Seabed Mining Origins: In the 1870s, a royally funded ocean exploration ship, HMS Challenger, pulled countless unusual looking rocks out of the ocean. The expedition’s lead scientist annotated these golf ball-shaped rocks in his journal as inorganic concretions and brought hundreds back to London for future research and analysis.1 Over the years that followed, it became evident that these ocean rocks, which seemed to form spontaneously around shark teeth and other sediment, contained a multitude of rare minerals.2 While other naval hydrographic surveys likely pulled these rocks from the water previously, the Challenger expedition is widely accepted as the first to recover large quantities of polymetallic nodules, map their distribution, and publish a scientific description.3 Thus, the same expedition that discovered the deepest known part of the ocean — the nearly 11,000 meter southern end of the Mariana Trench — and sparked modern oceanography 150 years ago, discovered mineral formations lying at the next frontier in humankind’s long history of natural resource extraction and geopolitical tension over the watery turf holding the resources.

At the time, scientists had a strong understanding of geochemistry and physical sciences, but the field of ocean research remained in its infancy. For example, 19^th century scientists made the (incorrect) hypothesis that the ocean was all but uninhabitable below 500 meters.4 It should come as no surprise that the technology and supply chains to enable large-scale seabed mining would not exist for many years. What may be a revelation, however, is that we have yet to extract these rocks at scale for processing, despite their containing a handful of critical minerals essential to the current energy transition, to advanced technologies, and to national defense. The prospect of exploiting deep-sea minerals became one of the major issues bringing together national governments during the negotiations that ultimately produced the regulatory framework for the high seas, known as the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS).5 National governments and private companies have been exploring the seabed for decades, and it appears that large-scale extraction is on the verge of profitability due to technological advancement and the demand signals explained below.

Critical Minerals: Through the Energy Act of 2020, the United States government formally defined critical minerals as:

those that are essential to the economic security of the United States; have a supply chain that is vulnerable to disruption; and serve an essential function in the manufacturing of a product, the absence of which would have significant consequences for the economic or national security of the U.S.6

The Energy Act of 2020 also identified the U.S. Secretary of the Interior, acting through the U.S. Geological Survey, as the designating authority for critical minerals.7 In addition to the Department of the Interior’s list, the Department of Energy and the Defense Logistics Agency maintain overlapping lists of critical minerals.8 There are currently 13 minerals on all three lists, but those most relevant to seabed mining and the current economic competition between the United States and China are rare earth elements, copper, lithium, nickel, cobalt, manganese, and semiconductor elements.

Practical Applications: Whether you can personally identify these elements, they power your life. Rare earth elements are increasingly common magnet components, with uses ranging from the haptic engine in your cellphone to critical stealth components and weaponry on 5th-generation tactical aircraft like the F-35.9 Copper wire connects our electrical grid. Lithium is the primary element in the batteries that power electric vehicles and store renewable energy from solar and wind. Batteries have several proprietary blends of supporting minerals, but one of the more common categories is called NCM (nickel, cobalt, and manganese).10 High-purity silicon, and increasingly gallium and germanium, are the primary materials in microchip manufacturing.11 Below is a brief overview of current mining and processing locations for each of these national security-relevant materials.

Rare Earth Elements: Sometimes called rare earth metals, this category of elements includes dysprosium, neodymium, terbium, yttrium, and praseodymium, among others. “Rare” refers to their low relative concentration in Earth’s crust, not their abundance.12 Nor are they rare in modern technology. The challenge is finding them in high concentrations, and in allied or friendly territory — e.g., Greenland.13 China currently leads in rare earth mining, carrying out over 60 percent of the global supply, and dominates processing, particularly of the heaviest variants (over 99 percent of the same).14 Export bans have, unsurprisingly, been a major tool of Chinese economic statecraft in recent years. While there is an active rare earths mine at Mountain Pass in California, it primarily extracts lighter minerals.15

Copper: Copper is everywhere — it is the wiring that links our power grid and has enabled the electrified world we live in today. There are no indications that global demand for copper will decrease in the coming decades as developing nations electrify at increasing rates.16 While the United States has multiple active copper mines, China currently extracts twice as much copper and leads in processing here as well.17

Lithium: This soft metal is the primary component in the rechargeable batteries powering electric vehicles and grid-scale energy storage. Although lithium has become synonymous with the clean energy transition, it is only one of several critical minerals required to manufacture modern batteries. The real story here is what minerals pair with lithium in these batteries, and why the seabed is becoming a viable option for acquiring these minerals.18

Nickel: Nickel, a key component of the batteries powering the current energy transition, is overwhelmingly sourced from Indonesia and processed by Chinese companies. Recent estimates list land-based nickel resources at 330 million tons.19 Note that mineral resources are speculative numbers based on exploration of Earth’s crust, while reserves are a subset with demonstrated extractability. The 2026 U.S. commodities report estimates nickel reserves at 140 million tons.20 These numbers will be important when I address seabed mining.

Cobalt: The battery in your phone, and possibly your next car, contains a mineral almost exclusively mined in a war-torn African nation notorious for human rights abuses and unpredictable market manipulation.21 The Democratic Republic of the Congo possesses over 70 percent of the world’s terrestrial cobalt resources, with Chinese companies controlling the majority of mining operations and cobalt processing. The United States is a net importer of cobalt, and many Americans and American companies are becoming wary of propping up the “artisanal” Congolese mining industry that fails to prevent deadly child labor.22

Manganese: The United States is 100 percent import-reliant on manganese, the third major component of the most common lithium-ion battery chemistry, and imports most of its supply from Africa.23 The Defense Logistics Agency includes on its critical minerals list both manganese and ferromanganese, the steelmaking alloy.24 Manganese is the principal metallic constituent of polymetallic nodules and partners with iron to form the ferromanganese crusts blanketing large portions of the deep seabed.25

Semiconductor Minerals (Silicon, Gallium, Germanium): This group is peripheral to seabed mining, but semiconductor production — through partnerships with the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, the Dutch company ASML Holding N.V., and others — is one piece of economic leverage Washington currently holds over Beijing. U.S. export controls on semiconductor technology spurred the most recent economic row between the United States and China. This then spread into Chinese export controls on rare earths and gallium and germanium, the source minerals necessary for the United States and its allies to churn out high-quality microchips.26 Economic resilience only goes as far as the next supply chain vulnerability, so it would be a strategic error to forget that export controls on input materials can be just as damaging as restrictions on finished products or intellectual property.

Strategic Importance: Why does this matter for the United States? Economic statecraft, economic warfare, economic securitization — these are terms you have heard if you have tuned in to the strategic competition with China in the last decade. This competition increasingly resembles a cold war, but one hinging more on economic dominance than ideological expansion.27 Tariff battles, export controls, infrastructure deals, supply chain disruptions, and coercive partnerships are the new tactics for this conflict. Securing supply chains, particularly for energy and defense technology, is a relevant strategic priority. That these minerals are vulnerable to supply chain disruptions and are vital to American economic and security interests is definitional, but simply sourcing enough to meet manufacturing needs may not be enough. As Adam Johnson, critical mineral supply chain expert and CEO of Principal Mineral, warned in a 2024 interview with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, we should also be concerned that barely making ends meet with these materials is an obstacle to the kind of innovation ecosystem required for the United States to remain a technological and economic leader in the future.28

Seabed Mining: This brings us back to the central aim of the Undersea Strategy Program: securing a strategic advantage in the undersea environment. Deep in the Pacific Ocean is a 1.7 million square mile patch of seabed, called the Clarion-Clipperton Zone, that contains billions of polymetallic nodules.29 These golf ball sized rocks have high concentrations of manganese, nickel, cobalt, and copper. In this stretch of the high seas alone, there are around 300 million tons of nickel (double the current reserves on land) and 250 times the amount of copper that U.S. mines produced in 2025, despite nickel and copper comprising only a small fraction of the nodules by mass.30

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An analysis of seabed mining would be incomplete without addressing the other two main targets for mineral extraction: ferromanganese crusts, sometimes called cobalt-rich crusts, and seafloor massive sulfides.31 Accounting for cobalt in polymetallic nodules and ferromanganese crusts, deep-sea estimates exceed land-based resources fourfold and current reserves tenfold.32 Rather than exhausting every category of seabed mineral deposits, our ongoing analysis will focus initially on polymetallic nodules, particularly in the Indo-Pacific. The reason is twofold. First, the extraction technology for collecting and processing the nodules is much further along than that for crusts and sulfides. Second, the vast area between the United States and China, with billions of nodules on the seafloor, is proving to be a hotbed of geopolitical tension.33 Instances of Chinese dual-use seabed mapping in the Indo-Pacific are well documented and highlight additional reasons why a robust strategy for undersea research and infrastructure is necessary, beyond shoring up supply chains.34

Beyond the economic and geopolitical aspects of mining the deep seabed, research on environmental impacts remains incomplete, and many American citizens and lawmakers are concerned about due diligence.35 Meanwhile, the legal regulatory regime is currently in flux, as the United States still technically delegates deep seabed exploration contracting to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration as a non-party to UNCLOS.36 When, how, and under whose authority the United States mines the deep seabed are questions that extend far beyond marine geology; they are increasingly central to great power competition with China in the 2030s and beyond.

Conclusion: Over the next few months, we will take a deeper look at the other factors at play in deep seabed mining, including environmental and ecological considerations, technological limitations, economic feasibility, China’s efforts to date, and international law as it currently stands. The key takeaways on critical minerals are as follows:

• The Energy Act of 2020 formally defined critical minerals based on ties to economic security, manufacturing of vital national security-related products, and supply chain vulnerability.

• The Department of the Interior manages the official list by statute, but the Department of Energy and the Defense Logistics Agency maintain mostly overlapping lists of energy- and defense-specific materials, respectively.

• The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is the U.S. department responsible for providing licenses for exploration and exploitation of the seabed under federal statute.

• Polymetallic nodules number in the billions on the deep, flat portions of the seabed, and contain large quantities of manganese mixed with smaller quantities of cobalt, nickel, copper, and trace amounts of lithium.

• Ferromanganese crusts form on ridges and seamounts and contain large concentrations of iron- and manganese-oxides (not to be confused with the steelmaking alloy, but a potential feedstock for it), along with heavier concentrations of cobalt than in the nodules, and lighter concentrations of rare earths and nickel. They are much harder to extract than polymetallic nodules.

• Little is known about the ecological consequences, given that seabed exploration is only decades old and exploitation has been limited.

• Commercial interest suggests that large-scale nodule mining is increasingly likely, but how to proceed under the current international regulatory regime and considering China’s head start requires a strategic approach to both maintain international legitimacy as an enforcer of maritime rights and avoid falling behind in these critical mineral supply chains.

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Introduction

Seabed governance is moving from a technical niche to a geopolitical and social strategy issue. The International Seabed Authority (ISA) currently regulates exploration in the “Area” — the seabed beyond national jurisdiction — and has entered into exploration contracts with contractors from multiple states for polymetallic nodules, sulfides, and cobalt-rich crusts.1 At the same time, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), scientists, and some governments argue that deep-sea mining may cause irreversible ecological harm, while states and companies increasingly frame seabed minerals as part of supply-chain resilience and strategic autonomy. In Pacific Latin America, the issue matters not only because of possible mineral extraction, but because seabed policy intersects with maritime security, environmental governance, and social legitimacy.

The social strategy approach implemented here begins with the people closest to the challenge, mapping stakeholders and turning shared understanding into coordinated action.2 This is especially appropriate for seabed policy due to the technical questions of who benefits, who bears the risk, and who makes the decisions. In this sense, one should understand seabed sovereignty as the capacity of states and societies to govern ocean space in a way that protects security, preserves legitimacy, and strengthens long-term resilience. The central argument of this brief is that Mexico, Colombia, Peru, and Chile need a common regional framing, but each country will face a distinct stakeholder structure and social conflict profile.

Conceptual Framework

Social strategy is useful because it forces policy design to begin with stakeholder reality, rather than with abstract institutional plans. This framework starts by defining the problem, then convening stakeholders, designing a strategy, and coordinating implementation.3 This sequence is highly relevant to seabed policy as the issue is unresolved, legally contested, and sensitive to trust. If governments begin with extraction targets or geopolitical narratives alone, they will likely produce opposition rather than durable policy.

For this brief, seabed sovereignty refers to the political and institutional capacity to manage ocean floor resources, monitor critical infrastructure, and protect maritime interests. Ocean security includes submarine cables, seabed sensors, maritime domain awareness, and the defense of coastal and offshore infrastructure. Critical mineral resilience refers to reducing dependency on external suppliers while preserving stable access to materials such as nickel, cobalt, copper, manganese, and related inputs associated with seabed deposits. Social implication refers to the distribution of costs, risks, and benefits across coastal communities, indigenous peoples, fisheries, workers, and regional governments.

This framing is significant as seabed mining is not only an environmental debate. The ISA has repeatedly emphasized the existence of exploration contracts and contractor obligations, including contingency planning and training commitments, indicating that the governance structure is already international, technical, and developmental in character.4 Yet NGOs continue to warn that the process lacks adequate transparency and environmental safeguards.5 The strategic challenge is therefore not whether seabed governance exists, but whether Latin American states can shape it in a way that serves public purposes rather than narrow extraction interests.

Regional Stakeholder Landscape

Across Mexico, Colombia, Peru, and Chile, the primary state stakeholders include foreign ministries, environmental ministries, mining ministries, fisheries authorities, navies or coast guards, oceanographic institutes, and congressional committees with jurisdiction over environment, defense, oceans, or economic development. Seabed policy sits at the intersection of sovereignty, security, and resource governance. Each stakeholder brings distinct priorities: foreign ministries focus on ISA positions and treaty alignment; environmental ministries on biodiversity and compliance; mining ministries on resource optionality and industrial policy; navies and coast guards on monitoring, undersea cables, and maritime situational awareness; and fisheries authorities on habitat disturbance and livelihood loss.

The non-state stakeholder field is equally important, including fishing cooperatives, indigenous organizations, Afro-descendant communities, port authorities, shipping firms, submarine cable operators, marine technology companies, universities, oceanographic centers, environmental NGOs, legal advocacy groups, and local governments. A clear example in Mexico is the coalition around the Don Diego dispute, where a fishing cooperative and the Center for International Environmental Law intervened6 to raise environmental and human-rights concerns. This case demonstrates that seabed policy does not only mobilize environmental activists, but workers and local livelihood groups whose interests are directly tied to marine ecosystems as well.

A social strategy brief should also distinguish between formal stakeholders and social entities. Formal stakeholders are actors with legal or institutional authority, while social entities are broader communities and networks that shape legitimacy, knowledge, and resistance. In this case, the relevant social entities are coastal communities, artisanal fishers, indigenous peoples, university researchers, marine science networks, youth groups, local NGOs, and regional coalitions. These entities often determine whether seabed governance is seen as credible or extractive. They also provide the local intelligence governments typically lack when policy is designed centrally.

México

Mexico is the most advanced case in the region for understanding the social implications of seabed mining as it has already faced a direct conflict over the Don Diego project off Baja California Sur. The project involved proposed underwater phosphate extraction in the Gulf of Ulloa, and environmental and legal groups warned that it would affect marine ecosystems and fishing livelihoods. Mexico’s environmental authorities denied the permit, and the dispute later moved into arbitration, illustrating how seabed mining can quickly become a sovereignty, investment, and rights issue, rather than a narrow resource question.7 The Don Diego dispute proves communities can become highly organized when they perceive seabed extraction threatens livelihoods and biodiversity.8 It reveals also that social license is not automatic, even when a project is framed as technologically sophisticated or economically promising.

Mexico’s main state stakeholders are Secretaría de Relaciones Exteriores (SRE), the Secretariat of Foreign Affairs; Secretaría de Medio Ambiente y Recursos Naturales (SEMARNAT), the Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources; Secretaría de Marina (SEMAR), the Secretariat of the Navy; Comisión Nacional de Acuacultura y Pesca (CONAPESCA), the National Aquaculture and Fishing Commission; coastal state governments; and congressional committees linked to environment and maritime affairs. Its key social entities are fishing cooperatives, marine conservation groups, Baja California coastal communities, university researchers, and legal NGOs. Mexico’s policy position has also moved toward greater caution in global forums. Public reporting indicated Mexico shifted toward supporting a moratorium on international deep-sea mining until stronger science and rules were in place.9 This makes Mexico a likely regional leader in precautionary seabed diplomacy, especially if it chooses to link marine biodiversity protection with broader ocean governance. From a social strategy perspective, Mexico is the country where legitimacy, litigation risk, and community resistance are likely to be most visible.

Chile

Chile is perhaps the strongest candidate for a rules-based, state-capacity-driven response. It has a mature mining sector, a strong regulatory tradition, and a political environment where ocean governance can integrate into broader strategic resource planning. Chilean debate around seabed mining is increasingly shaped by policy institutions, legal experts, environmental actors, and research organizations, rather than by a single high-profile mining conflict. This gives the country a different profile from Mexico: The issue is less one of direct seabed controversy, and more one of anticipatory governance.

Chile’s principal state stakeholders include the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ministry of Mining, Ministry of the Environment, and the navy, as well as fisheries authorities and public research institutions. Its social entities include artisanal and industrial fishers, indigenous peoples, environmental NGOs, universities, and regional civil-society organizations. Because Chile already understands large-scale extractive governance on land, its challenge is to ensure seabed policy does not repeat the same pattern of centralization and social friction. If Chile decides to move from caution to conditional exploration, the political test will be whether the state can demonstrate transparency, consultation, and marine stewardship.

This country’s ability to serve as a regional norm-setter is vital. A Chilean position emphasizing precaution, science, and benefit-sharing would likely carry weight in Pacific Latin America. Likewise, a Chilean position framing seabed governance as part of critical mineral resilience could also help translate the issue from an environmental debate, to a strategy of development. The risk is that seabed policy will be seen as extractivism by another name unless public consultation is genuine and visible.

Peru

Peru is likely to approach seabed governance through the lens of extractive politics, consultation, and social conflict management. The country has extensive experience with mining tensions on land, as well as disputes over water, territory, and social license. Such experience is directly relevant as seabed mining would create analogous conflicts over marine habitats, fishing grounds, and coastal livelihoods. Peru’s challenge is therefore to avoid treating seabed policy as a purely offshore technical matter.

Peru’s key state stakeholders include the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ministry of Energy and Mines, Ministry of Environment, fisheries authorities, the navy, and coastal regional governments. Its social entities include fishing communities, indigenous organizations, academic marine science groups, environmental NGOs, and local governments in Pacific-facing areas. One notable sign of political sensitivity is that Peruvian lawmakers have already considered a deep-sea mining moratorium, indicating the issue is entering public and legislative debate rather than remaining a specialist conversation.10 This makes Peru a critical case for testing whether institutional preparedness can precede extraction.

The policy implication is straightforward. Peru should not rush toward seabed extraction without first strengthening marine baseline science, consultation mechanisms, and enforcement capacity. In social strategy terms, Peru’s highest-value move is to build trust before making commitments. A policy brief that speaks to Peru should emphasize that seabed sovereignty is not just about accessing minerals, but managing ocean space in a way that does not reproduce the social conflict patterns seen in terrestrial mining.

Colombia

Colombia may be less directly exposed to seabed mining than Mexico or Chile, but its strategic importance lies in its Pacific frontage, maritime security interests, and potential role in regional norm-building. Rather than immediate exploitation, the issue for Colombia is likely to center on ocean governance, cable protection, maritime surveillance, and environmental stewardship, making Colombia a useful example of how one can frame this type of sovereignty as a security and governance issue rather than a mining-first agenda.

Colombia’s state stakeholders include the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development, Ministry of Mines and Energy, navy, coastal authorities, and scientific institutions. The key social entities include Afro-Colombian communities, fishing associations, Pacific regional organizations, universities, local governments, and environmental NGOs. Because Colombia’s Pacific coast already faces severe inequality and infrastructure deficits, any seabed policy will be judged by whether it benefits coastal populations or merely externalizes environmental risk. This distinction is especially important where public trust in central institutions is uneven.

Colombia should therefore position itself as a maritime governance actor in the making. Even if it does not become a pioneer in seabed mining, Colombia can shape the regional conversation on cables, monitoring, sovereignty, and precaution. In policy terms, Colombia is best served by joining regional transparency and consultation initiatives, rather than committing early to commercial extraction, allowing it to retain strategic flexibility while aligning with a socially legitimate stance.

Social Entities and Public Legitimacy

The most important social entities across all four of the above countries are coastal and artisanal fishing communities, indigenous peoples, Afro-descendant communities, marine scientists, universities, and environmental NGOs. These groups are pivotal as they are closest to the ecological and livelihood consequences of seabed policy. They are also the groups most likely to notice when the state makes decisions without consultation. In a social strategy framework, their role is not symbolic — they are sources of intelligence, legitimacy, and implementation capacity.

In Mexico, fishers and legal NGOs have already played a central role in contesting seabed mining.11 In Peru, social conflict experience around mining on land suggests community consultation will be decisive. In Chile, universities and environmental groups are likely to shape the policy narrative early. In Colombia, Pacific communities and regional organizations will be essential to ensuring seabed governance is seen as more than a distant technical problem. The common lesson is that legitimacy is built locally, but strategic decisions are often made nationally or internationally.

This brief therefore recommends treating social entities as co-producers of strategy rather than as external consultees. This necessitates incorporating these social entities in problem definition, stakeholder mapping, scenario analysis, and implementation design. A policy that ignores such groups may still be legally possible, but will likely be politically fragile. In seabed governance, fragility translates into delayed permits, litigation, reputational harm, and long-term distrust.

Policy Tensions

As the first tension is between strategic autonomy and environmental caution, Latin American governments may want to reduce dependence on foreign mineral supply chains, especially in a period of geopolitical competition over critical minerals.12 However, seabed mining remains technically complex and environmentally controversial, and the ISA’s own contract system shows that much activity is still at the exploration stage, not the commercial production stage.13 Claims of near-term mineral independence should thus be treated carefully.

The second concern is between sovereignty and cooperation: A doctrine of seabed sovereignty can strengthen state capacity, but only if it remains compatible with regional coordination and international law. The third problem is between security and militarization. It is reasonable to connect seabed sensing, cable protection, and maritime awareness, but a language of domination may trigger opposition if it appears to justify unilateral resource extraction or surveillance without oversight. The better framing is seabed stewardship supported by security capacity.

The fourth tension is between extraction and social license. NGOs have repeatedly warned that the deep sea may face irreversible damage, and that the ISA lacks sufficient environmental safeguards and transparency.14 Governments that move too quickly may face domestic backlash, regional criticism, or legal challenges. Social strategy is valuable precisely because it helps prevent those failures by forcing decision-makers to map interests before they harden into conflict.

Conclusion

Seabed governance is now part of the broader geopolitical and social contest over critical minerals, maritime security, and ocean stewardship.15 Mexico, Chile, Peru, and Colombia face different risks and have different opportunities available to them. Nevertheless, they share a common need for stronger stakeholder engagement and more credible marine governance. A social strategy approach is especially well suited to this issue as it begins with the people closest to the problem and translates their knowledge into coordinated action.

Seabed sovereignty should not be framed as a narrow extraction agenda. It should be framed as a strategic project integrating ocean security, critical mineral resilience, environmental legitimacy, and social inclusion. In Pacific Latin America, that is the only durable path to making seabed policy a credible public strategy.

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