It’s hard to think of anything more trivial to most people around the world than gusts of wind in the Egyptian desert. Yet on March 23, 2021, it was just such gusts, at just the wrong moment, that pushed the bow of Ever Given, a giant container ship, into a bank of the Suez Canal. The ship got stuck and couldn’t be budged for six days, blocking the canal, halting hundreds of ships, freezing an estimated $10 billion in trade each day, and sending shocks rippling through global supply chains.
