The European Union Critical Minerals Laundering The EU has a list of 34 minerals it calls "critical"

Added: 2026-05-19

[00:00:00]The European Union has a list of 34 minerals that it considers critical.

[00:00:04]This is the Critical Raw Minerals Act and it was signed into law in 2024 by Ursula von der Leyen. Look what this says. Critical raw materials are indispensable for the EU economy and a wide set of necessary technologies for strategic sectors such as renewable energy, digital, aerospace, and defense.

[00:00:24]The minerals on this list at the volumes they are being extracted has very little to do with green energy. Take antimony for example. The civilian use for antimony is in flame-retardant plastics, textiles, and furniture, or lead-acid car batteries, ceramics, glass, or rubber. But the military uses of antimony include as ammunition, lead-antimony alloy bullet cores, primer compositions, antimony sulfate, tracer and incendiary rounds, armor-piercing and penetrators, hardened steel core armor-piercing small arms rounds, lead-antimony shots for shotguns, explosives, I can't even say some of these words to be honest. But the United States Department of Defense has said explicitly that antimony is essential to national defense as a key component for munitions for small arms munitions and missile types. It's used in rocket systems, in solid rocket motor propellants, infrared decoy flares, missile warhead casings. It's used in submarines as lead-antimony battery plates and bearing alloys. It's used in night vision, antimony selenide and antimony telluride semiconductors. It's used in nuclear weapons. Antimony 124 is a neutron source.

[00:01:47]In 2024, less than 5% of the world's supply of antimony went into solar glass for solar panels, but over 40% went into ammunition. The EU bundle is laundering.

[00:02:02]It gives anybody who wants to mine any of these 34 minerals a fast-track 24-month extraction permit. A mine that is literally only mining antimony to make ammunition is getting the same regulatory treatment by the EU as a mine that is genuinely for battery lithium.

[00:02:21]The public hears solar, the planet gets war. And JP Morgan investors get rich.

[00:02:27]Words like carbon transition, civil nuclear, green economy, energy transition. This is laundering.

[00:02:35]The EU says that all of these minerals and the vast quantities of them that are being extracted and fast-tracked are for all of the green energy, all of the digital, and then defense, and then aerospace. However, the US Geological Surveys on these minerals are explicit about what they are used for, and it is not solar panels.

[00:02:59]It's right there. The leading uses of antimony are metal products including antimonial lead in ammunition, 40%.

[00:03:07]This one, cobalt. It says an estimated 51% of the cobalt consumed in the United States was used in superalloys, mainly aircraft gas turbine engines. So, jet engines. The United States is stockpiling cobalt for its fighter jets.

[00:03:24]I'm going to publish the full breakdown of everything in this table and what its civilian uses are, what its military uses are, how much of it we are mining, and how much of this is laundering When the EU Commission and JP Morgan and the British government tell you they are funding the energy transition and that it is critical and that it is urgent and therefore you should not look at what's in these policies.

[00:03:52]Ask them which transition because the minerals that we are mining are the ones that are going into bullets, bombs, submarines, and nuclear warheads, not solar panels.