Editorial: Industrial power returns  

For much of the past three decades, mining executives struggled to convince governments that minerals were strategic assets. They no longer have to make that case because the world has made it for them. 

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine exposed the importance of industrial capacity in sustaining modern warfare. China’s willingness to use export controls on critical minerals demonstrated that processing can be as powerful as production. Artificial intelligence is driving unprecedented demand for electricity, copper and the infrastructure needed to connect them.

These drivers are often treated as separate stories, but they aren’t. Together, they mark a profound shift in how governments think about mining. It is no longer viewed simply as a cyclical industry that produces commodities. It is increasingly seen as a foundation of economic resilience and national security. The evidence stretches far beyond mining circles. 

In May, the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) defined economic warfare as “the use of financial, industrial, trade, and regulatory tools to shape how states convert resources into military power.” 

Minerals alliance

Industrial power has always underpinned military success, from Britain’s Industrial Revolution to the United States out-producing Germany and Japan during World War 2. Today, however, it is measured as much by critical minerals, refining, semiconductors, electricity and AI as by factories and shipyards. 

In June, G7 leaders agreed to establish a critical minerals alliance aimed at reducing dependence on any single supplier like China, coordinating stockpiles and expanding the International Energy Agency’s role in monitoring markets and issuing early warnings.  

The initiative is about more than trade since it reflects a recognition that secure mineral supply chains are now considered part of national preparedness. 

These aren’t isolated policy announcements because they reflect a broader realization that resilience in supply chains is becoming as important as the efficiency that drove them for decades. 

Industrial endurance

Ukraine has reinforced that lesson. The war has become one of industrial endurance as much as battlefield tactics, with the ability to produce shells, drones and missiles proving as important as military strategy. Manufacturing capacity is once again viewed as a defence capability. 

As Gracelin Baskaran and Meredith Schwartz of CSIS observed in their April report on China’s rare earth export restrictions, “True resilience will be measured not by policy announcements or deployed capital, but by sustained output, diversified supply, and the ability to attract private investment.”  

That’s one of the more important sentences written about mining this year. It reflects how mines, refineries, smelters, transmission lines and skilled workforces cannot be created overnight. They take years to permit, finance and build. One area where the United States has moved decisively is mineral security. And it’s pulled most Western nations along with it.  

Of course there are lots of challenges. In Alberta, proposed AI data centres are competing with industrial projects for electricity and grid connections. Across North America, utilities are warning that transmission capacity, not generation, is becoming the bottleneck.  

Simultaneous scramble

Governments are simultaneously scrambling to secure supplies of copper, rare earths, graphite, tungsten and other materials needed not only for batteries and power grids, but also for missiles, aircraft, radar systems and communications equipment. Increasingly, the same metals serve both civilian and military purposes.  

NATO members are rebuilding munitions stockpiles and strengthening domestic industrial capacity after decades of outsourcing and just-in-time supply chains. The objective is not simply to field better weapons, but to ensure they can continue producing them during a prolonged conflict.  

This convergence is changing mining’s place in the economy as the industry no longer simply supplies manufacturers. It’s supporting the infrastructure on which digital economies, energy systems and national defence all depend. 

Researchers at the Washington-based Resources for the Future reach a similar conclusion from a different direction. In a report from May, the group argues rebuilding domestic mineral supply chains requires far more than geology. Workforce shortages, processing capacity, infrastructure, permitting, community support and long-term policy certainty all determine whether new supply can actually be developed. 

In other words, critical minerals policy is becoming industrial policy. Success, however, will depend less on discovering the next orebody than on building the infrastructure, processing capacity and social licence needed to bring those resources to market. 

First link

For years, the industry argued that it deserved a place at the centre of economic policy. Governments often viewed that as special pleading from another cyclical sector. 

Now, they see mines producing copper, nickel, rare earths and uranium as the first link in supply chains that underpin AI, the energy transition and national defence. That changes the conversation, even if it doesn’t guarantee higher prices or easier permitting.  

Mining has become more important, not because the industry is waving flags, but because governments, military planners and technology companies have all reached the same conclusion. Industrial strength begins with secure supplies of minerals. 

And that means the path to economic and military power increasingly begins where mining has always begun: in the ground.