It seems that 27 was the magic number in the end. That was how many attacks the Houthis landed on international shipping before the inevitable military response was triggered.

On January 12, America and Britain responded with more than 60 sea and air attacks on Houthi targets in Yemen in an attempt to restore open passage, expanding the scope of the Middle East conflict.

As we recorded this week’s extended edition of the Lloyd’s list Podcast on Friday, we had to insert the significant and inevitable caveat that by the time you listen to this one, the details will have changed — the risk assessments that were being conducted day by day are now being reassessed on a hour-to-hour timeline.

President Joe Biden threatened further military action and said America would not allow “hostile actors to imperil freedom of navigation in one of the world’s most critical commercial routes”.

The immediate impact is clear — we had already seen the boxshops diverting around the Cape of Good Hope, but in the aftermath of the air strikes on Yemen, we are seeing an increasing amount of tankers and bulk carriers follow suit.

This matters in terms of the immediate market implications, but it also matters on geo-political level.

The vulnerability of supply chains to shocks is well understood, but just how much protection can navies offer shipping today?

Today we are looking at the Red Sea, but what about the Taiwan strait? The Black Sea, the Arctic? Freedom to trade is not a given and the naval response to this latest threat is being carefully watched by everyone.

Speaking on this week’s edition of the podcast we have:

• Lloyd’s List Intelligence principal analyst Michelle Wiese Bockmann

• Sal Mercogliano, the renowned American maritime historian and professor

• Lars Jensen, containers analyst and chief executive of Vespucci Maritime

• David Wech, chief economist at Vortexa

For More information about Lloyd’s List Intelligence’s Predictive Fleet Analytics, follow this link