Skip to content It’s nice to hide away in our little corner of the internet and talk tech, safely away from the turmoil of world events. Sometimes though, geopolitics intrude even into our space, and Reuters are here reporting on a new concern that will probably affect many Hackaday readers. Conflict in the Gulf of Arabia, and in particular raids on Saudi petrochemical plants, is threatening PCB production far away in China . Most of us probably have a mental image of tankers sailing through the Strait of Hormuz laden with Gulf crude, off to be processed by refineries somewhere else in the world. Certainly a load of oil takes just that route, but for the Saudis and other oil-producing nations in the region, it also makes economic sense to site petrochemical industries at source. They export the much more valuable refined products, among which is the polymer resin used in PCB production. The Reuters report says that consequent to this and a rise in copper prices, the cost of a PCB in China has risen by 40%.…