US Critical Mineral Aggression Abroad Connected to Data Center Fights at Home

Even as the Trump administration brazenly undermines other nations’ sovereignty in the pursuit of the critical minerals necessary to fuel the AI infrastructure boom, the data center fight in communities across the United States has not left the headlines. These two phenomena are not independent of each other: America’s industrial policy and practice are increasingly shaped by the massive resource demands of the “AI revolution.” The data centers themselves, the chips that reside within them, and the energy infrastructure needed to power them are all entangled in material and political supply chains that link the communities on the frontlines of data center buildout to those on the frontlines of resource mining and refining. These connections matter, both because they reveal the full environmental impact and geopolitical complexities of AI’s infrastructures and because they open avenues for new forms of solidarity.

As recent moves by the US to claim natural resources in Venezuela and Greenland demonstrate, the colonial history of the Global North’s plunder of the Global South is seeing a reprise. Simultaneously, this pattern is being complicated by recent moves to onshore more critical mineral production, in part to power AI but also to manufacture the batteries and parts necessary for a green energy transition. These developments juxtapose the hyperlocal and the global, but also increasingly link them, as raw mineral extraction crops up on domestic shores. For instance, Nevadans are currently confronting the massive Thacker Pass mine, which is slated to produce 40,000 metric tons of lithium carbonate for 800,000 electric vehicles in its first phase, while Arizonans are encountering the staggering consumption and pollution from the country’s first TSMC semiconductor chip factory.