, a very dynamic environment. So what is it that's causing the stress for the CFOs and the CSAOs? We're talking about geopolitics and geoeconomics now. These are key aspects of supply chain conversations today. How should leaders think about the convergence of those two forces? When we talk about supply chain strategy,

Speaker B: there is the honest truth is a lot of them don't think about it yet. Um, I've been struggling to get these leaders in front of the leaders of the other pillars, the policymakers, but also the technology leaders. Um, and I'm struggling with that because they're saying why should I talk about it? Uh, shouldn't that be a CEO topic? And I always say the CEO orchestrates the organization. But isn't the expert of the dynamics necessarily of the function that you provide? And as a C SEO and a CPO, you provide a function that goes across the entire value creation chain and you're actually asking for a seat at the table while you are the owner of the room where everybody congregates anyways. So stop trying to get into a boardroom when you actually have the room where everybody has to come to anyways when they want something in the value creation process. So you own this almost like a committee environment where risk isn't a functional ownership anymore or resilience, but it is a business and operational strategy and you can lead it. That's an opportunity for you. And when I look at those Leaders that comprehend that. I can see a shift, um, I can see a shift where they suddenly um, try to the geoeconomics and geopolitics, uh, interpretation sometimes of course, with help of organizations like yours that distill it down and provide it in a context and language that they can then scale up in their organization to be understood correctly. Because some of the intelligence jargon is probably not easy to, I almost like, like, you know, to interpret or translate. Um, or they work with organizations like ours and analysts and researchers that provide that context with the supply chain specific dynamics in it. And that's where we have been operating the last two years quite, I would say successfully versus the traditional, it's not a pun intended to anyone out there, but it's just like that. You can look at the research, large research firm share prices and you see a huge decrease, some uh, of them, 85% down like Forrester, uh, or Garten in the last 18 months. Right? Almost 70% done. Why is that? It's because they have been operating in a very specific lane that did not converge these. And then you look at business leaders in supply chain and then, then they're like, okay, but I need the honest geo economics interpretation, the honest technology interpretation in context of my business. And that's where your organization comes into play. Providing the platform of almost like you bring the people together even if they are not able to, and then that translates and has a positive ripple effect into their own organization and say we need to replicate this.

Speaker C: Corey, you made a, you know, comment before about the visibility and you know, obviously one of the gaps that we identified during the pandemic was the lack of visibility into our extended tiers. Um, I'm not sure there's a CSCO right now that can walk into the boardroom and say I don't know who or what is in my supply chain. I think those that comment is off the table. So theoretically we should know everybody and everything in our supply chain. That's the good news. The bad news is we now know who and what is in our supply chain and we're finding out we're not as resilient, we're not as agile, we're not as ethical as we had expected to be. Now we're using technology to augment the information, you know, making sure that we get timely, relevant information so we can get, you know, the appropriate decision makers. What does that dynamic look like right now? You indicated before that we're really not 100% visible today for most organizations. And yet the investment in technology is moving forward at light speed. Um, are we getting the investment return that we're seeking from the technology investment right now or is this a tbd?

Speaker B: The intentions are there. So if I look at some of the research data, um, over 90% of organizations are having the intention to apply AI and gen AI in their analytics to tackle problems such as visibility. Um, the, the um, the formal strategy percentage looks very different. Meaning like a strategy that is already approved and budgeted is merely at around 23%. So whereas nine, uh, out of ten want to do it, two out of ten have actually something in the books to be done in the next two years. And when we look at then unfortunately at the ROI of those two, then almost only 0.2 of those two get a ROI. That explains the investment to be positive. Why it's not necessarily a technology problem. There is a huge technology problem, unfortunately driven by a lot of money going into the market. And I'm going to get to that in a second because there's a huge push of technology as there is a total addressable market projection that VCs and PEs just love. Right? A huge growth market. And there are not many growth markets left nowadays in the economy if you look at it, um, hence there's a lot of vaporware unfortunately out there. A lot of buzzwords coming down. Everybody is talking about super agents, um, agentic AI, autonomous sourcing. And then you look at it under the hood and you're like, that is actually a Hegel bot or just a decision tree, uh, glorified macro if you want to even say so there is that disappointment. But there are some gems out there that truly have applied that and that's where you see the gains that also, um, quite honestly, uh, replicable and defendable in the P and L. Uh, very early on you could utilize AI to optimize logistics, uh, cost cuts. Right? There are 5 to 20% of logistics, the cost in any system that are just based on inefficiency. Why? Because there's just too much going on for the organization to handle. So they put it almost on um, autopilot. Right. But it's not an optimized autopilot. Uh, that's where the additional cost is, uh, burden buried.

Speaker A: Ah.

Speaker B: And you can get that out. Same thing in inventory reduction. Some parts that are really not risk parts, they are over inventorized. And others that are higher risk, you don't have. So you have to balance that. And that's again an analytics problem because the number of parts floating around in an organization can be thousands and some of them hundreds of thousands. And if you have a large conglomerate, you have 50 plus ERP systems, right? Or instances. So it's all over the place. So that's where AI actually shows the gains. What I would actually, uh, urge the companies is make yourself ready first before you just trust a technology vendor to fix your problems. And there are a couple layers. There is a talent, uh, layer to be ready. Organizations like you help to understand the context and say, what does it mean to be AI ready in procurement? Second is the technology layer being ready and not necessarily what you already bought, but your data, if your data is a mess and companies out there in the AI space say to you, doesn't matter, I can orchestrate it because my AI is so intelligent, they will fix it, uh, run away, literally run away. And are there companies out there that get actually more money by claiming that? Yes. Uh, this is, this is like the paradox, right? And that's because the market is such a growth market that VCs just throw money at the best narrative, not at the best software. So don't be the one that throws your efforts into the best narrative because you will end up disappointed. And then the third layer besides that is actually your processes. So if you look at your processes, are they even AI and autonomous ready? Or is your government handbook and the procurement handbook very much people gated? So, um, committees that decide certain things. Right. Or Kris, that are outside of your purview. Like you implement an AI system, but let's say your legal department doesn't get access to it or doesn't get a say and how to implement it, they will still be the one that delays the process to be autonomous. No, it's not them delaying it, it's the process delaying that. And that's an honest review that we go back to. Master black belt capabilities, quite honestly, where you value stream map your processes not for efficiency, but for AI autonomous processing. And that's something that not enough companies do.

Speaker C: It's interesting when you talk about the, you know, sort of the visibility in terms of, you know, what can we, you know, reasonably, uh, you know, um, understand in terms of our extended supply chain, one of the areas that we're seeing is a, uh, greater focus on compliance and ransomware and you know, a lot of cyber attacks coming through the extended supply chain where Most of your tier 3, 4 don't have the same security protocols and the resources. So going back to the resiliency question, how do we ensure that we're resilient when we can't even ensure that we're getting, you know, that we're protecting our systems from cyber and ransomware from the extended supply chain. But there's no option other than to connect technologically with those tier three, tier four organizations. Um, it seems to be a lot of pressure on the prime now to support your extended supply chain.

Speaker B: Right. You are actually redesigning your supply chain network, um, in light of the geopolitical environment changing and certain things to be quite permanent for the next few years. And not just a disruption, let's say like Covid was a couple years of a disruption. People expected it to be three months. In my early research I said beware, um, it's going to be a couple years, maybe three to four years until we recuperate. And then if you remember, it was like, is it a V recovery? W recovery. What's going on? Right. Um. When we're looking at cyber security and we're looking at developments in technology like quantum computing, you can see adversary attacks to be very capable. And most importantly, where do you hit your enemy's supply chain? You hit it at the aircraft carrier or at the supply chain that supports the aircraft carrier? Well, of course you go into the supply chain because if that big thing doesn't get the supply, it's unusable. And if you attack the big thing, it probably has the best protection. So same in supply chain. What they, what you see The Adversary attacks 2 is in the third and fourth tier of your supply chain generally. And there's a huge uptick of cyber security issues. And they can compile that data and reconcile that data from tier 4 and tier 3 into the bill of material of your top line item. Actually if they know what the composites are of your product, they know your product. Um, and that in quantum computing is a bit like this. Um, think about, you have, you know, a very old computer, um, with a very rigid cyber security environment. And there comes the latest GPU driven quantum computing capable, uh, cybersecurity, uh, attacker that takes layer by layer, tier 1, tier 2, tier 3 exposure layers of your software stack one by one. They are not a threat. But if you combine that, they can unlock your environment and basically go after the data, destroy it, uh, steal it, uh, impede your ability. And the more robotics we utilize in the manufacturing, they can stop manufacturing instantly. And what we're doing right now in the industrialization or re. Industrialization space, people think like, well, you know, bringing manufacturing back to America means that the Americans go back to the production line and do like mind, uh, numbing work. No, what we do is we put robots on the line, we put AI on the line. Yes, we manufacture on site, but labor as a cost component becomes almost irrelevant of the manufacturing future. And that exposure in IoT, we need to make sure that our cyber security environment is part of our supply chain diligence. And when you do that visibility, what you. I call it the software bill of material. You have to be visibility. You have to have visibility of what kind of software your supplier uses, where do they create data, where do they send it, where do they buy it from, who they share it with, and how resilient is their cyber security environment. And if it's your data, we always talk about data sovereignty. You give them the data and you don't care what they do. No, you should care where you send your data. Yes, absolutely. And I mean, spot on, right? Again, a topic outside of the CPO and cs your world, usually they say, oh, the CIO takes care of it. Well, maybe the CIO doesn't even know where the data goes because they are not part of the CSEO environment. So it's all becomes one operational strategy and capability.

Speaker C: Yeah, clearly, as you're pointing out before, you know, again, the cseo, you know, used to work in the back office. The only time that you heard from them was when there was a problem, perfect orders. We didn't hear anything. That was what was expected. Now we're talking about relationships with the cfo, obviously, as we had just talked about, but with chief sustainability officer, with chief compliance officer, roles that did not exist or uh, responsibilities uh, that didn't exist probably five or six years ago. So for leaders today, what signals or indicators should you be watching to anticipate the disruption before it cascades through your supply chain? What are the macro indicators that you would indicate that, uh, you know, you should pay attention to folks, I would

Speaker B: say, generally speaking, right? You want to look at, um, the composition of criticality for an economy when it comes to material imports and exports. Even if you don't use those materials directly in your bill of material, when you decompose it, if there is a trace of that material, you have exposure no matter what the other one is. It's not just about your own supply chain visibility. You need to trace down the supply chain of the commodity or the product you're purchasing in general. Why? Because there's something called global capacity. If capacity goes down even in your competitors environment where you're not exposed to, you're immediately exposed to that because they will try to compensate for that loss in a supply chain that is still active, which is probably yours in that moment. What does it mean to you? Uh, you know, if demand goes up, price goes up, right? And that's, that's very easy if supply is limited. And that is something where you can look at that environment and almost understand that even if you're not hit directly, there's still measures to be taken on your end to protect, hedge your pricing, hedge your, uh, procurement volumes, um, or in fact, you know, keep your supplier very, very close, almost as a partner when it comes to critical material exposure. That's one. The other one is, I think, um, watch out for political change. Uh, and don't disassociate from it by saying we're unbiased, we're apolitical company. No, that's what my research writes about. You need to be Machiavellian, almost like neutrality is a thing of the past. Um, you don't have to communicate what you actually think, but you have to act with what you think. And that means if there's political change in a system where you operate, then you need to understand if that political system is in alignment with your current setup or actually heads on. If it heads on with your current setup, you have two choices. You either align to the current political environment and make sure to keep them very close, or if you think totally different than the political environment, you need to take the consequences and self disrupt because you will be disrupted one way or another. Uh, and that is really the hardest thing to do, right, for companies to say, we don't really align with the politics of this country, but we stick it out. Like Venezuela, a lot of American companies lost tons of assets there. When Chavez came, they were like, let's stick it out, right? We're still do business then. They continue to do business almost for a decade plus, whereas it was almost lunatic. Sorry, my English. Because the gains that they made in the market, they couldn't even exit out of the market. So it was like, we're doing business, but we never get the cash out of the country. And they just decide their own exchange rate. Every time I have an import for my own company to produce a product being sold in the market, which creates cash that doesn't go anywhere. I mean, that is the, uh, ultimate, almost like illusion that, you know, we'll stick it out. No, you're not going to stick anything out, right? You're going to make sure that you have an honest evaluation. Is it a fellow, is it a transactional partner or is it a strategic partner? And the difference between strategic and fellow is fellow aligns also with your views and your political setup, how you operate, where's your biggest market? Uh, another example is a little bit like, why is Germany not so openly, uh, engaged in the trade discussions with the US And China, where Germany's trade is probably the second largest with China when it was with the US the reason is major conglomerates like VW own their P and L revenue mostly to the China market. And of course they lobby in the political environment to say, please keep it low, please don't talk critically about them. Most of our money is made there. Um, you need to understand that even if, let's say they are your clients, right. Um, you're part of their supply chain. It doesn't matter where you position in the supply chain. You have to be more Machiavellian in take care of your own decisions before they are taken care of for you. Doesn't matter how big you are or how small you are. I always say, like, what you can control, you can measure. What you cannot control, you will be measured on. So, and that's really not good. Right. Like I, I hate to be measured on stuff that's, you know, at some point, at some point I decided to just, you know, go by myself being entrepreneur because I won't be. Well, I somehow will be still measured on. But it does not, doesn't come around as a performance review every month or every quarter, it.

Speaker C: Or not. Yeah, that's right.

Speaker B: Exactly. Yes.

Speaker C: Corey, last question. When you look ahead, what separates organizations that are going to simply react. We're in a reactive posture versus those organizations that really are able to redefine their position and take advantage of the marketplace dynamics. So in a nutshell, as you indicated before, who's going to win in the

Speaker B: next decade on supply chains is exactly the right question. Right? In the next decade means you have to prepare yourself for the next decade and not for the next disruption. Major, uh, disruptions are happening faster right now. You know, there were like five plus years, uh, in distance, uh, previously to Covid. Now we're down 3.7 years. Um, doesn't sound like a major reduction, but if you look at the percentage, yeah, it's, it's 20, 30%, uh, actually faster than before, which means there they will happen within probably your job, inside the company because, you know, generally you stay two to three years, maybe some stay five years in the same job before they get promoted, promoted and so on. Right. So within that period of time, you usually think just to, you know, make it, make sure nothing happens during that, but that doesn't help companies. So the leaders that define the next decade build the next decade supply chain network. Because statecraft on the political side really takes three to 10 years to see effect. Um, in democratic Systems they take five to 10 years, sometimes 10 plus years. When you think about infrastructure investments, right, you build an air airport in the western world takes 10 years, um, versus, you know, some of, you know, if you build an airport in China, they do it in 18 months. Right. Uh, but depends where you live. So you look at that infrastructure environment and you say, can I operate within this and how are my products situated? For all the disruptions that are happening in technology, are those products still going to be the products I'm going to sell? If not, how about I set up my supply chain for the products of tomorrow already with a scalability option? So that is where supply chain becomes part of the boardroom business strategy conversation, and not a business execution function only. So leaders are in the supply chain procurement world, a business strategy creator, not just an executor. And then the other one of course is like, tackle the basics. Do you have visibility? How deep is the visibility? Do you have analytics capabilities that can span 80% plus of your data in the company? It's a very easy thing. You look at all the analytics that you're doing and then analyze how much of your data is being utilized in the analytics. If it's not 80% plus of your data. And unfortunately most of the companies run analytics on 20% of the data. Then they say we don't have data. And then you look at it, you don't even have to look outside. You look at inside their Systems. You're like 80% of the stuff that you have, you're not even utilized to make your decisions better. Why not? Well, I mean, it's like, you know, until we aggregate it, we reconcile it, it takes too long. And then you're like, ever heard of something called artificial intelligence? And they're like, yeah, but that doesn't work. Like it doesn't work because you're not ready. If you're ready and you put it into place, then it does work. And actually that's what leaders do, right? So when you think about those analytics engines that are out there, a couple of them are really powerful. You can look at different analyst report, or in fact, you know, you can look quite honestly who is providing policymakers with analytics, because government is actually not always that numb on that thing. Like they have an intelligence service for a reason. And that intelligence service utilizes those companies to create strategies and adversary attack protocols or defensive protocols. If you see those companies in that environment and they provide a supply chain angle, that's the first company I would go to. So companies ah, that um, run on AI or they call themselves AI Native and they don't have a government angle, you run a risk. It's maybe more hype than substance. If they have a government angle and they're embedded in intelligence, State Department in, in econ, Economics or even you know, um, Department of Defense or so that means there is literally substance behind that because there are tons of very, very smart people evaluating that before they engage with the most critical information that we have as a society. And we have to trust that. That's the highest trust level that you can have, unfortunately, or fortunately. And that's where you can then dissect that. So implement AI. Yes, before you are too late, but make it in a very intelligent way. No pun intended. And last but not least, I would say look at your product exposure. Do you have over engineered material in there that impedes your ability to continue business? When something happens too many over engineered parts that require certain inputs from single source environments that are not aligned with your political view, you, they're bound to disrupt you and stop you at risk, Right? Absolutely. So you can out engineer that based on innovations that are out there right now. You know, um, I just name a few like dysprosium and all of that. That's everything that in April from China became a critical material export quota and now is six times higher in price within. I just look 4th of June, like in five weeks it became six times higher. It's not initially a big cost component, but if it's six times higher. Yes, it becomes one and actually if it's not available it takes down your entire.

Speaker A: That's.

Speaker B: Yeah. So those are the ones that are I think the uh, next decade and a last qualifying point and you're part of that conversation. Policymakers. If you're not talking to policymakers, if you're not lobbying for your interest in that environment, then you're not part of the leadership, you're part of the followership. So uh, it's almost like emancipate yourself, educate yourself. I always say from an ex niche expert supply chain specialist, you need to be a expert generalist that can talk politics, that can talk technology, that knows everything about supply chain and you become the most valuable asset in that room because suddenly you expose the blind spots to them and you cover them. At the same point in time you will be very Much appreciated in that environment. Environment. So that's, I think, where you operate and where, you know, we operate and that's how we actually also share the common interests. Right?

Speaker C: Or. Yeah, I can't thank you enough. Uh, that just really wonderful insight in terms of how supply chains have become instruments of geopolitics, how AI can actually improve our decision making in a volatile world, and more importantly, what leaders need to do today to stay competitive in this fragmented world. Uh, I'm sure we'll have more conversations in the future as we has evolved in terms of the dynamic environment that we live in. Corey, thank you so much for joining us today.

Speaker B: Thank you for having me, Abe. And uh, again, it's amazing how you also organize, uh, you know, yourself and self disrupt and make yourself relevant constantly. And I think that is something that a lot of organizations can look at as a blueprint for themselves. So appreciate you having me. And that's one of the examples, you know, where you can say, yes, we do it. So appreciate that, that.

Speaker C: Thank you, Cory. All the best.

Speaker B: Thank you.

Speaker A: The Chain Podcast is brought to you by ascm, the association for Supply Chain Management, a global leader in supply chain, organizational transformation, innovation and leadership. You can listen to all episodes of the Chain Podcast on your favorite podcast platform. Remember to download, rate and review. Learn more about ASCM and how we can help you connect to your supply chain community by visiting our website@ascm um.org.