On critical minerals, resource extraction, and imperialism

The logic of extraction itself is not new at all. The US (and European empires before it) have a long record of securing raw materials “by any and all means,” including coups and regime change; Chomsky’s work documents that history in detail. I’m not claiming that the underlying drive to secure inputs has vanished and suddenly reappeared in 2026.

What I am arguing, however, with the Bunker State framework is that:

The state form and the elite orientation framework, and the technological–logistical apparatus through which this extraction is now being organized are qualitatively different from earlier cycles (admittedly, there’s much I still want to write about, demonstrate, and research; this is all still under contsruction).

Three points of difference that matter:

We are observing a shift from episodic intervention to hard‑wired anti‑entropic integration. So, back then, the “old” pattern Chomsky describes is largely about episodic interventions (overthrow X government, install Y, extract), with formal sovereignty broken openly or severely compromised via direct US control.

What we see in the current critical minerals architecture is a shift to: a permanent supply‑chain integration by treaty (bilateral agreements), regulatory harmonization (and not only regulatory, but even operational, and infrastructure harmonization), and contractual/price mechanisms that lock in dependency even if the client state formally remains “sovereign.”

That’s why I call it “anti‑entropic integration”. It’s not just “we’ll overthrow you if you misbehave,” (that, too, of course), but “we will build a system where exiting becomes materially and legally impossible” because your mining codes, stockpiles, price bands, and export channels are all pre‑wired into the core’s security architecture.

In other words: the leopard hasn’t changed its spots, but it has moved from hunting trips to building a zoo. The Joint Action Plan is about fencing and caging the terrain itself.

There is also simulated sovereignty and a total loss of effective sovereignty. With earlier imperial practices they often openly destroyed sovereignty: coups, occupations, protectorates.

What’s happening now is closer to simulated sovereignty on the surface, but resource subordination underneath. And with resource, I mean everything from the territory itself, its geographical location, its population, its infrastructure as well as its material natural resources.

On paper, Mexico remains sovereign. In practice through this critical mineral agreement, ut loses the ability to negotiate with alternative partners (China, Russia, BRICS), it loses the ability to price its own resources according to future strategic value, and it aligns its regulations, stockpiles, and investment plans with US security planning.

That is indeed continuity in goal (subordination), but novelty in form. Since there is a total loss of effective sovereignty under conditions of formal sovereignty. A world in which “neutrality” and non‑alignment become structurally impossible; not only because Washington doesn’t like it, but because the supply chains themselves are built to make neutrality non‑viable.

That is not “nothing new.” That is the closing of the space of neutrality by design.

Further, I’d argue that there is a new elite configuration: bunkerized, (historically grown) transnational, and tech‑enabled (the topic of speed).

Chomsky’s generation couldn’t fully see yet, that while Cold War US hegemony was brutal, it coexisted with: more internal egalitarianism inside the West (including in its ruling strata), stronger national counterweights (unions, mass parties, domestic publics), and slower, less integrated global logistics.

After neoliberalism + unipolarity, internal counterweights are largely dismantled or marginalized. Also, transatlantic elites are more integrated and socially insulated than in the 1960s–70s; they share schools, conferences, foundations, and family-level histories in a transregional manner. Additionally, digital and financial technologies (surveillance, sanctions architectures, platform control) allow forms of continuous, fine‑grained management of peripheries that go beyond classic coups and gunboat diplomacy.

So what’s new is not the desire to extract, but: the bunkerized orientation framework (deterrence everywhere, friend/enemy in every domain), the total ideology of elites who genuinely see themselves as a besieged “civilizational core”, and the logistical/technological tools that let them integrate and discipline entire regions under the banner of “resilience.” But all within a temporal panic, making their agressive actions permanent and totalizing.

So, yes, “old dogs” are still trying to use old tricks. But the architecture I’m describing is the old trick embedded into the infrastructure, so that even if there is no spectacular coup, the outcome is the same: no real sovereignty, no space for neutrality, and a permanent, securitized flow of resources into the bunker. And such a resource flow is not only for defensive reasons, but potentially destructive reasons, even on a large scale.

That’s the claim: that the Bunker State is a new configuration of imperialism, more integrated, more technologically mediated, and more thoroughly insulated from internal and external counterweights.