Nations and corporations are exploiting control over critical supply chain nodes—rare earth minerals, semiconductor manufacturing, energy infrastructure, maritime choke points—as primary tools for geopolitical leverage and economic coercion. Rather than competing on scale or traditional military power, actors assert dominance through bottleneck governance, where control of a single node (like the Strait of Hormuz for oil transit) translates directly into global economic influence. This is Control assertion through node-based architecture: making yourself indispensable through scarcity control.