Cobalt and lithium become geopolitical
By 2017, the Democratic Republic of Congo produced over 70 percent of the world's mined cobalt — the critical material for high-energy-density lithium-ion batteries. By 2020 China processed roughly 80 percent of the world's cobalt and over half of its lithium, regardless of where the raw mineral was mined. The 'lithium triangle' of Chile, Argentina, and Bolivia held over half of global lithium reserves, with each country experimenting with various forms of state participation. The transition to electrified transport recreated, on a smaller scale, the same producer-state coordination dynamic that OPEC had built around oil — except this time the geographic footprint was different and the processing chokepoint was Chinese rather than American.
Indonesia, the world's largest nickel producer, banned exports of unprocessed nickel ore in 2020 explicitly to force foreign investors to build refining capacity inside Indonesia. The strategy has worked — Indonesia is now the world's largest battery-grade nickel processor — and is being studied closely by other resource-state governments. The 'no raw exports' template is the 21st century's equivalent of the 1970s nationalization wave.
05 · The Transition
Three energy revolutions are running simultaneously. American shale fracking has made the U.S. the world's largest oil and gas producer for the first time since 1973. Solar and battery costs have collapsed by 80 to 90 percent in fifteen years, with China dominating both production and the rare-earth supply chain. And weaponized energy — Russia's gas cuts to Europe, Western sanctions on Russian oil, the price-cap mechanism, the Nord Stream sabotage — has demonstrated that the petrodollar system can be unwound, in pieces, in months. The wealth ranking of the next era is being decided right now, and not all of the candidates know they're competing.
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