Strategic natural resources—from oil and gas to critical minerals—have long underpinned U.S. national security. Decades ago, China’s Deng Xiaoping pointed out that the Middle East has oil, China has rare earths, highlighting that control of key resources translates to strategic advantage. Today, senior U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) officials face a global landscape in which access to critical natural resources is a defining element of national security. The United States is sharpening its policies to identify and prioritize these resources, as adversaries leverage economic and military tools to secure supply dominance.
Table of Contents:
- Fortifying America’s Grip on Critical Resources
- Battlegrounds for Minerals, Metals, and Influence
- The Battle for the World’s Building Blocks
- Geopolitical Implications: The Pressure Points of a Planet in Competition
- Navigating the Competition for Critical Mineral Resources
- Conclusion
Fortifying America’s Grip on Critical Resources
Which Resources Hold the Keys to U.S. Security
The U.S. has developed a formal process to designate strategic natural resources—particularly minerals—that are essential to economic and national security. Under a whole-of-government effort led by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), a list of critical minerals is regularly updated based on supply chain risk and importance to strategic industries vital for national security. In 2022, this process yielded a list of 50 critical mineral commodities deemed vital to the U.S. economy and defense; resources like rare earth elements, lithium, cobalt, nickel, and others feature prominently.
A mineral qualifies as critical if its supply is vulnerable to disruption and if it is a key input for technologies ranging from weapons systems and satellites to electric vehicle batteries and semiconductors. For example, the 2022 critical minerals list identified gallium—used in radar and communications electronics—as having the highest supply risk for the U.S. That warning proved prescient when China imposed export controls in 2023 on gallium and germanium, suddenly cutting off major sources and confirming the U.S.’s vulnerability.
New Deals, Domestic Mines, and a Global Push
In 2025, the Trump administration significantly escalated efforts to secure U.S. supply chains for strategic natural resources, directly tying resource security to national security and defense priorities. Most notably, the administration finalized a landmark U.S.-Ukraine Mineral Resources Agreement, intended to diversify and secure America’s access to rare earth elements and other vital materials from Ukraine’s abundant reserves. This agreement established a joint Reconstruction Investment Fund to assist Ukraine’s post-war economic recovery while simultaneously boosting U.S. resource independence and countering China’s dominance over critical minerals markets. Concurrently, President Trump invoked the Defense Production Act (DPA) in early 2025, further accelerating domestic mining and processing capacity for minerals deemed essential for U.S. military readiness and industrial resilience. This executive action streamlined regulatory approval processes for new mines and allocated emergency federal funding specifically targeting domestic rare-earth extraction and refining operations.
These actions in 2025 build on a strong bipartisan foundation established in previous years, reflecting growing consensus on resource security. Earlier legislative initiatives—such as the Energy Act of 2020, which mandated regular updates to the nation’s critical mineral lists and coordinated interagency supply-chain monitoring—have proven foundational. Subsequent bills directed substantial funding toward expanding America’s mining, refining, and recycling infrastructure. An extensive supply-chain review in 2021 underscored the need for greater domestic capacity and reduced dependence on adversaries like China. The result is that today’s policy environment—combining international agreements, targeted executive actions, and robust legislative backing—represents a comprehensive approach to securing strategic natural resources as a cornerstone of U.S. national security and economic strength.
Why the Pentagon Is Betting Big on Minerals
Within the Pentagon, ensuring access to strategic natural resources has become a pillar of U.S. national security readiness. The DoD’s 2023 Strategic and Critical Materials report to Congress and the first-ever Quadrennial Defense Supply Chain Review highlighted how supply disruptions could cripple the manufacturing of missiles, munitions, and other key defense articles. Nearly all of the 17 rare earth elements, for example, are needed in some capacity for DoD systems—embedded in jet engines, precision-guided munitions, sensors, and communication devices.
Recent adversarial actions have underscored these concerns. As one defense official noted, China’s move to clamp down exports of gallium, germanium, and antimony demonstrates Beijing’s willingness to disrupt supply chains for strategic gain.
In response, the DoD is pursuing a strategy of industrial base resilience: expanding domestic mining and refining, funding alternative suppliers, and working with allies to secure stable sources of critical inputs. U.S. policy now explicitly recognizes that a secure supply of strategic natural resources is as important to national defense as having advanced weaponry or well-trained troops.
Battlegrounds for Minerals, Metals, and Influence
China’s Rare Earth Grip: An Unseen Strategic Weapon
If there is a poster child for strategic natural resources that impact U.S. national security, it is rare earth elements (REEs). These 17 metals such as neodymium, dysprosium, and yttrium are crucial for high-performance magnets, lasers, and alloys used in fighter jets, missiles, and other defense tech.
While rare earth deposits exist in the U.S., Australia, and elsewhere, China has spent decades building an overwhelming dominance in this sector. As of 2022, China controls over 70% of the world’s REE mining output and about 87% of global rare earth processing capacity. It achieved this through long-term investments in mining, aggressive industry consolidation, and willingness to tolerate the environmental costs of processing. By comparison, the U.S. today has only one active rare earth mine at the Mountain Pass in California and still relies on China to refine that mine’s output into usable materials.
This imbalance poses a clear strategic risk: China could weaponize its rare earth monopoly, as it effectively did in 2010 by cutting off REE exports to Japan during a territorial dispute. That incident caused rare earth prices to spike tenfold and jolted governments into action. It also lent credence to Deng’s aphorism that control of rare earths can confer leverage akin to the control of oil. Today, China’s rare earth supremacy gives it a measure of economic leverage over the U.S. and its allies—a fact not lost on defense planners.
Battery Minerals Fuel Geopolitical Scramble
The clean energy transition is triggering a new scramble for strategic natural resources used in batteries—especially lithium, cobalt, nickel, and graphite—which are essential for electric vehicles (EVs), energy storage, and many military technologies vital for U.S. national security, to include portable electronics to future directed-energy weapons. A major theater of this resource competition is South America’s Lithium Triangle.
Spanning Argentina, Bolivia, and Chile, this region holds over half of the world’s lithium reserves in its salt flats. China has moved aggressively to secure lithium from these countries: through mining investments, supply contracts, and even geopolitical agreements. By locking in control over large swaths of South American lithium production, Beijing is advancing its electric vehicle ambitions while undermining Western supply chain dominance.
This strategic push raises concerns that China could gain excessive economic leverage and create resource dependencies for nations reliant on lithium batteries. Western countries are belatedly responding—for instance, the U.S. and Canada have formed partnerships with Australian and South American firms to diversify lithium sourcing, and new lithium mines are under development in Australia and the United States. But currently, China’s head start in the lithium race has shifted a traditionally U.S.-influenced region into a new battleground of global resource competition.
Cobalt is another critical piece of the battery supply chain puzzle. About three-quarters of the world’s cobalt is mined in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), where political instability and labor issues run rampant. China has heavily invested in the DRC’s mining sector and today controls a large share of cobalt mine output and refining facilities.
While the DRC dominates cobalt mining, it produces virtually none of the refined cobalt used in battery cathodes—almost all of that refining is done in China. This arrangement again gives China a chokepoint: even cobalt mined by Western companies often ends up in Chinese refineries. The U.S. and allies are working to develop alternate sources such as new cobalt projects in Australia and recycling initiatives to recover cobalt from used batteries, but the DRC-China axis remains a critical vulnerability.
Similar patterns hold for nickel—Indonesia, the Philippines, and Russia are top producers, and Indonesia has begun restricting raw nickel exports to gain leverage—and graphite—China is the dominant global supplier of both natural and synthetic graphite for battery anodes. In each case, a single country or a small few control the majority of supply, creating potential single points of failure in supply chains.
Why Oil and Gas Still Tip the Scales in Global Power
While the focus on emerging minerals is intense, traditional hydrocarbons remain hugely strategic. Oil and natural gas have fueled geopolitical power plays for decades—from the OPEC embargo of the 1970s to the Gulf Wars—and they continue to shape national security calculations.
Recent events underscored this reality: Europe’s heavy dependence on Russian natural gas became a glaring strategic liability during the Russia-Ukraine crisis, prompting Europe to scramble for alternate suppliers. The U.S., now the world’s largest oil and gas producer, was able to cushion allies by exporting LNG, but the situation revealed how energy exports can turn into geopolitical weapon. Conversely, U.S. energy abundance has given Washington a strategic edge—enabling sanctions on oil-rich adversaries like Iran without destabilizing global markets as severely as in the past.
As the world gradually shifts toward renewable energy, new forms of resource dependence are emerging. The solar panels, wind turbines, and battery storage systems of a green economy all require vast quantities of minerals like copper, lithium, rare earths, and nickel. In effect, the locus of resource competition is widening: the 20th-century race for oil is increasingly joined by a 21st-century race for critical minerals. Defense officials must therefore concern themselves not only with securing fuel supplies for jets and tanks, but also with securing the metals and materials for batteries, microchips, and renewable technologies that will power future warfare.
The Battle for the World’s Building Blocks
Around the world, countries are deploying economic, political, and military means to secure critical natural resources. The methods range from straightforward trade agreements to covert paramilitary operations. Understanding these tactics is essential for the DoD as it navigates an increasingly complex security environment.
Building Empires Through Balance Sheets
The most common tool for resource security is economic statecraft: using trade, investment, and aid to lock down supply lines. China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), also known as One Belt One Road, exemplifies this approach. Under the banner of infrastructure development, China has invested in ports, railways, and power plants across Asia, Africa, and Latin America—but often with an eye toward securing long-term access to natural resources.
In Latin America, for instance, Chinese state banks financed major projects in countries like Ecuador, Venezuela, and Peru, frequently tied to commodity exports as repayment. These projects often come with opaque terms and heavy debt burdens, giving Beijing financial leverage and privileged access to local resources. Access to minerals and oil is a quiet driver of many BRI deals.
China’s extensive loans and investments in Latin America are part of a broader strategy to secure access to natural resources and expand its geopolitical influence in the Western Hemisphere. The result can be a form of debt diplomacy: nations find themselves indebted and, in turn, pressured to grant China favorable mining rights, oil concessions, or strategic land such as port leases. Beyond BRI, China also uses direct commercial investment to capture resources—for example, acquiring stakes in foreign mining companies and forging long-term supply contracts for critical metals.
The U.S. and its allies, for their part, are leveraging economic partnerships to counterbalance these moves, securing the strategic natural resources critical for national security. Western democracies have begun coordinating efforts to invest in resource-rich countries via initiatives like the Minerals Security Partnership (MSP), launched in 2022.
The MSP brings together the U.S., EU, Japan, Canada, Australia and other partners to finance new mines and processing facilities in a sustainable, transparent way. The goal is to offer countries an alternative to Chinese capital, thereby diversifying global supply chains.
Similarly, trade agreements are being updated to include critical minerals: for instance, the U.S. has worked with Canada and Mexico through USMCA to encourage North American critical mineral development. Japan and the EU have also struck bilateral deals with the U.S. to ensure trusted supplies of lithium, cobalt, and other battery inputs for their industries. In short, a web of new economic alliances is forming to secure resource access—effectively a coalition supply chain strategy to reduce dependence on any single foreign source.
Resource Alliances Reshaping the Map
Beyond pure economics, nations are using diplomatic and political tools to gain resource security. Resource-rich countries themselves understand the leverage their commodities afford and often play major powers against each other. We see rising instances of resource nationalism, where governments enact policies to exert greater control over their own strategic resources—for example, Indonesia’s ban on unprocessed nickel ore exports to force companies to invest in local smelters or Chile’s recent moves to increase state involvement in lithium mining. These policies can rearrange global supply chains overnight and often prompt diplomatic bargaining.
Major powers are responding by deepening political ties with friendly supplier nations. The U.S. has elevated diplomatic engagement with countries like Mongolia for rare earths, Zambia for cobalt and copper, and Brazil for niobium and other minerals to secure future supply deals. In some cases, access to resources is becoming a key topic in defense and security partnerships. For instance, the U.S. and Australia—a close ally with significant lithium, rare earth, and uranium reserves—have a formal critical minerals partnership and have even agreed to treat each other’s critical mineral projects as part of their domestic industrial base for defense contracting purposes. This essentially integrates ally supply chains for strategic resources, blurring the line between domestic and foreign sources in the interest of mutual security.
China has pursued its own resource alliances, often as part of broader regional influence. In Africa, China is not only investing in mines but also cultivating political goodwill through forums like the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation, regularly forgiving debts or providing development aid tied to resource agreements. In the Middle East, Beijing signed a 25-year strategic partnership with Iran that includes oil trade provisions, and it has growing energy ties with Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states—relationships that ensure China’s energy security and extend its political influence into a traditionally U.S.-dominated region.
Mercenaries, Bases, and the Shadow War for Critical Resources
While economics and diplomacy are the first resort, some nations have shown readiness to use military or paramilitary means to secure resource interests. A stark example is Russia’s use of the Wagner Group—a private military contractor, replaced by the Africa Corps—across Africa. Russia has essentially traded security services for propping up regimes or fighting insurgents in exchange for access to precious minerals. In the Central African Republic, Mali, and Sudan, Moscow obtained lucrative concessions for gold and diamond mines, timber rights, and oil fields as payment for their military support.
Acting as an arm of the Russian state, Africa Corps and Wagner have extended Moscow’s footprint in resource-rich parts of Africa while generating revenue to fund Russia’s activities elsewhere. This fusion of military influence and resource extraction represents a modern form of mercantilism, where force multipliers secure raw materials for the patron nation. The Kremlin’s backing indicates the high priority it places on not losing these resource streams, especially after the Ukraine conflict made Russia more dependent on alternate income and trade outside the West.
China so far has largely avoided direct military intervention for resources, but it has shown hints of securitizing its resource supply lines. The People’s Liberation Army Navy has expanded its presence in critical shipping lanes—for instance, counter-piracy operations in the Gulf of Aden, through which oil from the Middle East flows to China—and built its first overseas naval base in Djibouti, a move partly motivated by the need to secure maritime routes for resource transport. In the disputed South China Sea, China’s construction of artificial islands and deployment of naval assets is driven in part by a desire to claim potential oil and gas under those waters, as well as to control fisheries. These actions have raised regional tensions, illustrating how far Beijing is willing to go in asserting control over nearby resources.
The U.S. traditionally secures strategic natural resources vital for national security through its global military presence and alliances. The U.S. Fifth Fleet helps safeguard oil shipping routes from the Persian Gulf, essentially underpinning the free flow of oil for the global economy and preventing any one power from choking off that supply. U.S. military aid and partnerships often coincide with resource interests—for example, long-standing security relationships in the Gulf states such as Saudi Arabia and Kuwait ensure energy stability, and new defense cooperation with countries like Mozambique, which has huge natural gas fields and graphite deposits, is on the rise to help those nations counter insurgencies that threaten resource development.
While outright wars for resources are rarer today than in the past, the implicit threat of force often stands behind resource security commitments. The Carter Doctrine of 1980 made it explicit that the U.S. would use military force to protect its interests in Gulf oil. In a contemporary echo, one could argue that ensuring access to critical minerals might warrant similar resolve. We see early signs of this thinking in the incorporation of resource scenarios in NATO planning and in U.S. Indo-Pacific strategy documents that highlight supply chain security as integral to regional stability.
Geopolitical Implications: The Pressure Points of a Planet in Competition
The Fragility Hidden in Modern Supply Chains
Perhaps the most immediate concern is how rival nations could exploit supply chain dependencies of natural resources to undermine U.S. national security for strategic gain. When a single country dominates the production of a critical material, it gains a stranglehold that can be used as leverage.
The rare earth embargo on Japan in 2010 was a vivid demonstration—a geopolitical dispute led China to choke off vital materials, imperiling Japan’s tech and defense industries. More recently, China’s willingness to withhold exports of gallium and germanium—key ingredients for semiconductors and night-vision systems—underlines the reality that resource interdependence can be turned into a pressure point.
Such actions amount to economic coercion. For the U.S., this means certain supply chains for components like high-power magnets, batteries, or specialty alloys could be suddenly disrupted if an adversary decides to restrict shipments. In a crisis or conflict scenario, that vulnerability could translate into delayed weapons production or degraded military readiness.
Supply chain attacks need not be overt embargoes either; they could involve price manipulation, hoarding, or export quotas that gradually squeeze other nations. The national security risk is clear: an adversary controlling a critical resource can effectively hamper the U.S. economy or defense industry without firing a shot.
This risk is amplified by the just-in-time nature of modern supply chains, which have very little slack. A single point of failure—whether a mine, a processing plant, or a shipping route—can have cascading effects. Over-reliance on foreign sources for critical materials poses a serious threat to economic stability and military superiority.
Great Power Rivalry and Spheres of Influence
Control of strategic resources is increasingly shaping the balance of power between the U.S., China, and other major players. China’s deep incursions into resource sectors in Africa and Latin America, for instance, are shifting alignments in those regions. By building mines, railways, and factories, Beijing not only secures resources but also ingratiates itself with local elites and creates dependencies that can translate into political influence.
Over time, this can erode U.S. partnerships and access. Latin America’s Lithium Triangle is a case in point: Chinese investment there is potentially undermining decades of Western economic influence, raising questions about who local governments will align with on global issues.
Similarly, if China continues to entrench itself as the indispensable buyer of South American copper or African cobalt, countries rich in those resources might tilt toward China’s geopolitical orbit to safeguard their economic ties. The Belt and Road strategy has explicitly blurred economic development with strategic alignment, and access to resources is a core piece of that puzzle.
For the U.S., this competition for hearts, minds, and minerals means that geopolitical influence and resource security go hand in hand. We may witness a bifurcation of global supply networks into a China-led sphere and a U.S.-led sphere, especially if decoupling accelerates in critical industries. Such an outcome would have long-term security implications, possibly solidifying blocs reminiscent of the Cold War – but defined by resource supply chains more than ideology.
Regional Instability and Conflict Flashpoints
The pursuit of resources can also exacerbate regional tensions or spark conflicts in unstable parts of the world. Many critical materials are found in developing countries with weak governance, where competition for mining revenues can fuel corruption or civil strife.
The DRC’s cobalt riches, for example, have been linked to violence and the financing of armed groups in the past. External powers vying for those resources can complicate peace efforts or even find themselves in proxy conflicts. In some cases, rival powers back opposing factions in resource-rich states to secure their preferred access—a dynamic not unlike the 19th-century colonial scramble, updated for the 21st-century context. We see hints of this in places like Sudan, where Russian and Western interests have intersected around gold mining amid a broader civil conflict.
Another potential flashpoint is the Arctic: as ice recedes, untapped oil, gas, and mineral deposits become more accessible, and circumpolar powers such as Russia, the U.S., Canada, the Nordic countries, and even China are positioning militarily and legally to claim them. Disputes over Arctic boundaries or sea routes could intensify, bringing resource competition into the realm of naval standoffs or militarized disputes.
Even ostensibly local resource disputes can have global repercussions. Territorial waters in the East and South China Seas are contested not just for nationalistic reasons but also for the rich fisheries and undersea gas fields they contain. Chinese maritime aggression around the Senkaku Islands, also claimed by Japan and Taiwan, and the Spratly Islands, with multiple claims to control, is tied to the desire to control these resources, and each incident risks military escalation.
Likewise, conflicts over water rights—Ethiopia’s Grand Renaissance Dam impacting Egypt’s Nile flow—could destabilize regions that are of strategic interest to the U.S. and its allies. Emerging global conflicts might well center on resources more than ideology. It’s not hard to imagine a scenario in which an energy crisis or a critical minerals shortage triggers panic buying, trade embargoes, or even interstate skirmishes in resource-rich border areas.
Alliances Tested and Reshaped
Competition for resources can also test the cohesion of alliances. Europe, for instance, has had internal fractures over energy policy—with some countries reluctant to boycott Russian gas due to immediate needs, even as others see the long-term strategic necessity.
Within NATO, differing levels of resource dependency can lead to differing threat perceptions. If, say, one ally is heavily dependent on Chinese rare earths for its defense industry and another has domestic sources or alternate suppliers, their urgency to confront China on that issue may vary. This uneven exposure can be exploited by adversaries to drive wedges between allied nations.
On the flip side, common vulnerability can also forge new bonds: witnessing China’s control of rare earths, Japan and Vietnam formed a partnership to develop rare earth mines in Vietnam, strengthening their strategic ties. The U.S. has an opportunity to lead in building a united front among allies and partners on resource security—but it will require careful coordination and sometimes economic compromises, such as sharing technology or financing to help allies build their own capacity.
Economic Volatility and Social Unrest
Another implication of resource competition is the potential for market volatility and domestic unrest. Sudden moves like export bans or war in a resource-rich region can send global prices for critical commodities soaring. We saw this with rare earth prices after 2010 and with oil prices during the 2022 Ukraine crisis.
Such spikes can harm global growth, strain government budgets, and even lead to unrest such as fuel protests or, in extreme cases, regime change in countries unable to afford essential imports. For resource-producing countries, a surge of foreign interest and investment can be a double-edged sword—it can distort their economies, invite corruption, and create discontent if locals feel exploited or environmental damage goes unchecked.
In South America, for example, indigenous communities and environmental groups have protested lithium mining expansions, fearing water depletion and land degradation. These local grievances, if ignored, could disrupt supply or provoke political backlashes that foreign adversaries might cynically support to undermine Western companies.
Navigating the Competition for Critical Mineral Resources
Navigating this era of strategic resource competition will require a proactive, multifaceted approach.
- Strengthen Strategic Stockpiles and Buffers: Reinvest in the National Defense Stockpile and other resource reserves to provide a safety net against supply shocks. After decades of drawdowns, the U.S. strategic materials stockpile is a fraction of its Cold War size—valued under $1 billion today from a peak of $42 billion (inflation-adjusted) in the 1950s. Recapitalizing this stockpile with critical minerals like rare earths, cobalt, lithium, and titanium will help fortify the U.S. against disruptions and ensure defense production can continue. In addition, by prioritizing long-term national security over short-term budgetary gains and rebuilding inventories of scarce materials, the U.S. gains breathing room in a crisis and deprives adversaries of easy coercive leverage.
- Expand Domestic Production and Processing: Reduce import dependence by investing heavily in domestic mining and refining of critical resources. Fully utilizing funding authorities like DPA Title III to support domestic projects for rare earth separation facilities, battery-grade lithium hydroxide plants, missile-grade tungsten processing can translate into less reliance on adversary-controlled supply chains. Recent moves to fund rare earth magnet factories and lithium battery production in the U.S. are steps in the right direction. This effort can be paired with streamlined permitting for mines and incentives for private sector investment in critical minerals.
- Forge Resource Alliances and Partnerships: Elevate critical resource security as a key pillar in U.S. alliances and defense partnerships. By continuing to lead initiatives like the Minerals Security Partnership to jointly invest in diverse, resilient supply chains, we can map global resource deposits, pool funds to develop new mines in third countries, and share information on potential supply disruptions. Engaging with emerging producers in Africa, Latin America, and Asia through security cooperation for training, military education, or development aid packages that include a focus on resource governance can build goodwill and secure agreements that favor U.S. access to resources over the long term. Ensuring that partners like India, Brazil, and South Africa—all with significant resource potential—are aligned will prevent a situation where they work with adversaries out of economic necessity. In essence, treat critical minerals diplomacy as a core task of U.S. statecraft, alongside traditional arms sales or basing agreements.
- Intelligence and Early Warning: Incorporate resource security into the IC’s priorities. The DoD and IC should maintain up-to-date assessments of global critical mineral supply and track adversary activities in this domain. This includes monitoring Chinese investments in mines worldwide, detecting illicit trade networks, and forecasting potential resource-driven instability. Open-source intelligence (OSINT) can complement classified intel here—for example, tools and analysis like those employed by FIU researchers in SOUTHCOM provide valuable real-time tracking of critical minerals security issues. A dedicated analytics cell to fuse geological data, trade data, and geopolitical risk indicators into an integrated resource threat assessment would enable early warning of supply chain attacks or emerging resource chokepoints, much as we have early warning systems for missile launches or cyber threats.
- Diversify Supply Chains Geographically: Avoid single points of failure by sourcing critical materials from multiple regions and encouraging allies to do the same. For each mineral or resource identified as critical, we should develop a supply chain diversification plan. This might involve helping a new mine come online in a friendly country or supporting trade agreements that open access. We’ve seen progress in areas like rare earth magnets, where Japan, the EU, and the U.S. are all investing to break China’s near monopoly. Similar attention is needed for other vulnerable links such as graphite processing and battery precursor chemicals.
- Invest in Alternatives and Innovation: Mitigate resource constraints by reducing demand for scarce materials through technology. By funding R&D into substitute materials, recycling, and efficiency technologies, such as developing electric motors and precision-guided munitions that use less or no rare earth elements, we can become less reliant on and more strategically allocate critical mineral resources. Similarly, support for battery chemistry innovations that minimize the use of cobalt and nickel can free those metals for other uses. Japan provided a powerful example after the 2010 rare earth shock: it poured investment into technologies to reduce usage, find alternatives, and recycle rare earths, which successfully cut its dependency on Chinese supplies. By taking a page from that playbook, we can engineer new innovations that mitigate or eliminate the supply chain vulnerabilities. Additionally, investing in materials science education and workforce will rebuild domestic expertise in mining and metallurgy.
Conclusion
Strategic natural resources are the lifeblood of modern militaries and economies—and in the 21st century, they are as contested as ever. The United States faces a formidable but manageable challenge: to secure the critical materials that fuel its defense supply chains in the face of intense global competition. This challenge is not insurmountable. With foresight and coordinated action, the U.S. can build resilient supply lines, invest in innovation to alleviate scarcities, and strengthen alliances to present a united front against coercion. The geopolitical chess match underway—from Latin American lithium salars to African cobalt mines to Chinese rare earth refineries—will help define the security landscape for decades to come. By acknowledging the strategic importance of natural resources and implementing robust strategies, the U.S. can mitigate risks and seize opportunities. Resource security is national security. Ensuring reliable access to critical natural resources will fortify America’s defense industrial base, uphold its technological edge, and preserve its strategic autonomy in a turbulent world. In an era when global conflicts and power dynamics increasingly hinge on supply chains and subterranean treasures, the U.S. must lead with both strength and integrity—securing the resources that secure the nation.
