Supply chain capitalism principles—reliance on outsourced labor, an emphasis on just-in-time delivery, faith in data-driven decision-making, pursuit of economies of scale—have played, at times, an under-appreciated role in the emergence of digitally-enabled inequities that COVID-19 will also likely exacerbate. The languages of supply chain management and software engineering tend to overlap and borrow from one another (lean operations, just-in-time delivery, containerization); arguably many of the operations underlying surveillance capitalism can’t happen without supply chain capitalism. Admiration of supply chain management has also been used to justify data-driven disruptions of industries and aspects of public life.

Ingrid Burrington, "After Supply Chain Capitalism"