Patagonia is often imagined as a remote sanctuary at the edge of the world: vast forests, glacial lakes, windswept plains, and indigenous territories that have resisted the pressures of industrial modernity for centuries. Yet in recent years, this image has begun to fracture. Across Argentina’s southern provinces, forests have burned with unusual frequency and intensity, communities have been displaced, and land once protected by ecological or cultural barriers has become newly accessible, as documented in assessments of the 2024 Argentina wildfires. At the same time, Patagonia has emerged as a focal point in a far larger global struggle, one driven not by climate, but by geopolitics, resource scarcity, and national security imperatives emanating from Washington.
Beneath Patagonia’s scorched earth lies a convergence of uranium, lithium, copper, gold, and rare-earth-associated minerals, precisely the materials the United States has identified as critical to its military, technological, and economic survival, according to the Defense Logistics Agency’s Strategic Materials list (DLA). As China continues to dominate global supply chains for these resources, the U.S. has embarked on an aggressive, state-backed campaign to secure alternative sources, a shift analysed in multiple policy briefings and industry reports from Fastmarkets, and Rare Earth Exchanges, just to name a few. Argentina, and Patagonia in particular, have become central to that strategy. This investigation examines how U.S. mineral policy, Argentine investment frameworks such as RIGI, foreign mining corporations, and a wave of criminally investigated fires intersect, raising disturbing questions about environmental destruction, indigenous population displacement, and the true cost of securing “strategic” resources.
Over the past decade, the United States has quietly but decisively reframed access to critical and strategic minerals as a matter of national security, a transformation detailed in analyses of Pentagon stockpiling and mineral vulnerability, as described in a report from Ecor Network, titled: “Mining for War: An Assessment of the Pentagon’s Mineral Reserves“. This shift reflects a growing awareness inside the Pentagon, Congress, and the intelligence community that modern warfare, surveillance, and economic power depend on materials that the U.S. largely does not control. Lithium is essential for batteries powering military systems and electric vehicles; rare earth elements such as neodymium, dysprosium, and terbium are indispensable for missile guidance systems, radar, satellites, and advanced communications; uranium remains fundamental to nuclear energy and deterrence; and copper, nickel, gallium, and cobalt underpin everything from fighter jets to data centers, as reflected in the DLA strategic materials mandate (DLA).
The vulnerability lies in the supply chains. The United States is fully import-dependent for at least twelve critical minerals and more than fifty percent dependent for twenty-eight others, while China controls roughly seventy percent of global rare earth mining and more than ninety percent of refining capacity, a dominance outlined in policy analyses cited by GovFacts and Discovery Alert. These realities allow Beijing to control, or according to some critics, weaponise supply chains, a risk openly acknowledged in U.S. government and industry circles.
Faced with this imbalance, Washington has responded not with market liberalism but with a form of mineral mercantilism. The Pentagon has invested directly in mining companies, guaranteed price floors for rare earth products, invoked the Defense Production Act to subsidise extraction and processing, and expanded the National Defense Stockpile, developments examined in industry reporting like Fastmarkets. A proposed $2.5 billion Strategic Resilience Reserve, reported by Reuters, would further entrench government control over mineral flows, explicitly aiming to reduce reliance on China and secure long-term access to critical inputs.
The Defense Logistics Agency (DLA), which manages the stockpile, lists uranium, lithium, rare earth elements, copper, nickel, cobalt, gallium, and platinum group metals among its priority materials. These are not abstract commodities; they are the physical backbone of U.S. military power and technological dominance, and the list reads almost like a geological map of Patagonia itself. According to the recent Observatorio de Tierras report, US citizens and corporations are the largest owners of Argentinian land, leading with 2.7 million hectares, followed by Italy and Spain, with 50% located in the Andes and in Patagonia. (more...)
Patagonia’s Silent Occupation: Who’s Burning Patagonia to Mine Its Minerals?
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