Bridges rarely collapse under the heaviest truck. They give way under the thousandth ordinary one.
That thought kept coming back this week, starting in France. On Saturday, a month of student protests met with wider anger over the cost of living and deteriorating public services. More than half a million people took to the streets across the country. Most demonstrations were peaceful, but some descended into violence, with shops looted, public buildings attacked and the town hall in Limoges set on fire. Authorities reported more than 500 police officers, gendarmes and firefighters injured, alongside nearly 1,800 arrests.
The underlying tensions had been building for weeks. The demonstrations themselves were announced in advance.
Out at sea, the story is slower but no less telling. The Hormuz crisis began in late February, and by early October, spot container rates from the Far East to the US were still more than 300% above their pre-crisis levels. Analysts believe rates have probably peaked, but they don’t expect a sharp fall any time soon. The immediate shock may have passed its worst point. The costs, however, are still showing up on the invoice.
Then there’s the cloud, where the risk is much less visible. In Britain, Microsoft, Google, Amazon and Oracle have been designated as critical third parties to the financial sector and brought under direct regulatory oversight. The logic is simple: when so many banks rely on so few providers, a single failure can have consequences far beyond the company where it starts.
A street, a shipping lane and a server farm have little in common. What they share is accumulated strain. Each carries a load that keeps creeping up, and each can look fine until the day it doesn’t.
So here are two questions to chew on. Which hairline cracks in your own organisation does everyone walk past because they’ve always been there? And who owns a risk that belongs to everybody, and therefore to nobody?
This week on the Global Risk Forum, let’s compare notes. Tell us what you’re seeing, and where you think the next crack will appear.
- Global Risk Forum 471
- Thursday, 22nd October at 16:00 BST
- REGISTRATION >>
- Global Risk Forum 472
- Friday, 23rd October at 09:00 BST
- REGISTRATION >>
