What a FARO subscriber reads.
FARO publishes three complementary formats. Each serves a precise function in strategic reading. None summarises current events. None comments on what everyone has already seen.
Full access is reserved for subscribers. The extracts below give an indication of the level of analysis — they do not substitute for it.
Ormuz: strategic demining.
Ceasefire negotiations mediated by Oman, confirmed on March 25, include no mine-clearing mechanism for the Strait of Hormuz. A technical detail that changes everything: Iran laid mines in the Strait between March 10 and 15. Mines do not disappear with a ceasefire — they require 3 to 6 weeks of active naval demining under military protection. No current agreement specifies who conducts this demining, under what authority, with what security guarantees for civilian vessels. The market assumes diplomatic relief equals reopening of the Strait. This is a category error. The global helium buffer — essential for semiconductor manufacturing — runs out in the first week of May. If the Strait remains closed, TSMC and Samsung begin to ration production.
What this text makes visible: the exact moment when a diplomatic signal masks an unresolved physical constraint — and why this changes the decision horizon.
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View access formats →Structure — systemic reading Q1 2026.
The effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz since March 4, 2026 reveals a vulnerability that geopolitical risk models had systematically underestimated. This is not merely an oil shock. It is the simultaneous exposure of three physical dependencies that the digital economy had rendered invisible: 20% of global oil supply, 20% of global LNG via Ras Laffan, and more than a third of global helium — essential for chip manufacturing with no technical substitute. AI sovereignty is no longer decided only in terrestrial servers. In January 2026, SpaceX filed a request for 1 million AI computing satellites in low orbit. On March 20, Blue Origin presented 51,600 satellites in sun-synchronous orbit as spatial data centres. China announced 200,000 state processing satellites. It is decided in orbit.
What this text makes visible: recalibrating your reading of power balances before the period's decisions are made.
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View access formats →The great reshuffling.
The world has built a multi-trillion dollar digital economy on a physical infrastructure whose vulnerability nodes are geographically concentrated, militarily exposed and structurally non-redundant. Ormuz, Ras Laffan, TSMC fabs, Korean foundries: the same four or five geographies that simultaneously concentrate energy, LNG, helium and semiconductors. The Iran war did not create this vulnerability. It simply made it visible. The recomposition of global energy flows toward Russia is the most strategically significant and least covered dynamic of the window. Moscow does not win through power — it wins through geography. The transition to renewables to reduce hydrocarbon dependency mechanically reinforces dependency on Chinese clean technology value chains. One dependency replaces another.
What this text makes visible: stepping outside sectoral reading to see the interdependencies that condition strategic choices.
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