Critical Minerals Are the New Oil: The Economist Highlights a New Era of Strategic Resource Power

• Critical minerals have replaced oil as the foundation of global power, with rare earths, tungsten, cobalt, and germanium essential to defense, AI, semiconductors, and clean energy infrastructure.
• China dominates mining and processing capacity while the U.S. accelerates supply chain diversification; Europe remains structurally vulnerable despite Sweden's major 2023 rare earth discovery.
• Control over critical minerals now equates to industrial capability and national resilience, making materials the defining strategic resource of the 21st century.

A recent analysis (opens in a new tab) in The Economist underscores a profound geopolitical shift: critical minerals — not oil — now underpin global power. In the 1970s, OPEC demonstrated how energy resources could be weaponized. Today, the strategic leverage lies in rare earth elements, tungsten, gallium, graphite, and other minerals essential to defense systems, artificial intelligence, semiconductors, and clean energy technologies.

Data cited by The Economist show that several of the most economically important and supply-risk-exposed materials cluster in the high-risk/high-importance quadrant — including heavy rare earths, cobalt, tungsten, and germanium. These inputs form the invisible backbone of modern industry. Without them, advanced weapons systems stall, AI chips cannot scale, and renewable infrastructure cannot be deployed.

China currently dominates large portions of the mining and, more critically, processing capacity for many of these materials. The United States is now accelerating efforts to diversify supply chains, secure allied production, and expand domestic refining. Europe, however, remains structurally exposed — highly dependent on imports for minerals that are essential to its industrial and green transition ambitions.

Yet history offers perspective. Sweden, whose iron ore was strategically vital to Europe inthe 20th century, may again play an outsized role. In 2023, LKAB, Sweden’s state-owned mining company, announced the discovery of more than one million tonnes of rare earth oxides — the largest known deposit in Europe. If developed, this resource could significantly strengthen European material sovereignty.  But note that actually mining this deposit is likely a decade to 15 years away.

The broader lesson is clear: control over materials increasingly equates to control over industrial capability and national resilience. Supply chains are now geopolitical instruments. Materials are strategic assets. And origin matters once more.

As nations rethink security in the age of electrification and AI, critical minerals have become the defining resource of the century.

Source: The Economist, “America’s scramble to break China’s grip on critical minerals,” 2026.