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Explainers on the tech stories that move prices and affect what you buy: memory, chips, supply chains and the internet.
3 articles
The war adds real costs (helium, circuit-board materials, freight, energy), but the sharp device price rises of 2026 are mainly about memory, and I found no source that puts a number on the war share.
AI demand, not the Iran war, is the main reason RAM and device prices jumped in 2026, and Micron says it does not see supply and demand balancing in 2027 or 2028.
The 2026 Iran war has shown real weak points (GPS jamming, an internet shutdown, drone hits on cloud data centres), but undersea cables had been spared as of late April and the Strait of Hormuz carries under 1% of global bandwidth.