Fragility as an Emergent Strategy, Not an Accident
There is a persistent tendency to treat each crisis as an isolated event: the pandemic was “a shock,” the energy crisis “an exception,” logistical bottlenecks “a side effect,” inflation “temporary.” When you place them side by side, however, they no longer look like accidents. They look like successive stress tests applied to the same type of system.
It was tested.
1. Redundancy: from strategic virtue to accounting waste
Rome is the classic example, but not the only one. Early maritime empires built alternative routes even when they were more expensive. Medieval cities had redundant guilds. Armies maintained entire depots of equipment that might not be used for years.
Why? Because temporary absence was more dangerous than permanent cost.
The modern contrast is brutal. Before the pandemic, Western hospitals were optimized to the functional limit. Beds almost permanently occupied, minimal stockpiles, staff calibrated for “normal flow.” It was efficient. Excellent on paper.
Then an event appeared that was not historically exotic. A pandemic. And suddenly, the lack of redundancy became visible. Not because the system was poorly designed, but because it was optimized precisely for a situation in which nothing unusual happens.
Redundancy would have looked like waste.
Until its absence looked like failure.
2. Single Points of Failure: semiconductors as a global lesson
The semiconductor supply chain is the perfect example of a modern SPoF because it is not hidden. It is public, documented, and accepted.
A few factories produce advanced chips.
A few companies produce the equipment for those factories.
An extremely small number of people fully understand the entire process.
It worked magnificently as long as no one blew in the wrong direction.
The pandemic showed how fragile the system was without the need for military conflict. Temporary shutdowns, unexpected demand, logistical delays. The result? Automotive production lines halted across entire continents because a microscopic component was missing.
Not because the technology did not exist.
But because no alternative existed.
The SPoF is not a flaw. It is the final form of global optimization.
3. Relocation: when politics discovers the limits of social physics
After 2020, almost all governments suddenly discovered the concept of “industrial sovereignty.” Statements flowed. Budgets were announced. Factories were promised.
Reality moved more slowly.
Building a factory is the easy part.
Building an industry is the hard part.
A banal example: Europe can build battery factories. But it cannot instantly produce the full supplier chain, tacit know-how, ultra-specialized workforce, and production culture that formed in Asia over decades.
The USSR attempted the forced relocation of strategic industries. It partially succeeded. At enormous cost and with uneven quality. Not because it lacked resources, but because ecosystems do not move by decree.
Relocation is possible.
Rapid and complete relocation is not.
4. Technological complexity: when no one is at the controls anymore
Modern energy systems are an excellent example. Extremely interconnected networks, balancing algorithms, spot markets, derivative contracts, distributed critical infrastructure.
They work. Until they don’t.
Recent blackouts, from Texas to various European regions, were not caused by a single catastrophic error. They were the result of combinations of small, interdependent decisions that were difficult to anticipate.
When a system becomes sufficiently complex, no one is really “driving” anymore. Everyone monitors. Intervenes locally. Hopes that local adjustments will not produce global effects.
Control disappears elegantly.
Crisis management remains.
5. The state: from shock absorber to cost distributor
The European energy crisis is a clean case study. Initially, the state absorbed the shock: price caps, subsidies, compensations. The real cost was temporarily moved into public debt.
Then the bill arrived. In the form of taxes, inflation, reductions in other services, stricter rules.
The state did not “fail.” It did exactly what a shock absorber does. But every shock absorber has a limited range. When it is exceeded, the shock does not disappear. It is transmitted.
This is where political tension emerges.
Not from ideology, but from mathematics.
6. The individual: the last buffer in the chain
The individual becomes the final buffer. Adjustable, fragmented, without real collective bargaining power.
When rent rises, energy costs rise, rules change frequently, and the future becomes opaque, it is not perceived as “collapse.” It is perceived as fatigue. As stress. As lack of air.
Exactly the kind of degradation that does not trigger spectacular reactions, but erodes social cohesion over time.
Historically, this is what most declines look like.
Not as collapses.
But as the normalization of worse conditions.
7. Conclusion: the shared lesson of all examples
All these cases, historical and contemporary, say the same thing: systems do not die because they are poorly designed. They die because they are too well adapted to a narrow set of conditions.
Maximum efficiency creates performance.
Resilience demands permanent sacrifices.
We chose the first option.
Not out of stupidity.
Out of rationality.
The systems that will survive will appear slow, expensive, and poorly optimized. They will be constantly criticized for “inefficiency.”
Exactly as all systems that endured were criticized.
The rest will remain excellent examples.
In textbooks.