#13 The Weight of the Digital Economy
The market is focused on who will build the future. It is paying far less attention to what the future will be built from. In March 2021, the Ever Given became lodged across the Suez Canal, blocking one of the world’s most important shipping routes. For six days, hundreds of vessels carrying crude oil, LNG, semiconductors and consumer goods accumulated at either end of the canal. Global supply chains slowed. Commodity prices moved. Manufacturers recalculated inventories. A single ship briefly became one of the world’s most important macroeconomic variables. The lesson extended well beyond maritime logistics. Modern economies are not usually constrained by their largest industries. They are constrained by the narrow points through which those industries must all pass. Those bottlenecks often attract remarkably little attention until they fail. Artificial intelligence, semiconductors, hyperscale data centres, solar power and electric vehicles are generally analysed as separate investment themes, each with its own forecasts, valuations and specialist research. Yet they increasingly depend upon the same industrial foundation. Every one requires reliable electrical transmission. Every one depends upon increasingly sophisticated electronic systems. Every one ultimately draws upon a surprisingly small group of materials whose physical properties remain exceptionally difficult to substitute. Technology has advanced rapidly. The periodic table has not.
