I was pleased to speak in Washington, DC at the C3 Solutions / E&W Law roundtable on critical minerals policy and America’s economic and national security needs.
My central point was this:
The United States should be country-blind if the country is an ally.
That phrase comes from direct experience. I have been an investor for years in the Cook Islands subsea minerals industry. In February 2026, I spent a week aboard the research vessel Anunua Moana, which gave me deeper insight into the scale, complexity and strategic importance of subsea critical minerals in the Pacific.
The Cook Islands represents one of the world’s most significant subsea polymetallic nodule opportunities. But mineral potential alone does not create supply-chain security. The real challenge is converting that potential into a responsible, investable and strategically aligned supply chain that helps America and its allies reduce dependence on adversarial sources.
The U.S. has already recognized the need to work with partners.
The Minerals Security Partnership, launched in June 2022, was an attempt to accelerate diverse, sustainable and secure critical energy mineral supply chains. With more than 14 countries and the EU involved, it has helped frame the importance of public and private investment in mining, processing and recycling, particularly across minerals such as lithium, cobalt and rare earth elements.
That should be acknowledged.
But it is not enough.
The MSP is primarily a strategic and diplomatic partnership.
What is still missing is an execution platform that helps emerging allied technologies, allied resource projects and allied processing solutions move from concept to deployment.
That gap matters because many allied projects still face practical barriers when they try to access U.S. support.
For example, foreign allied applicants may need to show that the relevant work cannot be performed in the United States and that it directly serves U.S. national security or manufacturing.
Many DOE grants require significant cost-sharing, often at levels that can be unrealistic for emerging technologies or early-stage projects. EXIM financing can involve export-related tests, including requirements tying a portion of domestic production to exports.
These rules may make sense in narrow programmatic terms. But from a critical minerals policy perspective, they can slow down exactly the projects America should be trying to accelerate.
If an allied country has the resource, the technology, the geography, the processing capability or the operating expertise that strengthens America’s supply chain, the policy system should not make that project harder simply because it is not wholly domestic.
That is why I say: be country-blind if it’s an ally.
This does not mean lowering standards. It means applying high standards across the trusted allied world. It means judging projects by whether they strengthen a secure, transparent, responsible and resilient supply chain — not by whether every part of the solution happens to sit within one national border.
From my perspective, three policy objectives are now essential.
First, America Should Adopt A Country-Blind Allied Eligibility Principle.
The test should not simply be: “Is every part of this project physically inside the United States?”
The better test is: “Does this project strengthen a trusted allied supply chain that reduces dependence on adversarial sources?”
If a project in the Cook Islands, Australia, Canada, Norway, Japan, the United Kingdom or another trusted partner country helps America secure critical minerals, then U.S. policy should be capable of supporting it.
Domestic production remains essential. But domestic production alone will not solve the problem quickly enough. The challenge is too large, too urgent and too technically complex.
Second, The United States Should Create An Allied Critical Mineral Technology Hub And Network.
This would be materially different from the MSP.
The MSP is a country-level partnership.
What I am proposing is a physically grounded, execution-focused technology hub and network, ideally based in the United States, close to policymakers, national laboratories, defense users, capital providers, universities, processing facilities and industrial partners.
Its purpose would be proximity, collaboration and speed.
An Allied Critical Mineral Technology Hub should bring together U.S. agencies, national laboratories, allied governments, private capital, subsea technology companies, processing innovators, environmental-monitoring specialists, logistics providers, offtake buyers and strategic end-users.
The goal should be practical: identify the best allied technologies and move them into real projects.
In subsea minerals, this is critical. The issue is not only whether nodules exist. The harder questions are collection, lifting, environmental monitoring, vessel logistics, metallurgy, processing, offtake, financing and regulatory confidence.
No single country has all of the answers. But the allied world has many of the pieces.
Some of the best subsea engineering may sit with allied companies. Some of the best processing innovation may sit in universities, national laboratories or industrial groups. Some of the most important mineral opportunities may sit in Pacific jurisdictions that are strategically aligned with the United States.
America should organize that capability rather than wait for it to form project by project.
Third, The United States Should Create A Cabinet-level Secretary For Critical Minerals.
Critical minerals policy is currently spread across too many departments, agencies, programs and mandates. DOE has an important role, but critical minerals cannot remain treated as a sub-issue inside the energy bureaucracy.
This is a national security issue. But it is also:
- an industrial strategy issue.
- a defense issue.
- a foreign policy issue.
- a permitting issue.
- a trade issue.
- a finance issue; and
- a technology issue.
The United States needs a senior official with Cabinet-level authority to work across the whole government.
A Secretary for Critical Minerals should have the power to coordinate across DOE, Interior, Defense, Commerce, State, Treasury, EPA, USTR, EXIM, DFC, the national laboratories and the National Security Council.
The role should not and must not be symbolic.
It should align funding, permitting, offtake, allied supply-chain eligibility, processing strategy, defense procurement, environmental standards and international partnerships.
This role could draw on DOE expertise, but it should not be trapped inside DOE.
The supply-chain problem cuts across government and across borders.
The authority to solve it must do the same.
Without that central authority, critical minerals policy risks remaining fragmented. Each agency may do useful work, but no one owns the whole supply chain.
My week aboard the Anunua Moana reinforced this point. The opportunity in subsea minerals is real. But the path from seabed resource to secure supply chain is not automatic. It requires technology, environmental seriousness, processing capability, finance, offtake and policy alignment.
The United States has started the conversation through initiatives such as the Minerals Security Partnership.
But The Next Phase Must Be More Operational.
America now needs to build the machinery to execute.
That means:
- Be country-blind if it’s an ally.
- Create a U.S.-based Allied Critical Mineral Technology Hub and network focused on proximity, collaboration and deployment.
- Establish a Cabinet-level Secretary for Critical Minerals with authority across the whole U.S. Government.
Critical minerals security will not be achieved by admiring the problem. It will be achieved by organizing the trusted world around a serious execution plan.