Pete Hegseth, who has taken to calling himself the Secretary of War, says the Defense Department “does not do climate change crap.” Just last week, he asserted that the agency “will not be distracted” by climate change or “woke moralizing.”
But a new report suggests that the Pentagon is engaging with the issue in one serious way: As it stockpiles dozens of critical minerals, it is threatening the energy transition by hoarding resources that could be used to decarbonize transportation, energy production, and other sectors.
President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act allocated $7.5 billion to bolster the Pentagon’s reserves of critical minerals like cobalt, lithium, and graphite that are held in six depots nationwide, an effort supervised by the Defense Logistics Agency. Such materials are used in everything from jet engines to weapons systems, and often are mined or processed in China or other nations. The materials in the stockpile are only accessible during times of declared war, or by order of the Undersecretary of War, a Defense Logistics Agency s... Read more
