One of the unexpected consequences of Hurricane Helene is that it disrupted and shut down the high-quality quartz mines near Spruce Pine, North Carolina. This will cause a temporary disruption for the semiconductor industry.

One of the most important steps in making silicon chips and key components for solar panels is to melt down a highly purified substance called polysilicon. This can only be done in crucibles that don’t react with the polysilicon, and the best material for making the crucibles is the ultra-pure quartz that is mined at Spruce Pine. The mines there are said to have the highest-purity quartz in the world and most of the crucibles in the world used for making chips come from Spruce Pine.

The pandemic showed us how vulnerable the world is to disruptions in the supply chain of important materials. In the telecom industry we had some surprising shortages caused by breaks in the supply chain for raw materials. One of the earliest and biggest disruptions during the pandemic came from the shortage of the raw materials used to make the resins that are used as enclosures for telecom gear. Resins require polyethylenes, nylons, polycarbonates, and acrylonitrile butadiene (ABS). The supply chain broke for several of these key components.

A longer-lasting shortage in the industry crippled the manufacture of computer chips. It turns out that chip manufacturing relies on almost two hundred raw minerals like silicon, germanium, gallium, indium phosphide, boron, phosphorus, and many others. The worldwide supply chain issues shut down chip manufacturing when many of the raw materials became hard to acquire.

While major weather events can disrupt the supply chain, the impact is usually temporary, except when severe weather destroys key facilities that are part of the supply chain. There are many other causes of supply chain disruption including political unrest, labor shortages, high fuel costs, transportation restraints, and cybersecurity threats.

We are constantly reminded of the fragility of the international supply chain. The collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore killed the delivery of raw materials to numerous U.S. manufacturers. A recent rumor of a dockworker strike caused a shortage of toilet paper as consumers recalled one of the biggest early issues during the pandemic. Political unrest in Africa routinely cuts off major supplies of cobalt, platinum, and chromium.

Some supply chain problems are purely political, like when nations get into tariff wars and raise the cost of importing goods. Farmers too well remember the impact of the Chinese tariffs on U.S. pork that were imposed as part of a larger trade war a few years ago.

The newest cause of disruptions comes from cybersecurity attacks on companies. Corporations can be shut down for weeks or months as a result of major hacking. Many U.S. auto dealers suffered major problems a few months ago when CDK, a supplier of the software that operates dealers, was hacked.

One of the key characteristics of supply chain disruptions is that they are most often a big surprise. There is nobody who could have imagined the disruption of mining for ultra-pure quartz in western North Carolina. I’m sure that the folks running that mine would have sworn that such an event was unthinkable. What we’ve learned in recent years is that almost nothing is unthinkable anymore.