Operation Mineral Independence: Retired Officers Lead the Charge for Critical Minerals
How the Pentagon’s elite are trading battlefields for boardrooms to win the global race for critical minerals.
Forget the traditional prospecting tools of the trade. In the modern mining industry, a geological map and a rugged pair of boots are no longer enough to strike gold, or, more accurately, to strike tungsten, lithium, and rare earths. Today, the most valuable asset a mining executive can possess is the cell phone number of a retired four-star general. As the race to secure critical minerals evolves from a boardroom competition into a full-blown national security mandate, the mining sector is undergoing a profound "militarization" of its leadership.
Western mining companies are currently scouring the Pentagon’s retirement rolls for talent, hunting for the same strategic minds that once coordinated global troop movements. These retired officers, ranging from admirals to generals, are being installed in boardrooms and C-suites at a record pace. Their mission is simple yet incredibly complex: bridge the massive cultural and bureaucratic gap between the dirt-under-the-fingernails world of resource extraction and the high-stakes, red-tape-heavy corridors of the Department of Defense.

