In the 21st century, the struggle for natural resources is becoming a new type of covert warfare. Countries today do not compete only for land, borders, or military influence. More and more often, they compete for access to the minerals, metals, and energy resources. In the modern world, whoever controls strategic mineral resources controls future.

Humanity has always experienced conflicts connected to natural resources. Throughout history, wars were fought over fertile land, water, gold, spices, coal, and oil. Empires rose by taking control of trade routes and raw materials. Today, resource conflicts are tied not only to digital technologies, military production, and global supply chains.

One of the main reasons for this struggle is the simple fact that natural resources are limited and unevenly distributed. Critical minerals do not exist everywhere. They are concentrated in specific regions, which creates dependency among states. Some countries possess the raw materials, while others dominate processing, refining, and high-tech manufacturing. This imbalance produces geopolitical tension. For example, major lithium reserves are located in South America and Australia, while the processing of lithium and the production of battery technologies are largely connected to Asian countries.

Rare earth elements have become equally important. These minerals are essential for manufacturing many modern products, including smartphones, electric vehicles, wind turbines, satellites, and advanced military equipment. They are especially valuable in the defense and aerospace industries because they are required for precision technologies, radar systems, aircraft components, and electronic warfare systems.

At present, China dominates the global rare earth industry. It controls a significant share of the world’s processing capacity and plays a central role in supplying these materials to other economies. China provides a substantial portion of........

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