I'm John Batchel. I welcome my colleague and friend Michael Bernstam of the Hoover Institution.

In the midst of the Iran War, we're looking at supply chain and shortages and price spikes.

Of course, we're thinking about oil and gas, but there are many other dependencies out of the Gulf region where the combat is now.

And Michael has agreed first to speak about the planet and the supply chain.

Some surprising shortages are caused by shin bone, knee bone, elbow bone.

You understand they all connect.

And then we'll turn to the Russian economy in what looks to be a last-moment rescue of the budget.

Michael, a very good evening to you.

My three favorites from the Financial Times report about what can go wrong and why with the

Straits of Hormuz or with the general combat in the area of the Gulf.

My three favorites are sulfur.

Who knew you needed sulfur for copper manufacturing.

The second is helium. Who knew that you needed it for microchips? And my absolute top favorite

is the Dead Sea, bromine from the Dead Sea. I did not know when I waited into the Red Sea, the Dead Sea, that I was waiting into a gold mine

for the highest technical engineering we do, which is TSM in Taiwan and ASML in Europe.

They used the bromine to etch the silicon wafer to make the chip that

Nvidia designs to run the AI. All of those commodities out there, Michael, I had no idea.

Does the rest of the world know about this? Was this a secret? Good evening to you, Michael.

Good evening to you, and this proves the greatest law of life and law of economics is that all production is local

and all consumption is global.

And then the production is global because you need inputs and those inputs go into other inputs

and we have global markets.

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