Ed Zamanillo

Author of Mining Is Dead. Long Live Geopolitical Mining | Mining Engineer

[Ed Zamanillo @EdZamanillo]

Mining is no longer just about energy transition—it’s the backbone of global power.

Our new book “The Mining Is Dead. Long Live the New Geopolitical Mining” explores the forces reshaping the world.

Available now on Amazon: https://t.co/CZqqc2o1vu
#Mining #Geopolitics #CriticalMinerals

[Amanda van Dyke @AmandaVandyke13]

Rare earths aren’t rare. The ability to separate them is.

We already know of enough mineable reserves to cover ~100 years of demand.

So scarcity isn’t the problem.

Complexity is.

Not all rare earth deposits are created equal:
• Some are rich but chemically messy
• Some are accessible but low concentration
• Most contain multiple elements tangled together

And separating them....that’s the hard part.

It requires dozens (sometimes hundreds) of chemical steps to isolate each element.

Which is why processing — not mining — is the real bottleneck.

Here’s what these elements actually power:
• Magnets (Neodymium, Praeseodymium,Dysprosium) → EVs, wind turbines
• Superalloys (Scandium, Yttrium) → aerospace, high-performance metals
• Catalysts (Cerium, Lanthanum) → refining, emissions control
• Electronics(Samarium Terbium) → screens, sensors, defence tech

So while the world focuses on “who has the rare earths”…

The real advantage belongs to those who can refine them efficiently.

The solution is investing in separation, refining, and process innovation.

To raise awareness of the minerals that power our world, follow, share, comment. #criticalmineralshub #mineralimperative

[Amanda van Dyke @AmandaVandyke13]

The biggest mistake we're making about re industrialisation?

Thinking it's a technology race.

It isn't.

It's a manufacturing race.

The West has always had the best technology, but when we outsourced manufacturing we lost the ability make our technology real.

Re- learning to manufacturing is now the real race.

When the US lost rare earth refining.

But it didn't just lose plants.

It lost:
• Operators
• Engineers
• Suppliers
• Customers
• Universities
• Institutional memory

That's why rebuilding takes decades.

Because industrial capability can't be imported overnight.

China understood this.

It spent 60 years building industrial ecosystems.

The West assumed it could always buy the output.

Now we're discovering that knowing how to make things may be more important than knowing what to make.

The next industrial superpowers won't necessarily have the best ideas.
They'll be the ones that learn the fastest—and remember the longest. @StevenEKuhn @EdZamanillo @hjesanderson @VinceBeiser

Full Article in the comments. #criticalmineralshub #mineralimperative #rareearths

[Amanda van Dyke @AmandaVandyke13]

People keep talking about food inflation....

I think they're asking the wrong question.

Modern agriculture is a high-performance system.

It feeds 8 billion people because a handful of assumptions hold true:
→ Fertilisers arrive on time.
→ Supply chains function.
→ The weather behaves.
→ Farmers can afford inputs.

What happens when several of those assumptions fail at the same time?
40–50% of seaborne sulfur and ammonia trade moves through the Gulf.

El Niño risks are rising into 2026–27.

And roughly half of global food production depends on synthetic fertilisers.

Maybe the system absorbs the shock.

Maybe it doesn't.

But I struggle to understand why we're only discussing food prices when the real question is whether a system built with almost no spare capacity can withstand multiple stresses simultaneously. I unpack the maths in the full article below.
#mineralimperative #criticalmineralshub @ctindale

https://t.co/OHzxjP1184

[MINING.COM @mining]

The US passes DOMINANCE Act for critical minerals security    https://t.co/fbz8U6559H

[Ed Zamanillo @EdZamanillo]

@AmandaVandyke13 Really well put. Owning the resource is only half the story, the advantage comes from knowing what to do with it.

[Amanda van Dyke @AmandaVandyke13]

Rare earths aren’t rare.

The ability to separate them is.

Most people think “rare earth elements” are scarce, exotic, and running out.

They’re not.

The real problem?

We don’t know how to efficiently separate them.

Here’s why that matters:

• Rare earths always occur mixed together — like tangled threads

• Separating them requires complex, multi-step chemical processes

• It’s expensive, slow, and environmentally messy

• China dominates because it mastered this processing,

So the bottleneck isn’t geology.

It’s chemistry + engineering.

The next global resource race isnt just about who has minerals.

It’ll be about who can refine them best.

That’s where the real leverage is.

To raise awareness of the minerals that power our world, follow, share, comment. #criticalmineralshub #mineralimperative

[Amanda van Dyke @AmandaVandyke13]

The Deep Ocean Imperative: China Isn't Just Exploring the Seabed. It's Mastering It.

China's deep sea mining fleet isnt about mining alone. The battle for the Ocean floor has already begun. The New Great Game runs 5000 meteres below the Surface.

China holds more International Seabed Authority licences than any other nation.

But that  is just a statistic that largely misses the point.

China isn't winning the race for deep-sea minerals because it has more pieces of paper.

It is winning because it has spent decades building the ships, scientists, engineers, ports, submersibles, legal frameworks and industrial capability needed to operate in the deep ocean itself.

The question is no longer whether China intends to mine the deep sea.

The question is why a country interested in collecting nodules thousands of kilometres from home has built one of the world's largest oceanographic fleets and a new generation of vessels capable of operating almost anywhere on Earth.

Aircraft carriers dominate the surface.

Nuclear submarines dominate beneath it.

But the next great competition may belong to something less glamorous:
research vessels, seabed crawlers and deep-ocean motherships.

#deepseamineralimperative #themineralimperative #criticalmineralshub
https://t.co/lQdwpt3qEz

[Ed Zamanillo @EdZamanillo]

Codelco, Collahuasi and Technical Governance in Chilean Copper

The question after Jorge Gómez’s appointment is not only whether he has the technical background.

He does.

The real question is whether Chile’s state-owned copper system will give technical leadership enough mandate, accountability and room to operate.

Collahuasi matters because it shows what technical governance can do when a complex mine needs to recover operational order.

Codelco is a different institution. But one principle can travel: complex mining systems need integrated control, clear accountability and technical authority protected by competent governance.
@berfontaine @collahuasiCL @AngloAmerican @AngloAmericanCL @CodelcoChile @Glencore @mitsuiandco
https://t.co/Qc42j1gIV6

#Copper #Mining #Codelco #Collahuasi #Chile #GeopoliticalMining

[Amanda van Dyke @AmandaVandyke13]

Last week we unpacked Canada’s disastrous handling of natural resources. This week I went deeper — straight into the heart of the Alberta independence debate. From a Mineral Imperative perspective, it’s not crazy. It actually makes a lot of sense.

Alberta sits on the 3rd-largest proven oil reserves on Earth and ranks as the 4th-largest oil producer. It’s loaded with natural gas, uranium, potash, critical minerals, and some of the most productive farmland in North America. For its entire history as a province it has been a massive net contributor to Canada — even as Ottawa’s net-zero policies throttled its growth, blocked pipelines, and jacked up costs.A $300-billion resource-exporting economy. World-class infrastructure. The U.S. as its biggest customer. And a growing sense that the federation is treating its golden goose like a problem to be regulated into oblivion.I break down the numbers, the history, the politics, and the hard resource-sovereignty case that makes Alberta independence — or even Alberta-as-U.S.-state — far more rational than the mainstream dismisses.

From a Mineral Imperative Perspective, An Independent Alberta Makes a Lot of Sense.Drop in and read the full piece. You might be surprised how compelling the case actually is. #mineralimperative #criticalmineralshub @jmroberge @SeanZubick @EdZamanillo @RealRickRule

https://t.co/TJTxl5bMYM

[AngloGold Ashanti Colombia @AGAColombia]

#Actualidad 💡
Estudio evidencia que la minería moderna no desplaza el agro
"El estudio indica que el país no enfrenta un dilema estructural entre minería moderna y agricultura. La evidencia disponible sugiere que la coexistencia entre ambos sectores es posible y, en muchos casos, ya ocurre en Colombia."
#MineríaConPropósito 🌳

https://t.co/46db0ynpP6

[U.S. Department of Energy @ENERGY]

On day one, President Trump ended the Biden administration's disastrous war on coal.

MINE, BABY, MINE.

[Ed Zamanillo @EdZamanillo]

Rare earths are becoming a talent war.

The real bottleneck is no longer only deposits, capital or geopolitics. It is the capability to turn mineral potential into qualified supply.

Engineers, processing knowledge and institutions are now part of mineral security.

https://t.co/ovn9Ge2P6n

#RareEarths #CriticalMinerals #Mining

[Amanda van Dyke @AmandaVandyke13]

The Canadian Mineral Imperative

Canada is in recession.

We are in the middle of a resources boom but the Canadian mining and oil and gas industry is not booming. Not because it ran out of oil, gas, minerals, farmland, fresh water or opportunity.

Canada remains one of the most resource-rich nations on Earth. It shares the world's longest border with the largest economy in history. It possesses vast reserves of oil, gas, potash, uranium, nickel, copper, gold and critical minerals.

So what went wrong?

For decades, Canada made it increasingly difficult to develop the very resources that built its prosperity. Projects were delayed, cancelled, litigated and regulated into oblivion. Capital left. Talent left. Investment followed.

This is a story about a country that forgot the Mineral Imperative: the simple reality that every economy is built on the resources it can secure, develop and transform.

My latest article explores how one of the world's most blessed nations squandered its advantages—and what it must do to reclaim them. @SeanZubick @EdZamanillo @ctindale @RealRickRule
#Canada #Mining #CriticalMinerals #Energy #NaturalResources #Economy #ResourceSecurity #TheMineralImperative

https://t.co/LKJ4UCx267

[Survival: Global Politics and Strategy @SurvivalEditors]

Nicolas Niarchos’s The Elements of Power and Marta Rivera and Eduardo Zamanillo’s Mining Is Dead. Long Live Geopolitical Mining are more measured than their titles – and many in the field – suggest.

Review by Chris Clague: https://t.co/9EGf9ugma2

[Ed Zamanillo @EdZamanillo]

Colombia should be one of the most important mining countries in Latin America.

But geology is not enough.

The 2026 election will test something deeper: whether Colombia can rebuild confidence around formal mining while dealing with illegal extraction, security risks, energy transition politics, and the future of coal and gold.

That is the lens of our latest article.

Colombia’s mining debate is not only about resources.
It is about state capacity.

https://t.co/ogNNzY0sGm

#Colombia #Mining #LatinAmerica #GeopoliticalMining

[Amanda van Dyke @AmandaVandyke13]

The US, India, Australia, and Japan, the worlds leading Western mining and processing nations ex China, have announced a comprehensive framework for working together to increase and secure critical mineral supply chains for their mutual benefit.

Who wasn’t invited to the party……the EU, Canada, or the UK. #mineralimperative @jmroberge @ctindale

https://t.co/nV8YCZ4bCR @SeanZubick

[Amanda van Dyke @AmandaVandyke13]

He who controls power, will control AI. This is the profound truth most people are missing.

Thanks to Diego Davila for the image. @robert_ivanhoe @ctindale

[Ed Zamanillo @EdZamanillo]

New Geopolitical Mining Weekly is out.

This week felt like a good reminder that mineral security is not built only at the mine.

It is built in processing plants, Arctic power systems, copper province agreements, sanctions structures, ownership rules, boardrooms and reporting systems.

Less glamorous, maybe.
But probably closer to where the real story is now.

https://t.co/0RHPQXfZcT

#Mining #CriticalMinerals #Geopolitics

[Amanda van Dyke @AmandaVandyke13]

The Mineral Imperative in the Deep Sea
*only the exec summary of this article loaded yesterday, apologies.

Deep sea mining has moved from science fiction to geopolitical reality. For years, deep-sea mining was treated as science fiction, a distant hypothetical.

That era is over. Governments are reviving dormant mining laws. Billions are already being deployed into ships, robotics and exploration systems. China is expanding its deep-sea capabilities. The United States is accelerating permitting pathways. Companies are testing full-scale collection systems kilometres beneath the ocean surface.

Meanwhile, much of the public conversation still acts as though this industry does not yet exist. This article examines the reality behind deep-sea mining: the companies, states, technologies and geopolitical forces already turning the seabed into the next great strategic resource frontier.

The real debate is no longer whether deep-sea mining will happen. It is who will control it, under whose rules, and whether the world is prepared for what comes next.

Rory Usher I hope you like the image ;) @gtbgtb @themetalsco @SeanZubick @A_Milewski

#DeepSeaMining #CriticalMinerals #Mining #EnergyTransition #Geopolitics #MineralSecurity #Nickel #Cobalt #Copper #RareEarths #China #IndustrialPolicy #EnergySecurity #TheMineralImperative

The New Deep Sea Great Game https://t.co/34Pudg1tsB

[Amanda van Dyke @AmandaVandyke13]

The Deep-Sea is Next Battle Ground
-for critical minerals, industrial power, military dominance, and global influence, and deep sea mining moved from science fiction to geopolitical reality.

For years, deep-sea mining was treated as science fiction, a distant hypothetical debated in academic papers and environmental campaigns.

That era is over.

Governments are reviving dormant mining laws. Billions are already being deployed into ships, robotics and exploration systems. China is expanding its deep-sea capabilities. The United States is accelerating permitting pathways. Companies are testing full-scale collection systems kilometres beneath the ocean surface.

Meanwhile, much of the public conversation still acts as though this industry does not yet exist.

This article examines the reality behind deep-sea mining: the companies, states, technologies and geopolitical forces already turning the seabed into the next great strategic resource frontier.

The real debate is no longer whether deep-sea mining will happen.

It is who will control it, under whose rules, and whether the world is prepared for what comes next.

@TheOregonGroup @SeanZubick @EdZamanillo @gtbgtb @themetalsco
#DeepSeaMining #CriticalMinerals #Mining #EnergyTransition #Geopolitics #MineralSecurity #Nickel #Cobalt #Copper #RareEarths #China #IndustrialPolicy #EnergySecurity #TheMineralImperative

https://t.co/muEbHjvXLn