The Strategic Execution Gap: Why America Can Find Critical Minerals-and Still Lose Them

Highlights

• China dominates critical minerals not just through bribery tolerance but via a state-backed ecosystem combining financing, infrastructure, and guaranteed downstream demand.
• FCPA enforcement and compliance friction reduce Western investment in high-corruption jurisdictions by up to 24%, giving rivals a structural advantage in securing strategic assets.
• Case studies in Guinea, DRC, and Myanmar show how regulatory asymmetry and capital gaps let Chinese firms absorb critical mineral assets that U.S. companies identified but could not secure.
• The Minerals Security Partnership and revised DOJ FCPA guidelines signal Washington recognizes the problem, but prosecutorial discretion alone cannot close a structural execution gap.
• Winning in Great Powers Era 2.0 requires turning geology into a transaction and a transaction into a full supply chain, including refining, infrastructure, and host-country value-chain development.