Despite most individuals not with the ability to identify a single one, essential minerals are elementary to the superior applied sciences that underpin U.S. financial competitiveness and nationwide safety. Think microchips, electrical automobiles, and life-saving medical gadgets. However, as well-documented by FAS, the United States stays depending on exports from a restricted variety of international locations that mine and course of them. This is regardless of efforts to onshore and diversify provide chains by means of main initiatives just like the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, Inflation Reduction Act, and focused commerce insurance policies. The consequences of failing to satisfy this home demand, and meet it promptly, will likely be handed onto American shoppers: inflationary dangers, provide chain disruptions, and the potential of the U.S. being “exposed to the leverage of resource-rich countries or market incumbents abroad.” That’s flowery communicate for the U.S. being held hostage by our reliance on rocks.
We’re not the one nation coping with this. And given the size of this problem, no single nation will be capable of deal with it solely by means of home coverage. Rather, it’ll require vital collaboration and cooperation amongst allied nations by means of automobiles of worldwide science and know-how engagement.
Since late final yr, we’ve got seen the Trump administration’s willingness to handle export promotion, provide chain safety, and know-how management for different nationwide priorities by means of a flurry of bilateral know-how prosperity offers:
- In October 2025, the U.S. signed a know-how prosperity cope with Japan targeted on AI, quantum, 6G telecommunications, fusion vitality, and area exploration.
- That similar month, the U.S. formalized a know-how prosperity cope with Korea, targeted on AI, 65 telecommunications, quantum, pharmaceutical provide chains, area exploration, and primary analysis and STEM trade.
- In September 2025, the U.S. announced a know-how prosperity cope with the United Kingdom targeted on AI, civil nuclear vitality, quantum, 6G telecommunications, and analysis safety; nonetheless, simply a short while later, in December, implementation was suspended over frustration over an absence of progress, however restarted again in February 2026 with a extra slim deal with nuclear vitality.
- Most lately, in May 2026, the U.S. signed a know-how prosperity cope with Sweden targeted on AI, 5G/6G connectivity, biomedical analysis, superior manufacturing, nuclear vitality, area exploration, quantum, and analysis safety.
These know-how prosperity offers replicate the administration’s strategy to science diplomacy as targeted on financial and safety returns for the United States, in the beginning. But extra importantly, whereas signaling intent to cooperate on shared pursuits, all these agreements explicitly state that they don’t create legally binding obligations, and that nothing commits the individuals to the expenditure of funds, thus rendering them successfully toothless. Rather than making an attempt to deal with essential minerals by means of bilateral know-how prosperity offers that commit nothing and bind nobody, the U.S. wants a devoted, correctly resourced machine for worldwide science and know-how cooperation with actual authority, funding, and accountability.
The Strategic Technology and Resilient Alliances Act of 2026 (STRATA Act) would do precisely that. This new bipartisan invoice by Representatives Young Kim (R-CA-40) and Ami Bera (D-CA-06) would set up a Critical Minerals Innovation Partnership program inside the Department of State, to be led by a Senate-confirmed director reporting to the Under Secretary of Economic Affairs. Unlike the toothless know-how prosperity offers, the STRATA Act would create actual mechanisms for cooperation: binding partnership agreements with particular aims, quantitative benchmarks, multiyear funding plans, and mental property protections. The Director can be empowered to concern joint solicitations with accomplice international locations, coordinate demand aggregation throughout allied governments and the non-public sector, and set up International Centers of Excellence for revolutionary extraction and processing applied sciences in accomplice nations. A public-facing digital platform would join U.S. startups, universities, and analysis establishments to funding alternatives and collaborative tasks. Crucially, the invoice additionally amends the Foreign Assistance Act to explicitly authorize financing for essential minerals S&T cooperation, giving this system the authorized and budgetary spine that bilateral offers have lacked. The program would sundown after ten years, offering a built-in accountability horizon whereas permitting present agreements to run their course. There are historic and up to date analogous efforts that may function fashions of success.
The Soviet Nuclear Threat Reduction Act of 1991 established and approved the Cooperative Threat Reduction program to facilitate “cooperation between the United States, the Soviet Union, its republics, and any successor entities to (1) destroy nuclear weapons, chemical weapons and other weapons, (2) transport, store, disable, and safeguard weapons in connection with their destruction, and (3) establish verifiable safeguards against the proliferation of such weapons.” 25 years into this system, the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) documented this system’s vital accomplishments, together with the destruction of two,532 missiles, the decommissioning of 1,300 supply methods, the destruction of over 4,700 tons of chemical weapons brokers, and the employment of twenty-two,000 former WMD scientists.
More lately, the CHIPS and Science Act of 2022 authorized the International Technology Security and Innovation Fund (ITSI). It provided the Department of State $100 million per yr over 5 years “to promote the development and adoption of secure and trustworthy telecommunications networks and ensure semiconductor supply chain security and diversification.” ISTI awards have included a $13.8 million cooperative agreement in 2024 with Arizona State University to increase semiconductor workforce capability and strengthen provide chain infrastructure throughout accomplice international locations within the Americas and Indo-Pacific. That similar yr, by means of the ITSI Fund, the State Department collaborated with the Inter-American Development Bank to launch the CHIPS ISTI Western Hemisphere Semiconductor Initiative, to boost “semiconductor assembly, testing, and packaging (ATP) capabilities in key partner countries, beginning with Mexico, Panama, and Costa Rica.” Additionally, the fund enabled a partnership between the State Department and the India Semiconductor Mission, Ministry of Electronics and IT, Government of India, targeted on assessing India’s semiconductor ecosystem, together with its regulatory framework, workforce, and infrastructure wants, to tell potential future joint initiatives.
When Congress gives devoted authority and actual funding, the State Department can function an efficient car for technology-focused worldwide partnerships. The similar mannequin needs to be utilized to essential minerals. As Congress considers broader packages to advance essential minerals manufacturing and provide chain resilience, science diplomacy automobiles have to be a part of that dialog. It can’t be an afterthought; fairly, it have to be an intentional pillar of any technique.