Western efforts to secure critical mineral supply chains from China are increasingly driven by security logic. That approach risks raising costs, slowing decarbonisation and undermining the global energy transition.

Since 2022, the United States and the European Union have shifted rapidly towards a more interventionist industrial policy aimed at building ‘trusted’ critical mineral supply chains free from Chinese inputs.

The logic of this strategy is understandable. China has demonstrated its capacity to exploit supply chain chokepoints and western defence planners are right to worry about concentrated sources supply for advanced weapons systems.

Yet this western response exposes a deeper problem. Despite differing policy instruments, Washington and Brussels have pursued two intertwined objectives – national security and competitive positioning vis-a-vis China’s state-led development – risking the subordination of critical minerals that are crucial to managing the challenge of climate change to what amounts to a war-oriented logic.

Policymakers in both the United States and the European Union have promoted strategies such as ‘strategic autonomy’, ‘friend-shoring’ and ‘secure supply’ for critical minerals and the industrial capabilities that convert them into batteries, magnets and advanced weapons components. Yet this turn towards state capitalism, with governments acting as direct economic actors, applies the logic of military supply chains to the climate challenge that can only be met by the mobilisation of market forces across the global economy.

Minerals are classified as critical not only because of their functional importance, but because of their supply chain vulnerability. A mineral may be economically vital yet not deemed to be critical if its supply is diversified across markets and resilient. This differs from strategic minerals, which are defined by their specific utility in defence, aerospace or critical infrastructure and by the absence of viable substitutes. The same minerals, used in both security-related applications and in green........

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