I still don't get how this works. My world image must be pretty off at this point if this kind of thing is possible. A tanker is big, expensive, and not exactly easy to misplace. And for a nation to be able to send this kind of expeditions it must be both dysfunctional enough to allow this, but competent enough to be able to mount it. And other countries allow it? Why? Again with the "expensive and hard to misplace".

The whole global just-in-time supply chain depended on at least the illusion of the freedom of the seas guaranteed by the United States, which the US unambiguously spoiled this year. Piracy never went away altogether but a multi-polar world where regional powers sanction piracy and provide the pirates with sophisticated weapons isn't going to underpin the same kind of global economy.