The United States is facing a collision of two crises: China’s tightening control over the minerals that fuel modern industry and America’s exploding electricity demand from artificial intelligence. One is geopolitical, the other domestic, yet together they threaten to test the nation’s economic and energy resilience in profound ways.
Earlier this month, Beijing further expanded its export controls on rare-earth metals and related technologies—adding new minerals to its restricted list and imposing tougher licensing rules on mining, smelting, magnet manufacturing, and recycling know-how. China’s Ministry of Commerce defended the measures as necessary for national security and brushed off Washington’s protests as hypocrisy.
The impact was immediate. Chinese rare-earth exports fell 31 percent in September alone, the third straight monthly decline, as companies struggled to obtain licenses for magnet materials. China already controls roughly 70% of global rare-earth mining, 90% of processing, and more than 90% of high-performance magnet output. By effectively closing the door on key technologies, Beijing is now weaponizing the supply chain rather than just dominating it.
These minerals—including dysprosium, terbium, germanium, and antimony—sit at the heart of the digital and defense economies. They are used for crucial applications such as fighter jets, radars, advanced semiconductors, and renewable energy. Beijing argues that such dual-use materials fall under legitimate security restrictions. Geopolitically, however, the message is unmistakable: if the U.S. blocks China’s access to chips, China will restrict America’s access to what makes chips (and weapons) possible.
Washington’s response has been swift if fragmented. The Department of Commerce has launched a Section 232 national security probe into mineral imports to explore whether foreign dependence constitutes a strategic vulnerability. At the Pentagon, the Defense Logistics Agency has begun a $1 billion procurement drive to build the largest U.S. critical-minerals stockpile in decades, targeting cobalt, tantalum, and rare-earth oxides to blunt any Chinese cutoff.
Automakers and suppliers have urged “immediate action” after reporting delays and shortages. Beijing, meanwhile, has accused Washington of double standards, insisting its export curbs mirror America’s own chip restrictions. The diplomatic tit-for-tat escalated when President Trump imposed 100 percent tariffs on Chinese imports and threatened new technology export bans.
While these mineral skirmishes unfold, the second crunch continues to brew at home. The rapid rise of artificial intelligence has unleashed a hunger for electricity unseen in history. Being the physical backbone of cloud computing and AI, data centers are now spreading faster than utility companies can build capacity. A September report found U.S. data center construction hitting record highs as companies race to meet AI demand.
The numbers are staggering. Analysts estimate these facilities could consume up to 12% of all U.S. electricity by 2028, up from roughly 4% today. McKinsey & Company projects total data center demand will reach 606 terawatt-hours in 2030, a fourfold jump from 2023 levels—equal to about 12% of national power use.
The Energy Information Administration expects U.S. electricity consumption to hit new heights in 2025 and 2026, driven by data centers, electric vehicles, and electrified heating. Two-thirds of that growth could stem directly from AI-related computing. The Electric Power Research Institute warns that AI’s load alone could exceed 50GW by 2030—roughly the output of fifty nuclear reactors. Globally, AI data centers are predicted to consume the same amount of electricity as Japan does today, according to the World Economic Forum.
Yet the grid supplying that power in the United States is already strained. Years of underinvestment, regulatory delays, and local opposition have slowed the construction of new generation and transmission. Northern Virginia, home to the densest cluster of data centers on Earth, has at times paused new connections because transmission lines cannot handle additional power. Nationwide, utilities’ five-year load forecasts have quintupled since 2022, implying a need for 128GW of extra capacity by decade’s end—a 16% expansion that today’s permitting timelines can’t deliver.
Consumers are paying the price. Electricity costs rose on average about 5% nationwide this past year, with Maine (+23%) and New Jersey (+22%) leading the surge—far outpacing inflation. Soaring demand is meeting slow supply, and the result is predictable: higher bills, tighter margins, and growing anxiety about reliability as extreme weather events multiply.
This convergence of mineral scarcity abroad and power scarcity at home raises an uncomfortable question: can America secure both the inputs and the energy for its technological future?
Part of the answer lies in actors the public rarely sees—commodity traders. These firms form the connective tissue of crucial world markets by moving raw materials where they are needed most. In September, BGN International, a veteran energy trader, announced a new metals trading desk dedicated to materials “essential for the energy transition” and chaired by former Trafigura executive Claire Blanchlande. That development follows a partnership to market critical minerals in Africa, extending the firm’s 80-year legacy in oil, gas, and petrochemicals into critical minerals and metals.
BGN joins a quiet shift among its peers. Giants like Vitol, Trafigura, and Glencore, long focused on oil and refined products, are investing heavily in critical minerals logistics, anticipating that copper, nickel, and lithium will underpin both electrification and defense supply chains. Their role is both pragmatic and vital. By sourcing from diverse geographies and arbitrage regional imbalances, traders can redirect supply in real time, softening the blow of geopolitical and economic shocks. If China tightens exports, a trader might reroute Australian or African stockpiles within weeks and give policymakers time to craft structural fixes.
That agility does not replace domestic production, but it’s a crucial buffer. Governments move slowly and markets move overnight. Recognizing commodity traders as partners in resilience, rather than opaque middlemen, could be one of Washington’s more cost-effective defenses against a minerals crunch.
Still, no amount of clever trading can solve America’s electricity shortfall. Meeting AI-era demand will require a wartime pace of infrastructure building, which entails faster permitting for transmission lines, accelerated investment in renewables and battery storage, and attention to dispatchable baseload power from nuclear and gas plants. Lawmakers are debating permitting reform bills that could shave years off grid projects, but progress remains halting.
Efficiency will help too. Tech firms are experimenting with chips that use less power and heat-recycling systems that reuse waste energy. Encouraging data centers to shift flexible computing loads to off-peak hours could also ease strain. Yet without massive new capacity, even the most efficient servers can’t run on optimism.
The deeper lesson is that the 20th-century notion of energy security—measured mainly in barrels of oil—no longer suffices. Today’s security is measured in megawatts and minerals, the power to compute, and the elements that make computation possible. China’s export curbs have reminded the U.S. how dependent it remains on foreign supply chains. At the same time, America’s own digital boom is outpacing its physical infrastructure.
Resilience will come not from a single grand policy but from multiple sources, routes, and systems. What will prove vital are mining partnerships with allies like Australia and Canada, smarter grid planning, streamlined permitting, and a stronger relationship with private market players that can reroute supply when politics falter.
The world’s next economic shocks may not start with oil or gas but with a shortage of germanium wafers or a data-center blackout. To withstand them, the U.S. must learn to treat electrons and elements alike as strategic assets.
China’s mineral power and America’s AI appetite have set the stage for a new kind of resource race. The question now is whether Washington can adapt fast enough to win it.
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