Trapped By Design | Risk Updates for Weeks of 17 June

Unbreakable Ventures

Trapped By Design | Risk Updates for Weeks of 17 June - 1 July '26

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Trapped By Design | Risk Updates for Weeks of 17 June - 1 July '26

Threat concerns this week: Why 91% of businesses can't see their own AI dependencies. How grounded airlines became the resilience lesson we all need. And 5 quick fires you should know about.

Ollie Law, Brad Law, Martin Petts, and 2 others

Jul 01, 2026

Hello 👋 get a brew on because these are the top emerging risks between June 17th, and July 1st, 2026…

Review our report’s terminology here ↗

Our main risk this fortnight is…

1. Technological: Hidden AI Dependencies Expose Enterprises

A new IBM study finds that 91% of organisations surveyed say they don’t fully understand their dependencies across AI vendors, models, and infrastructure, limiting the ability to assess risk and plan for disruption.
As firms embed AI into core operations, most remain locked into systems they cannot easily change, with 81% saying a seven-day vendor outage would still cause severe or critical disruption, effectively halting operations.
Disruption is already routine. Surveyed leaders report an average of six AI-related disruptions over the past two years, largely driven by vendor services.
The threats extend beyond outages. Respondents also cite unexpected changes across the AI ecosystem, including price increases, usage restrictions, model deprecations, and performance degradation.
A small elite is pulling ahead. Organisations with the most advanced AI control capabilities protect more than half of their operating profit from AI-driven disruptions, yet only 7% operate at this level, signalling a widening gap between those building adaptable AI systems and those constrained by dependency.

Sources

IBM Study: Limited Control and Rising Dependencies Leave Enterprises Exposed in the Age of AI | IBM Newsroom | June 2026

You should be concerned if…

Enterprises with AI embedded in core operations: With most firms unable to map their AI dependencies, a single vendor outage, price hike, or model deprecation could halt operations. The lack of visibility leaves leaders unable to assess true exposure or plan continuity.
Regulated industries handling sensitive data: 68% of surveyed executives say meeting data residency and sovereignty requirements across geographies is challenging, creating compliance and continuity risk for financial services, healthcare, and government bodies operating across borders.
Organisations carrying legacy technical debt: Legacy complexity is also widely cited by respondents (57%), reflecting mergers, acquisitions, and historical decisions, which compound the difficulty of switching or governing AI systems flexibly.
Smaller firms reliant on single AI providers: Without the resources to diversify vendors or build sovereign infrastructure, smaller players risk being trapped by usage restrictions and price increases, eroding margins and limiting their ability to respond to ecosystem shifts.
Procurement and governance teams: Traditional procurement cycles move slower than AI ecosystem changes, leaving teams exposed to contractual terms that fail to account for sudden model retirements, performance degradation, or escalating costs.

These items are generic assumptions. We recommend considering your own unique risk landscape against your critical dependencies. If you don’t know what they are, get in touch.

Preventative actions

Map your full AI dependency chain

Conduct a comprehensive audit of every AI vendor, model, and infrastructure layer your operations rely on. Visibility is the prerequisite for risk assessment. You cannot plan continuity around dependencies you have never documented or stress-tested.

Build vendor redundancy and exit strategies

Avoid single points of failure by qualifying alternative providers and negotiating portability into contracts. Ensure data and workloads can migrate if a vendor raises prices, restricts usage, or deprecates a model your operations depend upon.

Strengthen AI sovereignty and control

Invest in greater control across data, models, infrastructure, and applications. The minority of firms with advanced control capabilities protect significantly more operating profit, demonstrating that adaptable, sovereign AI architecture directly underpins resilience and performance.

Stress-test for a multi-day vendor outage

Model the operational impact of a seven-day outage from each critical AI supplier. Establish fallback processes, manual workarounds, and contingency capacity so that a single disruption cannot effectively halt your business.

Align governance with AI velocity

Update procurement and governance frameworks to match the pace of AI change. Embed clauses covering model deprecation, performance guarantees, price stability, and data sovereignty so contractual protections keep pace with a fast-evolving ecosystem.

2. Geopolitical: Airlines Become Resilience Case Study

The airline industry is among the hardest hit by the Iran conflict, offering a live business continuity lesson. The major airlines of the Middle East, including Emirates, Etihad, and Qatar Airways, suspended all operations facing major disruptions, while international airlines like Air India, British Airways, Cathay Pacific, and Lufthansa also suspended services.
The disruption has been severe. Airspace closures in the UAE, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, and other Gulf states have led to over 4,000 daily flight cancellations, stranding hundreds of thousands of passengers.
Even with reopenings, recovery is slow. The largest operational challenge is no longer whether airspace is technically open. The issue is that too much traffic is now attempting to move through too few viable routing options.
Layered atop this, structural supply chain strain persists. Austrian Airlines’ CEO warns that aviation supply chain disruption remains a long-term challenge, with aircraft delivery delays and shortages of parts and engines expected to influence planning through at least 2028.
The survivors will teach the rest of us. Carriers that endure are doing so through contingency planning. One carrier has avoided capacity reductions by relying on contingency planning, fleet flexibility, and support from the wider group. Meanwhile, smaller airlines like Gulf Air and Middle East Airlines have faced an increased risk of bankruptcy due to sustained airspace closures and soaring insurance premiums.

Sources

You should be concerned if…

Gulf-based and Asian carriers: Proximity and reliance on Gulf transit make these airlines most exposed. India is particularly exposed because roughly 40% of its $130 billion in annual revenue comes from traffic passing through the Gulf. Reroutes and suspensions are eroding margins severely.
Smaller and indebted airlines: Carriers without group-wide support or deep balance sheets face existential threat. Sustained airspace closures and soaring insurance premiums have pushed smaller operators toward bankruptcy, making them cautionary rather than instructive case studies.
Any business dependent on air freight: Maritime diversions around the Cape of Good Hope are adding between two and four weeks to shipping times, while air freight capacity across Middle Eastern routes has tightened and congestion is spreading through ports. Time-sensitive goods face mounting delays.
Business continuity and resilience planners across all sectors: Airlines are a leading indicator. Having weathered pandemics, fuel shocks, and now conflict, the carriers that survive offer transferable playbooks on contingency planning, asset flexibility, and operating under permanent uncertainty.
Insurers and aviation lessors: Soaring premiums and concentrated risk in volatile regions are reshaping underwriting. Lessors face exposure as carriers reroute, ground fleets, or fail, threatening lease income and asset values across long-haul widebody portfolios.

Preventative actions

Treat airlines as a live monitoring benchmark

Track how surviving carriers adapt. Their responses to airspace closures, fuel volatility, and routing constraints provide a real-time playbook for resilience that businesses in other industries can study and adapt before facing comparable shocks.

Build a credible “Plan B” for critical operations

Airlines that avoided capacity cuts did so through pre-built contingency plans and asset flexibility. Maintain alternative routes, suppliers, and capacity so external shocks disrupt your plan without halting your business entirely.

Pool and share assets across the wider group

Carriers redistribute aircraft, engines, and capacity across group networks to absorb shocks. Organisations should similarly design for shared resources and mutual support across business units rather than optimising each unit in isolation.

Reprice and diversify risk exposure

With insurance premiums soaring and routing options thin, reassess concentration risk now. Diversify suppliers, transit corridors, and geographic dependencies, and lock in contingency fuel, capacity, or inventory buffers before disruption forces reactive, costlier decisions.

Plan around prolonged, not temporary, disruption

The aviation supply crunch is forecast to persist for years. Build planning horizons that assume disruption is structural rather than transient, so your continuity strategy survives extended uncertainty rather than betting on rapid normalisation.

Quick snippet stories

Pharma Supply Chains Hit Record Pressure A Moody’s report warns that pharmaceutical supply chains face unprecedented strain as geopolitical disruption, manufacturing weaknesses, cyber threats, and counterfeit medicines combine to create a new era of risk. The danger is that these threats are interconnected yet managed in silos. Firms should adopt integrated frameworks and improve visibility across suppliers and distribution networks.
Main link to resource
UAE Weighs Humanitarian Early-Warning Centre The UAE is studying a humanitarian aid early-warning centre to strengthen crisis response, reflecting how proactive risk anticipation is becoming central to regional resilience strategy. The risk it addresses is reactive, slow disaster response amid escalating regional instability. Organisations should similarly invest in early-warning systems and pre-positioned contingency capacity.
Main link to resource
World Bank Flags Sustained Gas Price Volatility The World Bank forecasts prolonged volatility in global gas prices. The risk stems from the Hormuz disruption, which affected global gas markets, with about 20% of the world’s supply of liquefied natural gas having moved through the Strait in 2025. Energy-intensive businesses should hedge exposure and diversify supply sources.
Main link to resource
Australian Businesses Face Relentless Cyberattacks Cybercrime costs are surging as Australian businesses reportedly face an attack roughly every six minutes. The risk is intensifying as attackers exploit AI, cloud reliance, and third-party providers to breach defences. Firms should prioritise threat detection, staff training, incident response planning, and continuous monitoring of critical systems.
Main link to resource
Asia-Pacific Supply Chains May Stay Disrupted S&P warns Asia-Pacific supply chains may remain disrupted even after Hormuz reopens. The risk is that a full recovery in flows is unlikely to be immediate. Mines will need to be cleared from the main shipping lanes and supply chains will take time to normalise. Businesses should maintain buffer inventory and alternative routing.
Main link to resource

Need support?

At Fixinc, we are passionate about helping people get through disasters. That’s why our team of Advisors bring you this resource free of charge. If you need help understanding these threats and building a plan against them, the same Advisors are here to help over a 30-minute online call. Once complete, if you like what was provided, you can choose to provide a donation or subscribe to Unbreakable Ventures to support this channel.

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