Abishur Prakash is CEO of The Geopolitical Business, a Toronto-based advisory firm, and the author of "The World Is Vertical: How Technology Is Remaking Globalization."
Two years after Arab exporters imposed an oil embargo on the U.S. for its wartime support of Israel, then-U.S. President Gerald Ford signed legislation creating a strategic petroleum reserve in 1975 to reduce the risk of future supply shocks.