Compute Runs on Minerals: Mapping AI’s Critical Mineral Exposure in the Age of Pax Silica

​Every frontier model runs on minerals. Behind the GPUs, the servers, the cooling systems and the power infrastructure that make up a data centre sit gallium, germanium, rare earths, copper, tungsten and a dozen other inputs whose mining and refining are concentrated in a small number of countries. Countries like China, that have weaponized that dominance, restricting exports of gallium, germanium, graphite and rare earth magnets, and each time targeting a material critical to AI. Demonstrating how a supply chain chokepoint becomes a tool of statecraft.

What exactly is AI infrastructure, which minerals does it depend on, and where is control over those minerals heading?

In this talk, Noah Chaikin works through the AI value chain from the mine to data centre and applies a foresight lens to what he finds. He argues that mapping critical mineral exposure across that chain is the first step toward securing North American supply, and points to Pax Silica, the US-led initiative to build a trusted AI supply chain among allies, as a live example of governments now trying to do exactly that. Drawing on his work at Kearney Foresight in geopolitical statecraft and his research on Canadian rare earth supply chains, he closes with scenarios for how mining, refining and AI investment could converge over the next decade, and what that could mean for Canada.

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