Critical Minerals Strategy Is A "Test Case" For Britain's Place In The World

Dan Marks, a research fellow in energy security at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) think tank, described the critical minerals industry as a “longer term, strategic problem”, but said it was not the “immediate national security concern that it's often made out to be”. However, he agreed it would be an important challenge to determine how the UK wants to engage with other countries. “You can't have one country, especially a country like China, which we have a very ambiguous, ambivalent relationship with at the moment, controlling the key energy technologies underpinning the entire global economy and future,” he said. “It's not sensible from a risk perspective. The question, fundamentally, is how do you have a strategy that both accounts for China as an adversary and China as an investor and trade partner?”