The hidden US-China battle beneath the Pacific Ocean

Conservation groups' policy brief steers the conversation toward the geopolitical aspect of deep-sea mining

By Mar-Vic Cagurangan

The U.S. has rekindled its interest in deep-sea mining, targeting critical minerals and power resources, which President Donald Trump said would secure America’s energy future and cut its dependence on China.

Trump’s April 24 executive order, titled “Unleashing America’s Offshore Critical Minerals and Resources,” seeks to access “potentially vast resources in seabed polymetallic nodules, other subsea geologic structures, and coastal deposits containing strategic minerals such as nickel, cobalt, copper, manganese, titanium and rare earth elements” in international waters.

“Our nation must take immediate action to accelerate the responsible development of seabed mineral resources, quantify the nation’s endowment of seabed minerals, reinvigorate American leadership in associated extraction and processing technologies, and ensure secure supply chains for our defense, infrastructure and energy sectors,” reads the executive order.

The directive mandates the expeditious processing of mining permits, bypassing the International Seabed Authority.

Trump's latest thunderbolt is not just about America’s energy future; it is also a bid to counter China’s dominance in critical seabed minerals, extending the arena of their raging competition to the ocean floor, where both nations are already jostling for spots to lay down subsea cables. This time, the critical deep-sea minerals represent yet another trophy in a brewing battle over technologies that signal economic and military supremacy.

“The United States also controls seabed mineral resources in one of the largest ocean areas of the world,” states the executive order, which foreshadows further escalation of geopolitical tensions in the Pacific island region.

The deep-sea mining industry has set its sights on the Clarion–Clipperton zone, an environmental management area in the Pacific Ocean that is rich in minerals essential for electric vehicles, renewable energy, smartphones and strategic defense applications.

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In a 2016 report titled “Deep-sea Mining Interests and Activities in the Western Pacific,” Christopher Kelley, a biologist at the University of Hawaii’s Department of Oceanography, said an area in the Central Pacific called the “Prime Fe-Mn Crust Zone (PCZ)” has been marked “as being of the greatest economic interest in the world for mining mineral-rich crusts.”

Kelley's report, published on NOAA’s Ocean Exploration website, notes that the western half of the PCZ, located near the Northern Mariana Islands and the Mariana Trench Marine National Monument, contains some of the oldest seafloor in the Pacific and is believed to have some of the thickest, most valuable crusts.

Yi Han, an analyst with the British think tank Bloomsbury Intelligence Security Institute, said China accounts for about 60 percent of global rare earth production and controls significant seabed mineral deposits. “Its 2010 temporary halt of rare earth exports to Japan during a territorial dispute, and its recent restrictions on exports of six critical minerals to the U.S. amid trade tensions, demonstrate its geopolitical leverage,” Yi wrote in a May 15 report published on Bloomsbury’s website. “Importantly, it underscores China’s ability to disrupt key defense industry supply chains, posing a significant security challenge.”

While the debate around deep-sea mining largely focuses on the still-unknown environmental impact of mineral extraction on ocean ecosystems, the Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era (DAWN) and the Pacific Network on Globalization (PANG) released a policy brief shifting the spotlight to the military aspect of the race to the ocean floor.

“Discussions on defense-critical minerals and the

 military-industrial complex—which is to say

 the intertwined interests of national armies, weapons manufacturing industries and  increasingly civilian

 institutions such as  academic institutions—have been

almost non-existent in the ocean space,” states the policy

brief titled “Peace Undersea Siege.”

The paper, written by Claire Slatter and Maureen Penjueli, explores how defense-critical minerals “could pull the trigger to mine the ocean floor.”

The authors noted that an often-overlooked factor in advanced defense capabilities and technological innovation is the supply chain of minerals essential for producing components of military arsenals.

“These minerals are deemed vital to countries’ defense industrial bases, enabling the production of military platforms such as fighter aircraft, tanks, missiles, submarines, ammunition, artillery shells and nuclear warheads,” Slatter and Penjueli wrote.

“Yet the importance of supply chains of minerals makes them dangerously vulnerable to three types of disruptions: foreign export controls; rising military demand (in addition to energy transition demands) amid great power competition (U.S.–China conflict); and disrupted sea lanes in key areas, including the Panama Canal,” they added.

The United States has limited capacity for domestic mineral production and therefore depends on mineral imports from foreign sources, including China and Russia.

 “The dominance of China in critical minerals has refocused the search for new frontiers of minerals free from supply  chain disruptions and unilateral 

trade rules on deep-sea minerals lying on the seabed beyond national

jurisdiction,” the policy brief said.

The search took the Trump administration to the Clarion Clipperton Zone, which is under the jurisdiction of the International Seabed Authority.  However, Slatter and Penjueli said extracting minerals from the area for military purposes runs counter to the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, which upholds the principle that the area be used  “exclusively for peaceful purposes.” 

Trump is seeking to catch up with China through international partnerships. The Metals Company, a Canadian mining company, emerged as the first beneficiary of Trump’s executive order expediting the permit processing, which would subsequently bypass the ISA. Nauru and Tonga are TMC's regional sponsors.

DAWN and PANG slammed TMC’s move as a “rogue plan,” which they said “requires the strongest condemnation by  ISA member states.” They also called on Canada to deregister TMC.

“Given the urgency of the issue, we call on member states of the ISA to consider blacklisting TMC and thereby sending an unequivocal message to any other contractors that may decide to follow suit. We call on the governments of Nauru and Tonga to demonstrate their respect for international law,  multilateralism

and the ISA by considering cancelling their sponsorship of TMC.”

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