RUSH: Global Scramble for Minerals Wages War on People and Planet

New report from the Oakland Institute highlights how the military, AI, and corporate interests are driving the global rush for critical minerals.

“The energy transition is expected to massively boost demand for minerals and metals, requiring an estimated $1.7 trillion in global mining investment.” That’s the World Bank in 2022, arguing in favour of expanding extractivism in the Global South which “could contribute to economic growth, jobs, and local development”. The World Bank predicts that by 2050, the demand for minerals such as graphite, lithium, and cobalt to “meet the growing demand for clean energy technologies” could be five times larger than today.

But a new report by the Oakland Institute argues that the critical minerals race is not actually about a green transition. “Instead, it is largely driven by countries seeking strategic inputs for their industries — particularly the military — and by corporations seeking growth and profits,” the report states.

The report is titled, “RUSH: Global Scramble for Minerals Wages War on People and Planet” and is written by Frédéric Mousseau and Andy Currier. The report finds that more than 70% of mineral demand comes from industries outside the energy transition. These include the aerospace, military, Big Tech, and AI sectors.

In a press release, Anuradha Mittal, executive director of the Oakland Institute, says,

“Securing access to critical minerals is reshaping international relations and foreign aid as competition between the US and China becomes a new geopolitical battleground. The costs are being borne by communities around the world as this global race drives wars and violence, results in land grabs, forced displacement, devastating pollution, and the irreversible destruction of lands and livelihoods.”

Project Vault

In February 2026, the fascist Trump regime announced a US$12 billion programme called Project Vault, to create a stockpile of critical mineral in the US. US$10 billion will come as a loan from the US Export-Import Bank and US$2 billion from private capital. Companies involved include General Motors, Alphabet, Lockheed Martin, and Boeing. These companies will gain preferential access to minerals in case of shortages.

The Trump regime has signed more than 20 bilateral critical mineral deals, with countries including Ukraine, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Kazakhstan, Australia, India, Saudi Arabia, Japan, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, and Cambodia.

In July 2025, the Oakland Institute published a report about the peace agreement signed between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo, brokered by the Trump regime. The Oakland Institute explains that,

Profit off Peace? Meet the Corporations Poised to Benefit from the DRC Peace Deal exposes how the deal could further enrich Western mining firms with dubious records around human rights violations, environmental damages, and financial crime – in addition to billionaires like Bill Gates, Marc Andreessen, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk and mercenary Erik Prince. It examines the deep connections between Trump and several of the key players set to profit, raising legitimate concerns over the influence of business and foreign interests on Trump’s international agenda.

The AI boom and demand for minerals

Between 2026 and 2030, the AI boom is expected to double the capacity of data centres. The AI industry is setting up its own mining companies — to secure the minerals needed for these data centres.

For example, a company called KoBold Metals was incorporated in the tax haven of Delaware in 2018. The company uses AI to explore for minerals.

Funding for KoBold Metals comes from Breakthrough Energy, which was launched by Bill Gates in Paris on the sidelines of COP21 in 2015. Breakthrough Energy is backed by Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Marc Benioff, Aditya Mittal, Andrew Forrest, and Michael Bloomberg.

Other investors in KoBold Metals include Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, and Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz’s venture capital firm, Andreessen Horowitz. (Andreessen is also a major backer of Substack.)

The company has more than 70 projects across five continents, the Oakland Institute notes.

KoBold is developing the US$2.3 billion Mingomba copper mine in Zambia.

In April 2026, KoBold Metals started exploring for lithium in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The company has acquired 13 exploration licenses and will carry out airborne surveys over an area of 30,000 square kilometres. KoBold Metals will spend about US$50 million by early 2027, including US$20 million it has already paid to secure the permits.

Kurt House, KoBold’s CEO, claims that the company is “the largest American investor in the ​country”. He describes KoBold’s operations in the Democratic Republic of Congo as “the most ​ambitious mineral exploration ⁠programme ever attempted”.

Before setting up KoBold, House worked in the fossil fuel industry. He was CEO of C12 Energy, which uses carbon dioxide to extract more oil from mature oil fields (and which KoBold describes as “carbon sequestration”). He was also a partner at Phase Change Resources, a private equity-backed oil and gas acquisition platform.

KoBold’s president, Josh Goldman, also worked at Phase Change Resources, before which he worked for McKinsey.

“The stakes could not be higher”

“The report issues a resounding call to challenge this false narrative to stop the untenable rush for minerals before it becomes an irreversible global catastrophe,” the Oakland Institute’s Frederic Mousseau warns. “The stakes could not be higher. If left unchecked, the global mining rush will trigger hundreds of new mines in a short period. The resulting human and planetary devastation will be at a scale never seen before – livelihoods will be destroyed, millions will be displaced, and environmental destruction will become irreversible.”

In its report, the Oakland Institute highlights three significant threats posed by the mining rush:

1. Escalation of competition between global powers, particularly the United States and China, for the control of mineral supply chains. While growing competition may improve bargaining power for resource-rich countries, it also creates major risks of conflict and supply disruptions, as seen in China’s export restrictions in response to US tariffs.

2. Competition for critical minerals between energy transition and military applications. Minerals such as copper, lithium, nickel, and cobalt are essential for both renewable energy systems and the defense industry. US stockpiling programs such as Project Vault, combined with the Trump administration’s disregard for climate action, constrain mineral availability for renewable energy deployment.

3. The intensification of social and environmental harms caused by extraction on an unprecedented scale. Expanding extraction will require fast-tracking new mines, threaten Indigenous lands, exacerbate water scarcity, and dramatically increase toxic waste contamination. The cumulative environmental footprint – from deforestation, soil degradation, and biodiversity loss to air and water pollution – will intensify, while the social toll, including displacement, human rights abuses, conflict, and impact on human health, will come at an extraordinary cost.