A common thread runs through two centuries of strategic thinking: every complex system has dependencies that matter more than others.
Carl von Clausewitz described this as the Center of Gravity (COG)—the source from which a system derives its strength. Although developed in a military context, the underlying idea extends far beyond warfare. Business strategy, critical infrastructure, cybersecurity, finance, and systems engineering all seek to identify the dependencies whose failure would have disproportionate consequences.
The question has remained remarkably consistent:
Where does the system derive its strength?
Modern interconnected systems, however, require us to ask a second question.
How should a system be designed to continue functioning after losing that dependency?
Within Aquarian Systematic Resilience (ASR), we approach this through the concept of the Pivot Domino—the dependency whose failure is most likely to interrupt the critical flows that sustain the system.
Those flows may include energy, information, logistics, finance, communications, operational control, and decision-making. Flow Sovereignty is the ability of a system to preserve these essential flows despite disruption.
From that perspective, identifying the Pivot Domino is only the beginning. The real challenge is ensuring that the loss of a critical dependency does not result in the loss of critical flows.
Perhaps resilience is not simply about protecting critical assets.
Perhaps it is about preserving critical flows, even when critical assets fail.
I'd be interested to hear how colleagues working in infrastructure, energy, AI, cybersecurity, governance, resilience engineering, and strategic planning view this evolution of a classical strategic idea.