After years of chaos in the global supply chain, Ryan Petersen, CEO of the logistics company Flexport, felt 2026 might offer some modicum of order. The pandemic was firmly in the rearview mirror. Red Sea shipping channels—which had been closed due to the Gaza crisis—were finally opening. The Supreme Court struck down many of Donald Trump’s tariffs, and some Flexport customers were hoping for refunds. Petersen could finally concentrate on what he had identified as the company’s major push of the year—embracing the latest AI technologies to make Flexport run more efficiently.

Then the United States and Israel went to war with Iran. Chaos is back, and it’s going to cost us all.

I spoke with Petersen this week to get a sense of how bad things are in the global supply chain—and what this means for Flexport’s business.

While the Iran war will wreak havoc on Flexport’s customers, it’s also an opportunity for the company to prove its worth. After all, its business is built on routing and tracking goods with cloud technology, improvising when necessary to get stuff to its destination. Those are necessary skills when the Strait of Hormuz is perilous—several ships were attacked there this week—and major Middle East ports are under fire.

Port countries like Kuwait, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates are central hubs for goods in transit. One large shipping company told Petersen that it won’t load containers on ships routed through some of the major ports of the Middle East...