Glossary of geopolitical and enterprise risk terms

A list maintained by the US Bureau of Industry and Security naming foreign parties subject to specific export-licensing requirements. Adding a company to the Entity List can sever its access to controlled US technology, which is why listings ripple through the supply chains of anyone selling to or sourcing from the named party.

See also: Export controls, Dual-use goods

A narrow, hard-to-substitute segment of a trade or transport route where a disruption forces traffic to stop or reroute at cost. Maritime chokepoints such as the Strait of Hormuz, the Bab-el-Mandeb, the Suez Canal, and the Strait of Malacca carry a large share of global energy and container trade, which is why a single incident at one can move prices worldwide.

See also: Strait of Hormuz, Geostrategic risk, Concentration risk

Exposure that arises when a critical input, supplier, customer, or route is dominated by a single source or geography. Concentration turns a local event into a systemic one. Diversifying contracts does not remove it if the diversified suppliers all depend on the same upstream origin.

See also: Supply chain risk, Critical minerals, Chokepoint

The sequence linking a geopolitical event to a concrete business outcome across defined time horizons, typically 30, 90, and 180 days. It translates an event such as a strait closure into the operational and financial decisions it forces, rather than leaving the reader to infer the relevance.

See also: Scenario analysis, Watch indicator, Risk register

A composite assessment of the exposure that comes with operating in or lending to a particular country, spanning political, economic, and financial factors. Country risk ratings are broad and slow to move. They tell you a country is risky, not which decision to change or when.

See also: Political risk, Geopolitical risk

Raw materials essential to industrial and defence production whose supply is vulnerable to disruption, including rare-earth elements, lithium, cobalt, and gallium. Processing, not just extraction, is heavily concentrated in a small number of countries, which places the leverage at the refining stage rather than the mine.

See also: Concentration risk, Supply chain risk, Export controls

Legal requirements that data about a country's citizens or operations be stored or processed within its borders. Localization rules in China, Russia, India, and the EU fragment multinational IT architecture and create new points of state control and compliance exposure.

See also: Extraterritoriality, Geopolitical risk

The release of controlled technology or source code to a foreign national inside your own country, which US rules treat as an export to that person's home country. It means an export-control obligation can be triggered by a hiring decision or a lab visit, not only by a shipment.

See also: Export controls, Dual-use goods

Items with both civilian and military or proliferation applications, such as certain chips, machine tools, chemicals, and encryption. Dual-use classification determines whether a product needs an export licence, and reclassification can turn a routine sale into a controlled one.

See also: Export controls, BIS Entity List

An organisation's legal and ethical obligation to protect the health and safety of its people, including employees travelling or posted abroad. Standards such as ISO 31030 and case law have raised the bar for travel-risk intelligence, turning inadequate geopolitical monitoring into a potential legal liability.

See also: Geopolitical risk

Laws that restrict the transfer of specified goods, software, and technology across borders, or to specified end users, on national-security or foreign-policy grounds. Export controls have shifted from a legal back-office function to a live supply-chain constraint, particularly in semiconductors and advanced computing.

See also: BIS Entity List, Dual-use goods, Deemed export, Sanctions

A government taking of private assets, whether outright seizure or the gradual erosion of ownership rights through regulation, taxation, or forced local partnership. Creeping expropriation is harder to price than outright nationalisation because it arrives in increments rather than a single act.

See also: Political risk, Country risk

The application of one country's laws to conduct that occurs outside its borders. Sanctions, export controls, and data-protection rules increasingly reach foreign companies through nexus points such as US-dollar clearing, US-origin technology, or handling a covered person's data.

See also: Secondary sanctions, Data localization, Export controls

A contract clause that excuses a party from performance when an extraordinary event beyond its control prevents it. Whether a geopolitical event qualifies depends on the specific wording. Clauses drafted for natural disasters often fail to cover sanctions, blockades, or export bans, leaving a gap that surfaces only under stress.

See also: Sanctions, Supply chain risk

Relocating supply chains toward allied or politically aligned countries to reduce exposure to a rival state. Related terms are nearshoring, moving production geographically closer, and reshoring, bringing it home. Each reduces some geopolitical exposure while often raising cost or introducing new concentration.

See also: Supply chain risk, Concentration risk

The Global Database of Events, Language, and Tone, an open dataset that codes world news into structured events, actors, and locations. It is a reference point for how machine-readable event data is built and scored, not a finished assessment on its own.

See also: Sector outlook, Watch indicator

The risk that state action, conflict, or shifts in the balance of power between states affect a company's operations, revenue, or assets. It covers sanctions, war, expropriation, trade restrictions, and political instability. It differs from ordinary market risk because the driver is a government or a contest between governments, not price or demand.

See also: Geostrategic risk, Political risk, Country risk

Geopolitical risk read through the lens of position: chokepoints, supply routes, resource concentration, and the physical or structural leverage one actor holds over another. A geostrategic reading asks not only what a government might do, but where its leverage sits and how that leverage reaches your operations.

See also: Geopolitical risk, Chokepoint, Concentration risk

State or state-linked activity that stays below the threshold of open armed conflict, including cyber intrusion, sabotage, disinformation, economic coercion, and the use of proxies. Grey-zone actions are designed to be deniable and to reach targets, including corporate infrastructure, that a conventional military campaign would not.

See also: Geopolitical risk, Watch indicator

The Office of Foreign Assets Control, part of the US Treasury, administers and enforces US economic and trade sanctions. OFAC maintains the sanctions lists that most global firms screen against, and its enforcement reaches non-US companies that transact in US dollars or touch US persons.

See also: Sanctions, SDN List, Secondary sanctions

The risk that political decisions inside a single country, such as elections, policy change, nationalisation, or civil unrest, damage a business operating there. Political risk is usually country-specific. Geopolitical risk sits above it and concerns the relations between states.

See also: Country risk, Geopolitical risk, Expropriation

A structured record of identified risks, each scored and assigned an owner and a response. In the Fortius Intel model, a sector risk register lists discrete, named risks with severity and likelihood rather than a single aggregate country score, so the reader can act on the specific exposure that applies to them.

See also: Sector outlook, Consequence chain, Country risk

Government-imposed restrictions on trade, finance, or travel used to change or punish the behaviour of a state, entity, or individual. Sanctions range from targeted asset freezes on named parties to broad sectoral or country-wide programmes. Compliance failures carry fines, criminal liability, and loss of market access.

See also: OFAC, SDN List, Secondary sanctions, Export controls

A method that develops a small set of distinct, plausible futures and works through the implications of each, rather than forecasting a single outcome. It is used to test decisions against a range of geopolitical paths and to identify the watch indicators that would show which path is unfolding.

See also: Consequence chain, Watch indicator

The Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons List published by OFAC. Assets of listed parties are blocked and US persons are generally prohibited from dealing with them. The 50 percent rule extends the block to entities owned in aggregate 50 percent or more by listed parties, which is where hidden exposure usually sits.

See also: OFAC, Sanctions

Sanctions that target third parties, including non-US firms, for dealing with an already-sanctioned entity, even where the transaction has no other US connection. They extend the reach of a sanctions programme far beyond the imposing country's borders and force global firms to treat the widest jurisdiction as the binding one.

See also: Sanctions, OFAC, Extraterritoriality

A monthly assessment of the geopolitical risks facing a specific sector, with each risk scored and dated. The sector frame matters because the same event carries different weight for energy, finance, technology, and manufacturing, and a general country brief cannot make that distinction.

See also: Risk register, Consequence chain

A maritime chokepoint between the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman through which roughly a fifth of global oil supply passes. Because there is no full-capacity alternative route for most Gulf crude, a closure or threat of closure repriced war-risk insurance and freight almost immediately, as seen in the March 2026 repricing episode.

See also: Chokepoint, War-risk premium

The risk that a disruption anywhere in the network of suppliers, logistics, and inputs interrupts production or delivery. Geopolitical supply-chain risk often hides two or more tiers back, where a single-origin input or sub-supplier concentrates exposure that a direct-supplier audit will not reveal.

See also: Concentration risk, Tier-N supplier, Critical minerals

A supplier positioned N steps upstream from you. Your direct suppliers are tier one; their suppliers are tier two, and so on. Most concentrated geopolitical exposure, such as a single-origin active pharmaceutical ingredient or a sole rare-earth processor, sits at tier two or deeper, beyond the reach of standard vendor screening.

See also: Supply chain risk, Concentration risk, Critical minerals

The additional insurance cost charged to cover vessels, cargo, or operations in areas exposed to conflict. Because underwriters reprice quickly, war-risk premiums act as a leading market signal of perceived escalation, often moving before analysts publish and before headlines settle.

See also: Strait of Hormuz, Chokepoint

A specific, observable signal defined in advance that a risk is moving toward a threshold. A useful watch indicator names the source, the value, and the action it should trigger. Generic watch lists that no one is assigned to monitor do not change decisions and give false comfort.

See also: Consequence chain, Scenario analysis