The Globe and Mail reports in its Saturday edition that a month into the war in the Middle East, an unlikely shortage of an irreplaceable gas is looming over the global economy. A New York Times dispatch to The Globe says that helium is indispensable to manufacturing the computer chips that power artificial intelligence, an important driver of U.S. markets and economic growth. A byproduct of natural gas processing, helium is produced mainly in the United States and Qatar. When output in Qatar was halted this month, it cut off roughly one-third of the global supply. The outlook worsened last week after Iran struck Qatar's largest liquefied natural gas facility, damaging helium production lines that could take years to rebuild. Without helium, leading chipmakers, including Taiwan Semi and Samsung, could struggle to keep production lines running, with cascading effects for semiconductor-powered devices from Apple's iPhones to Nvidia's AI servers. As the coldest liquid on Earth, it cools superconducting magnets in MRI machines. A shortage could ripple far beyond chipmaking, affecting everything from scientific research to space travel. Semiconductor companies rely on helium at multiple stages of chip manufacturing.