During the COVID-19 pandemic, states and private actors alike resorted to the unilateral use of states of exception in a desperate attempt to stabilise biosecurity. In this process, they destabilised the private law foundations of a world dependent on global production networks. Such massive, uncoordinated and unplanned responses may become increasingly prevalent in a world facing the threat of new pandemics, war, anthropogenic climate change, mass migration, financial meltdowns and other global-systemic crises. In this paper, we chart the emerging strategic resilience paradigm that grew from the manifold exception-based responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. We outline the strategic resilience paradigm and how it diverges from earlier neoliberal approaches to global production. We evaluate the practical effects of the strategic resilience paradigm from the perspectives of three key actors: what private actors, states and supranational actors, especially the European Union but also international organisations, can do to secure the supply of critical materials from global production networks in times of global systemic crises. Finally, we look at the consequences of different approaches,  differentiating between selfish, but from a local public policy perspective justifiable, interests of individual nation states and trading blocks, and a more globally fair and participative, but in practice probably utopian, transnational or international approach to ensuring the just supply of critical materials.