A Futurist and AI expert, he leads KŌSE Advisory, advises ODI Global and GLOBSEC, and is a key analyst on tech, geopolitics and value chains.gettyIn today’s geopolitics, some wars are already being fought as instruments of leverage. Others, over Taiwan, the South China Sea and the Eastern Mediterranean, remain undeclared, because declaring them costs more than staying ambiguous. Enterprises tracking only the first set are exposed to the second.In my last piece, I used the conflict over the Strait of Hormuz to illustrate the gap between disruptive power and structural power. Six months later, this remains the operating environment: Hormuz has been effectively closed since February 28, 2026, in what the IEA calls the most severe energy disruption in history, with roughly 350 tankers stranded at the peak.Ambiguity is not the absence of strategy. It is the strategy. And it is the new empire. You no longer have to occupy the border—you just have to occupy the uncertainty around it.Deterrence once depended on clarity: red lines, troops and treaties, since clarity makes cost calculable. States now withhold that clarity deliberately, because ambiguity buys more control than commitment. Never formally declare a strait closed or a vessel seized, and every option stays open to you, without triggering a sanctions regime.The Wars Being Fought Right Now This first tier splits into two patterns: ambiguity that fails and ambiguity that's controlled.Ukraine, in its fifth year fighting Russia, and Sudan, in its fourth year of civil war, show the impact of failed ambiguity. A UN mission has identified genocide hallmarks in Darfur, where more than 33 million face the world's largest hunger crisis. Neither war ends, because no one, not even Moscow or the RSF, controls the ambiguity. Everybody bleeds inside it.Iran and the United States show the instrument working as designed. Since Hormuz closed on February 28, Tehran has run it as a selective toll rather than a declared blockade, allowing some vessels to pass while boarding others. U.S. forces captured Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro in January and moved to control the country's oil. That same month, Panama's Supreme Court voided a Panama Canal port concession held by a Hong Kong operator, amid direct U.S. pressure over Chinese influence at the canal. This is doctrine, redomination, one asset at a time. Businesses, especially supply chains, are not built for this. They model risk as war or no war, route open or closed, as if turmoil resolves into a finite set of scenarios. Miss how ambiguity is engineered and you become another player trying to win against the casino.The Wars Not Yet Declared None of the examples above foretell the next major war. That war starts where no shot has been fired, in three theaters already rehearsing the posture.The South China Sea was the site of several flashpoints in a single week this past July: Chinese Coast Guard personnel struck a Filipino sailor at Second Thomas Shoal, then fired water cannon on Philippine vessels at Scarborough Shoal twice more. Ambiguity allows Beijing to test resolve without triggering the US-Philippines defense treaty.Taiwan sits behind this contest as the higher-value target, producing more than 60% of the world's semiconductors and roughly 90% of the most advanced nodes, with TSMC alone near 70% of global foundry capacity. Ambiguity keeps collecting rent here.The Eastern Mediterranean is the third front, closest to Europe's door. Turkey has advanced a draft maritime law claiming EEZ rights up to 200 nautical miles under its Blue Homeland doctrine, challenging the Greece-Cyprus-Israel framework and reactivating the Kirkuk-Ceyhan pipeline as a bypass.Why The Doctrine WorksThe Strait of Hormuz allows us to see the mechanism of ambiguity in full. Iran's selective toll system forced Washington into a naval counter-blockade in April, intercepting Iran-linked tankers carrying sanctioned crude. By August, both governments publicly claimed control of the waterway. Yet neither claim settles who runs it, allowing both sides to continue operating without triggering a wider war. Since the blockade resumed in July, most tankers transit “dark,” leaving satellite firms as the only real record of what is moving.The doctrine survives because most organizations lack the tools to see through it. Dr. Rebecca Nadin of ODI Global puts it plainly: "Decision-making in uncertainty is the new normal. We can no longer use complexity as an excuse to avoid hard decisions in a world where certainty is an illusion." Ian Cronin of the WEF's supply chain community agrees, saying, "We must continue innovating supply chains to stay resilient and competitive. The path forward isn't passive observation but active adaptation." Critical minerals prove them right; no navy is required. The IEA projects that China will supply over 60% of refined lithium and cobalt, and roughly 80% of graphite and rare earths, by 2035. Refining capacity, not the ore, carries the leverage.No internal risk function replicates ODI Global: distance from commercial interest, policymaker access and fragmented signals turned into intelligence before a headline. Companies without that view defend against yesterday's disruption.The Danger Of Awaiting CertaintyMost corporate risk models operate as switches, built for probability, not ambiguity. That fails against a doctrine built never to fully close, since the actor can add a new category or authority without notice. Frank Knight separated risk, where odds can be assigned, from uncertainty, where they cannot; Ellsberg's premium for avoiding the second is ambiguity aversion. I coined “ambiguity factor" for that premium: holding a position now, plus the volatility of not knowing when it resolves.Calculate it as a current cost from invoices, plus a future cost modeled as profit or loss scenarios. Split every element into what the firm controls (routing and contract terms) and what it doesn't (enforcement selectivity and jurisdiction claims). Set a floor and ceiling from the most extreme moves made. Hormuz insurance has moved from 0.25% to 10% of hull value since February, the spread whose P&L share defines the ambiguity factor: insurance, freight and clearance timing are set by an authority it doesn't control.Track that share over time: Probability-driven costs converge as data accumulates; ambiguity-driven costs do not, since the disagreement was never about frequency but what is being insured. This framework appears in my previous articles about alliances and fortresses and about ideology versus pragmatism. Waiting for certainty is an unpriced position, and the ambiguity factor makes that exposure visible before the bill is due. What Leaders Must Do NowChokepoint mapping, cross-referenced against ODI Global's risk modeling and dark fleet tracking, points to one assumption: Dominance now turns on technological velocity, not army size. Four mandates follow:• CEOs: Stop scoring risk against army size and headline closures. As argued in my article about operational darwinism, organizations waiting for stable conditions are already obsolete.• Chief procurement officers: There is no neutral supplier anymore. Map three to four tiers deep and re-qualify anyone tied to Taiwan's foundries or South China Sea lanes.• Chief supply chain officers: Interdependency is this era's permanent condition. Pre-cost alternate routings around Hormuz and Panama while still cheap.• CISOs: Kinetic and cyber ambiguity are the same weapon on different layers.Institutions with distance from commercial interests—ODI Global, Bruegel, the WEF—and expert advisors who create bespoke analysis (as opposed to catering to any commercial interests) are better positioned to deliver more impartial analysis, dissecting statistics rather than repeating hype and headlines.There is a Turkish saying: Durgun sular derinden akar. Still waters run deep. It is a warning, not a comfort. The calmest strait hides the strongest currents. Leaders who mistake probability for resolved ambiguity and wait idly for calm will be the last to see that ambiguity move against them.​Forbes Technology Council is an invitation-only community for world-class CIOs, CTOs and technology executives. Do I qualify?