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We’re working with partners to set cyber norms, and we’re working to uphold them around the world – as we did by publicly calling out the PRC for targeting U.S. critical infrastructure and by holding Iran directly accountable for its cyber attacks against Albania, just to cite two examples.
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Right now, the world’s tech manufacturing infrastructure is dangerously concentrated in a few narrow geographic areas. And in the event of military conflict, natural disaster, those supply chains could be cut off.
To lessen that risk, the United States is forging tech partnerships that will make critical technology supply chains more resilient, more diverse, more secure. And that includes for critical minerals, which are essential to scaling up clean energy technologies.
Today, the United States produces just 1 percent of the nickel, 4 percent of the lithium, 13 percent of the cobalt, 0 percent of the graphite required to meet current EV demand. Meanwhile, 80 percent of critical minerals are processed by China.
We want to strengthen and diversify critical mineral supply chains to meet the rising demand while, again, guarding against dangerous dependencies. Two years ago, the United States set up the Minerals Security Partnership, now joined by 14 countries and the European Union, which together represent more than half of global GDP. The MSP is working on nearly two dozen projects around the world across the supply chain, from mining, to extraction, to processing, to recycling, to recovery.
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Source: U.S. Department of State
Speaker: Antony J. Blinken, U.S. Secretary of State
Format: Speech
China Policy Research 