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Factories in Asia that manufactured computer chips could not keep pace with a dramatic increase in demand, an emergency in an age in which chips had become the brains for all manner of devices. Auto factories from Japan to the United States to Brazil halted production, citing a lack of chips. American car dealers typically held two to three times as many vehicles as they sold in a month. By the end of 2021, their inventory had plunged to a record low—less than half their volume of sales. And as new cars became scarce, even used vehicles saw their prices explode.

Medical device manufacturers embarked on a largely futile campaign to shame chip companies into prioritizing their orders over those from smartphone companies like Apple and Google. Major electronics companies began covertly buying old toys and video gaming consoles, breaking apart ancient PlayStations and Barbie accessories to harvest the chips within.

Even supplies of baby formula were exhausted, plunging millions of American families into a state of desperation.

For ordinary people who had never previously had reason to contemplate the intricacies of the global supply chain, all of this was cosmically disconcerting. The shortages of goods conveyed a gut-level affirmation that contemporary life itself had gone haywire, exposing a dark and unsettling truth: no one was in control.

In wealthy countries, contemporary society had been steeped in the idea that the internet had transcended the traditional constraints of time and space. You could go online at any hour, on any day, no matter the weather, click here, and then wait for the truck to arrive bearing your order.

In a world full of grave uncertainty, here was a sure thing.

The supply chain was not just the circulatory system for goods, but also the source of a deep-seated sense of authority over human circumstance, and a rare unifying aspect of modern existence. In a time of flagging faith in government, skepticism about the media, and suspicion of corporate motives, everyone could at least believe in the unseen forces that brought the UPS guy to their door. The links connecting farms, factories, and distribution centers to households and businesses had seemed inviolate.

We had no illusions about the moral sanctity of the bargain. Most of us understood that the businesses that dominated the supply chain were making the economy more unequal, enriching executives who frequently abused the rank and file, poisoning our democracies and sowing toxicity in our political discourse, to say nothing of the natural environment. To the extent to which we thought about it, we generally recognized that our mode of consumerism was threatening humanity with extinction via climate change, while exploiting labor from South Asia to Latin America.

We grasped that Amazon was run by a bazillionaire, Jeff Bezos, whose fortune was so vast that he could blast himself into space even as he failed to provide his warehouse workers with face masks in the midst of a deadly pandemic. But we also understood what we were buying: certainty and security, the comfort of not having to worry about running out of whatever we needed. In exchange for our tacit assent in the often-unsavory terms of global capitalism, we gained convenience and reliability to a degree that was unimaginable mere decades ago.

Which meant that the breakdown in the system was bigger than the delays and the shortages of goods. It forced us to contemplate the possibility that everything was spinning out of control, and at the worst possible moment.

As the supply chain began fraying, urban reality from Minneapolis to Milan was dominated by the ceaseless wailing of ambulances hauling those stricken with COVID-19 to hospitals, where people were dying on gurneys stashed in corridors, the rooms overflowing, the supply of ventilators exhausted. From San Francisco to Stockholm, people were taking their last breaths alone in nursing homes, without saying goodbye to their children and grandchildren. Every day brought grim reports of a rising tide of death that eventually took the lives of nearly 7 million people worldwide.

People were succumbing to existential dread that was testing faith in everything, from the wisdom of public health authorities to the enduring strength of their marriages. The supply chain failures added to the emotional strains of life under lockdown—the terror, the claustrophobia, the tedium. Denied access to supermarkets and restaurants, unable to send our children to school or interact with our friends, consumed with fear for ourselves and our loved ones, we were more dependent than ever on the delivery system for goods.

When even that failed, the emotional consequences cut deep.