Read the full op-ed by Rear Admiral Peter Brown, Vice Chair of the Critical Minerals Leadership Roundtable, on The Defense Post.
Our Military Runs on Minerals: Secure Them Before China Seizes Them
America’s military and technological edge cannot be sustained without securing the critical minerals that power modern warfare.
New technologies have moved us from the Space Age to the Information Age and now into an era defined by artificial intelligence.
The systems that will shape future warfare — AI-powered drones, autonomous platforms, advanced sensors, and eventually quantum computing — all depend on a narrow set of critical minerals.
If the United States does not act quickly, China’s long-term strategy to control these minerals will put the world’s most important materials in the hands of the Chinese Communist Party and enable them to hold us hostage.
President Donald Trump and leaders in Washington need to move fast to secure these minerals before it is too late.
Strategic Importance of Minerals
Not all minerals are created equal. The next century of both economic and military competition will be shaped by a handful of materials, including copper, iron, lithium, cobalt, nickel, lead, antimony, and others.
Without reliable access to these minerals, the US economy — and the US military — would be paralyzed.
Ensuring energy, storage, and operational capability in new technologies requires securing these critical minerals now.
Lessons From History
History offers clear lessons.
In the eighteenth century, Britain achieved naval dominance partly through government incentives that spurred the development of the chronometer for precise navigation.
In the nineteenth century, the United States encouraged private citizens to claim guano islands, securing fertilizer needed to feed the nation and strengthen the US merchant marine.
Adversaries, and potential adversaries, do this, too. For example, during World War I, Germany expanded synthetic ammonia production through the Haber-Bosch process after losing access to Chilean nitrates critical for explosives.
China has applied similar logic over the past 15 years. Under President Xi Jinping, Beijing has pursued a deliberate strategy to dominate critical mineral supply chains. China is blessed with extensive deposits of iron ore, copper, and antimony. Where it lacks natural reserves, it has secured them through debt diplomacy, most famously Congolese cobalt, and by dominating processing capacity.
This strategy has been remarkably successful, with China controlling 70 percent of global critical mineral processing. Over the same period, the United States has lacked a consistent strategy to compete.
National Security Implications
The Trump administration’s National Security Strategy correctly identifies this vulnerability.
As the strategy plainly states, America’s leaders have made “hugely misguided and destructive bets on globalism and so-called ‘free trade’ that hollowed out the very middle class and industrial base on which American economic and military preeminence depend.”
Few minerals illustrate this challenge more clearly than antimony. Though little known outside specialized circles, antimony is indispensable to the US military. It is used in ammunition, night vision goggles, and the starter batteries of nearly every military vehicle and vessel — from Coast Guard cutters to Sea King helicopters. Without antimony, the military would quickly face severe shortages of munitions and mobility.
Yet nearly half of the world’s antimony supply is located in China. For two decades, the United States relied heavily on Chinese antimony to equip its servicemembers. That dependence became acute last December when China banned antimony exports to the United States.
America’s only domestic antimony mine, located in central Idaho, was closed decades ago due to environmental and regulatory constraints. While recent approvals will allow the mine to reopen, the US still lacks sufficient domestic processing capacity to make the supply chain resilient.
Call for Action
The Trump administration is well aware of China’s critical mineral dominance.
Building on the National Security Strategy, the administration should advance a comprehensive, whole-of-government critical minerals strategy. This strategy must include not only critical mineral supplies but also critical mineral processing and recapture/recycling. We lag behind China in all of these areas.
Revitalizing the defense industrial base is impossible without secure access to critical minerals. Recent conflicts have underscored the need to produce munitions and systems at scale and to re-shore key elements of the defense supply chain. Dependence on China for antimony, cobalt, lithium, and other essential materials is incompatible with that goal.
As the nation approaches the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, the United States should aim to achieve a measure of mineral independence as well. That will require the Trump administration to put the right incentives in place to spur the private sector to achieve greatness.
Rear Admiral Peter J. Brown (USCG) Ret. served as the former Homeland Security and Counterterrorism Advisor to President Donald Trump.
He is currently Senior Fellow for Western Hemisphere Security and Maritime Affairs at the America First Policy Institute and the Vice Chair of the Critical Minerals Leadership Roundtable, presented by the Responsible Battery Coalition.
He holds degrees in both chemistry and law.
