The debate around deep-sea mining (DSM) has been gaining international attention focused on the likely irreversible harm it will cause to the ocean’s ecosystems and climate regulatory function, with 32 countries now calling for a ‘pause’ or a global moratorium on DSM.

Leading proponents of DSM have been framing deep-sea minerals as critical to address the climate crisis, a solution that would entail a tradeoff between biodiversity protection and climate change action and turn the oceans’ seafloor, considered the common heritage of humankind, into a new sacrifice zone.

At the same time, there are growing doubts about the financial viability of DSM and whether minerals from the deep-sea will even be needed for the energy transition, as battery technologies for electric vehicles and solar panels have been rapidly advancing with alternatives that could eliminate the need for cobalt, nickel and copper.

Heeding caution, 63 companies (and growing), among them Volkswagen, BMW Group, Samsung, Ford, Microsoft, Apple, Philips, and Patagonia, have either agreed not to use seabed minerals in their supply chains or declared support for a moratorium on DSM. The group includes 14 financial and insurance institutions, such as Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, Lloyds Banking Group, NatWest, the European Investment Bank and Swiss Re, which have announced that they will not lend or offer insurance due to the high-risks associated with DSM.

In this article, we shift the spotlight from the framing of critical minerals for energy security to the more recent aggressive promotion of critical minerals for ‘national security’ and ‘defense’ imperatives in the context of escalating geopolitical tensions driven by Western powers.