For much of the last generation, global power was spoken of in abstract terms. Influence. Norms. Rules-based order. These were the currencies of a world that believed scarcity had been tamed by trade and time.

That belief no longer holds.

I've been watching the moves on Greenland, Venezuela, Arctic positioning, and AI military integration with the kind of attention you give to a system reorganizing itself around new rules. And here's what I see: these aren't separate stories. They're nodes in the same system.

We are entering an era in which geopolitics is being reorganized around a simple question: who controls the foundations of modern capability?

The Return of Material Reality

The post–Cold War world assumed that resources would remain abundant, supply chains elastic, and conflict peripheral to economic life. In that world, political legitimacy and economic efficiency mattered more than geography or geology.

The present world is different.

Critical minerals are concentrated in a small number of countries. The U.S. Geological Survey’s 2025 Critical Minerals List identifies 50 minerals essential to national security, while energy systems are strained by electrification and data growth. Industrial capacity has been hollowed out by decades of optimization. And artificial intelligence—often described as immaterial—turns out to be ravenously physical, dependent on energy, chips, cooling, and rare earths.

Power as Layers

I've started thinking about power as a stack—layers that build on each other, each dependent on the one beneath:

Layer 1: Materials

Rare earths, lithium, heavy crude, critical minerals. The raw inputs that everything else requires. Greenland's deposits. Venezuela's oil reserves. The geology that suddenly matters again.Control over these inputs is uneven. According to the International Energy Agency, China controls over 90% of global rare earth refining capacity, giving it leverage far beyond extraction alone.

Layer 2: Processing

Refining capacity, industrial infrastructure, the ability to turn raw materials into usable components. This is where China's real advantage lives—not in what's in the ground, but in the facilities that transform it.

Layer 3: Compute

AI systems, data centers, chips, the infrastructure of intelligence. This layer consumes the outputs of the layers below. Training advanced models requires power measured in gigawatts and components drawn from globally contested supply chains.

Layer 4: Control

Who decides access at each layer. Who can tighten or loosen the flow. Who holds the chokepoints.

Each layer depends on the one beneath it. Compute becomes power. Power depends on energy. Energy depends on materials.

The stack closes.

This dependence is not theoretical. A 2024 report by the Government Accountability Office on defense supply chains found that U.S. weapons systems rely on rare earth magnets sourced through fragile, highly concentrated supply chains, exposing structural vulnerabilities that diplomacy alone cannot resolve.

Reading the Moves

Once you see power as a stack, recent developments begin to align. Not as a conspiracy. Not as a master plan. But as symptoms of the same underlying transition.

Greenland isn't primarily about mining economics. The northern region is mineable only six months per year. There are virtually no roads connecting settlements. Limited ports. Insufficient energy production for industrial-scale mining. The economics are brutal.

But Greenland sits along the GIUK Gap—the Greenland-Iceland-UK chokepoint critical for surveillance. Any satellite in polar orbit requires an Arctic ground station. Melting ice is opening shipping lanes that could sharply cut Asia-Europe transit times. Control Greenland, and you control access to those routes while positioning yourself between Russia's northern expansion and China's Arctic ambitions.

The minerals are the marketing story. The real value is geography and infrastructure.

Venezuela holds more proven oil reserves than Saudi Arabia, yet produces less than 1% of global demand. The strategic significance isn't volume—it's quality and optionality. Venezuela's heavy crude is crucial for diesel, asphalt, and industrial fuels. Most U.S. Gulf Coast refineries were built specifically to process it.

Beyond oil, Venezuela represents a critical minerals battleground. Chinese companies have embedded themselves in mining operations. Iran reportedly established drone manufacturing facilities. Russia deployed military advisers. The intervention isn't just about oil. It's about dislodging competing influence from America's backyard.

AI integration into military systems isn't a cultural shift—it's structural. Decision cycles shorten. Command architectures change. Deterrence logic shifts. And AI-first military systems require massive compute infrastructure, which requires rare earth magnets, cooling systems, and power management. All of which flow through supply chains vulnerable to disruption.

The System Reveals Itself

These aren't chapters of a narrative. They're components of the same architecture.

The system now taking shape rewards speed, vertical integration, and control of chokepoints. It punishes delay, diffusion, and moral ambiguity unbacked by capability.

Institutions designed for negotiation struggle in environments defined by scarcity. Alliances built on shared values strain when members assess costs differently. Governance frameworks lag technologies that compress time.

The question isn't who has the best arguments. It's who controls the stack beneath them.

Much of the public debate remains trapped in the language of intent: who believes what, who wants what, who is to blame. The more revealing question is structural: what does this system select for?

It selects for those who control inputs rather than narratives. For those who can endure volatility. For those who understand that power now resides not in ideals alone, but in the layers beneath them.

The future will not be decided by the loudest arguments. It will be decided by who controls the stack beneath them.

This is one lens on the current geopolitical shift. The next article in this series looks at the same system through the lens of brand strategy—examining how Trump and Musk represent two different missions optimizing for the same physical dependencies.

References for this article:

[1] U.S. Geological Survey
Mineral Commodity Summaries 2025 (Critical Minerals List; national security relevance)
→ usgs.gov

[2] International Energy Agency
Global Critical Minerals Outlook 2024 (refining capacity, supply-chain concentration)
→ iea.org

[3] Government Accountability Office
Critical Materials: Action Needed to Implement Requirements That Reduce Supply Chain Risks (GAO-24-107176, 2024)
→ gao.gov

Full reading list for the series will be published
with the final article.