Disclaimer

Not a predictor

NewsClock models capability and dependency for illustrative purposes. It is a comparison tool, not a predictor of real-world conflict or supply-disruption outcomes. Real outcomes depend on far more than the metrics tracked here — alliances, terrain, external intervention, nuclear deterrence, and political will, among others.

Data accuracy

Military personnel, defense spending, and hardware figures come from real, cited sources (The World Factbook, NATO, SIPRI, and a couple of smaller gap-fillers — see Data sources). The “Composite index” shown on country profiles is our own weighted blend of those inputs, not itself a published statistic.

Energy, food, and tech dependency are now sourced from the World Bank for the majority of countries — energy for 143 of 181, food for 149, and tech for 167 — across six research passes plus a live World Bank API refresh pass that have attempted every country in the dataset (see Data sources for exactly why each remaining country stays on its placeholder). GDP is now real and IMF-sourced for 179 of 181 countries, oil/gas production volumes are now real (EIA-sourced) for most countries, oil/gas import volumes are now real (EIA-sourced) for 175 of 181 countries, and the digital infrastructure score is now real (ITU-sourced) for 161 of 181 countries. The countries not yet covered in each of these fields remain on an old illustrative placeholder rather than a guessed number.

Risk and exposure scores (including scores shown under an active scenario) are illustrative estimates from the route/chokepoint model, not a prediction of actual supply disruption.

Built with AI assistance

NewsClock’s codebase, much of the research behind its sourced figures, and some of the site’s own text (including parts of this page) are built with the help of AI tools. AI output is informational only. It can be incomplete, outdated, or confidently wrong — including producing information that sounds plausible but isn’t (sometimes called a “hallucination”). We have no control over the accuracy of the underlying third-party AI models themselves.

Every real (non-illustrative) figure on NewsClock is cited back to a named source — see Data sources — precisely so you don’t have to take an AI tool’s word for it. But nothing on this site, AI-assisted or otherwise, should be treated as authoritative for professional, academic, legal, financial, or safety-critical decisions.

Verify anything you plan to rely on against the underlying source rather than treating this site as authoritative on its own.