From supply chains to blockchain, a tough road ahead for CIOs

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From managing supply chains to leveraging blockchain, CIOs face some challenging decisions in 2023.

Let’s start with China. While the dramatic shift in President Xi Jinping’s zero-Covid policy carries some risks, the easing of restrictions has been largely welcomed by investors and companies operating there. But be prepared for unforeseen consequences. Although unpopular, strict lockdowns have been effective in curbing Covid, keeping the world’s most populous country off the WHO’s top ten list of Covid-related casualties. As Forbes Senior contributor and Harvard professor Willy Shih points out that China’s “factory city” model makes the country particularly vulnerable to contagion. Also, much of the population is unvaccinated – and studies of Chinese vaccines such as Sinovac, published in The Lancet, have found them to be less effective than mRNA vaccines (such as Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech). With less reporting of cases in China, it may be difficult to tell how the pandemic will play out.

What we do know is that many companies are accelerating a push to diversify their supply chains outside of China. If talent shortages, rising costs and political pressure from Washington weren’t enough, violent protests and labor disputes at the world’s largest iPhone factory last month drove home the value of supplier diversity. Simon Lin, chairman of Taiwan-based iPhone supplier Wistron, notes that it won’t be quick or easy, but he told Forbes that the company already has what he calls the “first-phase preparation” of a global footprint in various stages of readiness.”

Few understand the complexities of doing business in or with mainland partners like those working in enterprise technology. It is the espionage concerns that prompted Washington to ban Chinese telecom and video surveillance equipment. (The U.S. formally denied the charges again. Huawei CFO Meng Wangzhou last week, but the Senate also introduced a bipartisan bill to prevent Huawei from accessing U.S. banks.

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) also announced bipartisan legislation Tuesday to ban TikTok in the United States, citing concerns that the app could be used to spy on Americans. This is in addition to state bans. To understand the fear that drives these decisions, look at the investigative coverage that Emily Baker-White and others are doing here.

Finally, of course, we’re keeping our eyes on the latest drama surrounding FTX co-founder Sam Bankman-Fried and his enigmatic CTO Gary Wang. We have long emphasized the differences between cryptocurrencies and the broad, transformative impact of the blockchain technologies on which they are based. But the ripple effects of FTX may dampen enthusiasm for the blockchain distributed ledger technology on which it is based.

But the real cautionary tale for enterprise technology leaders comes from the collapse of the Australia Securities Exchange (ASX), which has killed its six-year project to move much of its workflow to a shared, distributed ledger similar to the blockchain. The aim was to make the market more efficient by creating a single source of truth around share ownership. Easier said than done, it turns out. But the experiences will undoubtedly pave the way for that dream to be realized in other contexts.