I was sipping a rather uninspired macchiato at the Qantas Chairman’s Lounge when I saw the news. President Donald Trump and Pakistan had brokered a US-Iran peace deal, and Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong was on the television, welcoming the agreement and celebrating the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz. All around me, ordinary business travelers were breathing a sigh of relief over the stabilization of global supply chains. But I just sat there, swirling my coffee, thinking of the devastating human cost this sudden outbreak of peace will exact on my portfolio.
Just last month, I sat on a panel at Davos next to a very senior executive from a multinational maritime security firm. Over a plate of ethically sourced scallops, we bonded over our shared frustration with the working class’s naive obsession with "de-escalation." He explained to me, in terms so simple that anyone with a basic understanding of offshore tax havens could grasp, that a closed, heavily mined Strait of Hormuz is actually an engine of economic vitality.
It forces innovation. It drives up the premium on armed escort vessels. It creates jobs for the private military contractors who bravely stand on the decks of oil tankers holding very large guns. Now, thanks to Trump and Wong’s reckless pursuit of regional stability, that entire artisanal industry is at risk of total collapse.
Of course, the average consumer doesn’t understand this. The average consumer just wants their cheap imported electronics and their lower petrol prices. They don’t see the structural beauty of an artificial choke point driving up the cost of crude oil, thereby incentivizing the green energy transition startup I invested heavily in last Tuesday. Penny Wong claims that "the longer this war goes on, the greater the impact will be." Yes, Penny, exactly. The impact on my quarterly dividend was going to be spectacular, and now you have taken that away from me.
People hear the words 'peace deal' and they selfishly think about their families not being drafted, completely ignoring the fact that I just leased a fleet of armored tankers at peak conflict rates.
I recently read a government survey reporting that at least one-in-five university students in Australia don’t feel free to express their views on campus. Well, neither do I. If I walk into a university today and say, "Actually, the US-Iran war was providing crucial structural support to the global shipping insurance market," I would be shouted down by naive twenty-year-olds who don't even own a single mutual fund. Where is my safe space to defend the economic necessity of localized maritime terror?
And let’s not forget the domestic ripples of this diplomatic disaster. I happened to be sharing a moderately priced wagyu steak with Barnaby Joyce the other week, and he looked utterly exhausted. He had just fundraised millions to pay for One Nation ads explicitly designed to capitalize on the ambient geopolitical anxiety of the electorate. Now, with Trump suddenly declaring the Strait of Hormuz open for business and Iran standing down, all that beautiful, monetizable fear is gone. What is he supposed to scare voters with now? Local infrastructure deficits? The sheer logistical nightmare of having to care about domestic issues because the Middle East is stabilizing is frankly offensive to anyone who understands how modern politics actually works.
It is easy to side with the powerless. It is easy to look at a de-escalation in Lebanon and say, "Good, fewer people will suffer." But it takes real moral courage to look at a defense lobbyist who just had to cancel his deposit on a third yacht and say, "I see your pain, and your pain is valid."
So as Foreign Minister Wong takes her victory lap, claiming Australia has "long called for de-escalation," I invite her to consider the shareholders she has left behind. We must learn to forgive our leaders for accidentally stumbling into peace, but we must never forget the brave men and women of the military-industrial complex who are waking up to a very uncertain, very unprofitable future. Managing a highly lucrative, heavily weaponized geopolitical stalemate takes real talent. It is a shame to see it end this way.