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Opening statements will be heard this week in 

 in Oakland, California, where Meta will again face a judge and jury over alleged harms to children. Four state attorneys general — from California, Colorado, Kentucky and New Jersey — are the first of 29 to try claims that Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, violated their consumer protection laws. This trial would also cover allegations by all 29 states that Meta violated a federal law called Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, or COPPA by illegally collecting children’s data.

 last week as part of the jury. They will play an advisory role, while the US District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers 

 the final ruling. The trial may last six to eight weeks with a verdict in October and during that time, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Instagram head Adam Mosseri are expected to testify.

The trial is part of the social media adolescent-addiction multidistrict litigation (MDL), which has 

 from around the country since 2022. Among the alleged concerns are that Meta designed its apps to keep minors hooked to them and did that despite knowing from its own researchers that its products cause serious mental health issues for kids.

During the trial, states will show evidence they say demonstrates how the apps were designed to be addictive and Meta’s awareness of it, rather than focusing on the content on these platforms. That’s a deliberate strategy, since social media companies can invoke Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which shields them from liability for most third-party content posted on their platforms. The states hope to frame the case around product design and alleged deception.

“A few years ago, these tech companies were mostly seen as untouchable, largely due to the interpretation of Section 230 as a blank check for the tech industry’s recklessness and greed,” said Mary Anne Franks, a professor at The George Washington University’s law school “But as the destructive consequences of this interpretation have become harder and harder to ignore, courts have finally started to scale back their deference to the industry and to treat their broad claims of immunity with increasing skepticism.”

Meta did not respond to a request for comment. Elsewhere the company has 

 allegations made by the state AGs. The company 

 it could face up to $1.4 trillion in damages, close to its total market value.

This trial is one piece of a much larger and complicated structure. A multidistrict litigation, as the name suggests, allows similar cases that are filed across different federal districts to be consolidated for a single federal judge. For the social media adolescent-addiction cases against tech companies, as of now 

 have been consolidated under the MDL. These are different from the thousands of cases consolidated separately in California state court under a Judicial Council Coordination Proceeding, or JCCP. In addition, individual states have also filed cases in their own courts which includes the recent New Mexico state AG case where Meta was 

 a combined amount of $942 million, and the ongoing trial against Meta in 

The MDL includes four different tracks: the first are individual lawsuits filed by minors and parents alleging tech platforms to cause anxiety, depression, self-harm among its young users. The second track is that of the cases filed by school districts who have sued for public nuisance alleging that these platforms created a mental health crisis inside their schools. The third group is that of 29 state attorneys general and the fourth (and smallest) track is a set of cases filed by Native American Tribes.

From these thousands of cases, the judge has selected 11 as “bellwether” trials: five personal injury lawsuits and six school district cases.

“The idea is that there are so many cases that have been filed, rather than trying to hear them all, the court will pick some sample of those cases, try those, and hope that gives the parties enough information to figure out a resolution,” said Eric Goldman, a law professor at Santa Clara University, adding that the first bellwether trial from the MDL did not go as expected.

It was a case brought on by Breathitt County School District in Kentucky against the four tech platforms — TikTok, Meta, Snap and YouTube and was scheduled for a trial in June. But the case was settled in May even before it could go to trial, with the four defendants 

 a total of $27 million to the school district. This included $9 million from Meta.

This means the upcoming trial would be the first from the MDL to reach a jury — and also the first one to be brought by the state AGs — making it “the first real test of the federal litigation’s merits.” said Franks.

Lawyer Haley Hinkle, who has been tracking all the social media lawsuits, believes this upcoming trial is going to be an important one for several reasons. The four states are 

 Judge Rogers to tell Meta to make some changes to the platform: including implementing age restrictions, getting rid of the infinite scroll feature, and deleting algorithms built on children’s data.

“When you've got four states from across the country, including the state that is home to Meta, trying their claims together on behalf of the harms to all the families, that's going to be very significant,” said Hinkle, policy counsel at Fairplay, an organization that works to protect kids from Big Tech. “They are going to be pursuing not only damages but changes to the platform's conduct — these AGs are highly motivated to see actual change, and that’s why they’ve been so aggressive and so coordinated across all the states in getting these types of claims to trial.”

Legal experts explain that the state AGs are expected to make two main arguments against Meta. The first is regarding the violations of the four state’s consumer protection laws where the states are going to point at Meta for profiting enormously from exploiting the attention and time of children.

This is expected to be their core argument: “You have come into our state and gone after our consumers, our kids, and you've lied to them about your product: you've told them it's safe, but it's not. It's addictive, and when we go and look at all your records, your internal conversations reveal that you know it actually is addictive, and that it can create a lot of mental health problems. So you're lying to them,” explained Benjamin Zipursky, a law professor at Fordham University School of Law.

As for the COPPA side of things, legal experts say that the states are going to argue that Meta violated this 1998 law which tells companies to get parental consent before they collect data of users who are under 13.

“There are a ton of kids under the age of 13 on these platforms — that has been something the platforms know and have ignored, [and] failed to take appropriate measures to remove those kids from their platform,” said Previn Warren, co-lead counsel for some of the plaintiffs in the MDL. “And they've done that because having young kids on the platform is financially beneficial to the company: every fresh crop of kids with a smartphone is a new generation of kids for Instagram to add.”

More MDL trials are anticipated to get underway early next year. The next school district bellwether trials, filed by Arizona’s Tucson Unified School District and South Carolina’s Charleston County School District, are scheduled for 

As of now, it’s unclear when the individual bellwether cases from the MDL will be tried. But with the deluge of lawsuits and a wave of new legislation, one thing is clear, say some legal experts: change is imminent.

“In my mind, [it is] fairly clear that social media, as currently constructed, will not survive the legal onslaught. Something will change — I don't know how many different things [or] how structural those changes will be,” said Goldman. “The only way that social media could potentially remain as it is currently today is essentially if the social media services win everything: they win all the court battles and they win and defeat all the legislation. And I just don't see how that’s possible.”

In June, during Hanoi’s record breaking heatwave, photos alluding to rice grains being dried under the sun and exploding into popcorn went viral. Shortly afterwards, Vietnam’s Ministry of Public Security 

 on its Facebook page that the person behind the photos had been fined ₫7.5 million dong ($285) for spreading false information.

“Refrain from posting or disseminating false or misleading information that affects security, public order, and the legitimate rights and interests of organizations and individuals,” the announcement said. “Any violations will be strictly dealt with according to the law.”

As of July 1, what counts as violation goes beyond a meme spreading “fake news,” as Vietnam’s new 

 and its related decrees have come into effect. Disinformation, anti-state content, inciting violence, defamation, harassment, and immoral content have already been illegal since the original 

 of the law. The updated version expands the scope to include calling for boycotts that harm businesses, causing division among the people, and hindering the policy of international solidarity, among others. The penalties have been raised too, going as high as ₫

“I think this kind of law, it kind of makes people police themselves,” an administrator of a Vietnamese pro-Palestine Facebook page who has been actively supporting the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement told Tech Policy Press. With this law in place, “the BDS movement will never happen in Vietnam.”

“Vietnam’s cybersecurity framework, while also addressing legitimate concerns such as cybercrime, online fraud, and national security risks, has raised concerns among human rights groups because some provisions are broader and can allow restrictions on legitimate expression, political speech, and access to information,” said Lana Z., lead of the human rights group ARTICLE 19’s Engaging Tech for Internet Freedom team, who requested to not use her full name for safety reasons.

The new law does come at a time of increasingly sophisticated and damaging cyber attacks, and proliferation of personal data theft. “The development of artificial intelligence (AI), big data, and new technologies like deepfakes is being exploited by cybercriminals to carry out scams and social engineering,” stated a 

 introducing the Cybersecurity Law’s implementing draft decree prepared by the Ministry of Public Security, which is the government body in charge of the law.

“Meanwhile, management of cross border service providers has faced difficulties due to lack of a mechanism mandating storage of data in Vietnam to serve investigation purposes,” the report added.

The law attempts to solve that by giving the Ministry of Public Security greater oversight. It streamlines previously overlapping provisions, assigning more responsibilities to specific government authorities more clearly to safeguard national security, critical information systems, digital infrastructure, and personal data.

On Facebook, Vietnamese authorities have been posting about specific users they have fined and what kinds of online speech they are being fined for. Many of these posts include the person’s initials, the area they live in, and a photo with their face obscured. Some of the posts include language 

 users to think carefully about who they follow and what they post on social media.

“From a governance perspective, fining ordinary users may be a more scalable and less resource-intensive enforcement tool than criminal prosecution or detention, while still creating a significant chilling effect,” Lana Z. told Tech Policy Press. “Publicizing these penalties also sends a broader message that online conduct is under surveillance and that even seemingly minor online activity can result in legal consequences.”

In some recent cases, authorities have publicized fining people for things like 

 with a subversive or reactionary website, 

 offensive comments under a post promoting a product. But other examples of offenses include a user sharing a 

 about a type of biofuel that the government has recently mandated people use.

For Lana Z., these cases speak to the breadth of Vietnam’s Cybersecurity Law. “If content such as satire, memes, folklore, criticism of public officials, or engagement with politically sensitive content can trigger administrative sanctions, it suggests that the governing laws and regulations are being interpreted very broadly.”

“So much of what we post on the internet is silly, it's these attempts to make sense of the world,” said Kian Vesteinsson, deputy director for research at the nonprofit Freedom House, where he focuses on tech policy and digital rights. “When you have a censorship regime that considers any challenge to the government's view of the world to be a crime, what you have is an internet that's scrubbed of all of the things that make it pleasurable and fun and good for people.”

An important change that’s come into effect last month is a tightened window for social media platforms to respond to takedown requests from Vietnamese authorities. The law now gives platforms 24 hours to remove infringing content, but in “urgent cases,” that’s shortened further to six hours.

“This is an incredibly brief window for trust and safety staff at a platform to understand whether a notified post is something that's genuinely violative of local law, and it incentivizes platforms to over-remove content in order to not be found in breach of Vietnamese law,” Vesteinsson told Tech Policy Press. “Platforms can face incredibly excessive fines or the wholesale block of their services in Vietnam if they're found to be in breach of these really repressive content removal mandates.”

The press arm of the Ministry of Public Security 

 in a recent article that “The Cybersecurity Law is an important legal tool that contributes to protecting national security, maintaining social order and safety, and safeguarding the legitimate rights and interests of citizens in cyberspace.”

But that’s only one side of the coin. “Governments have an interest and a responsibility in building a more secure online environment, and certainly cybersecurity should be a priority for policymakers, but Vietnam's cybersecurity law is only nominally about cybersecurity,” said Vesteisson. Since the original law was passed in 2018, “this law has been focused on curtailing dissent on the Vietnamese internet.”

, over provisions that require platforms to share user data, censor posts without judicial oversight, and establish local offices in the country.

This new version of the law now specifies what kinds of user data foreign companies are required to store locally in Vietnam and for how long. This includes things like IP addresses and account names.

“This is fundamentally a surveillance concern,” Vesteinsson told Tech Policy Press. “Vietnamese authorities want to be able to demand user data from these companies in order to identify online critics and go after expressions of dissent, and it's much easier to do so when that data physically resides on a server in Vietnam.”

But resistance from tech companies has been waning. 

 out of the five US Big Tech companies — the others being Amazon, Apple, Google, and Microsoft — that hasn’t established a local office in Vietnam. Facebook, YouTube, and TikTok compliance with 

 have consistently been at over 90% as the government had threatened 

Meta, Google, and TikTok did not respond to Tech Policy Press’ requests for comment.

The Ministry of Public Security’s newspaper compared Vietnam’s Cybersecurity Law to the EU’s Digital Services Act and Australia’s eSafety agency. The 

 says, “The common thread in these approaches is the refusal to empower mob justice and the refusal to allow platforms to escape the consequences of their own amplification mechanisms.”

“It is true that many countries have introduced laws and institutions to address online harms, disinformation, cybercrime, and platform accountability,” said Lana Z. But comparing Vietnam’s cybersecurity law directly with the EU’s and Australia’s frameworks “is not fully accurate because the purpose, scope, safeguards, and implementation mechanisms are different.”

Vietnam is not alone in framing control of online speech as part of maintaining cybersecurity. The Bangladesh Cyber Security Act was 

. In Myanmar, the ruling junta has used its Cybersecurity law to 

. Meanwhile, Russia has been calling for more binding commitments from states to combat cybercrime and cybersecurity, what critics say is an excuse for 

Back in Vietnam, a pro-Palestine account announced in March on its Instagram page they would preemptively delete their BDS content ahead of the new Cybersecurity Law to avoid potentially getting fined. They urged followers to save the materials in their devices before they’re gone.

On Threads, which has become a go-to platform for Gen-Z netizens to discuss Vietnamese politics, users had already started reframing their BDS posts by focusing on the “good companies” instead of the “bad ones” to avoid the risk of being fined under the defamation provision of the law. In June, the government said 2026 is the first year 

Meta complied with the removal of content

 that “The law does not prohibit people from using the Internet, nor does it restrict freedom of speech or freedom of the press as stipulated by law. Citizens have the right to express their opinions, reflect their thoughts and aspirations, and contribute to national development in cyberspace.”

But on Threads, the fines have already become a running joke, as users reference them to warn accounts that challenge or criticize government policies or big corporations.

Despite the uneasiness about the fines, the first major test of how the police will interpret and enforce the new Cybersecurity Law is happening now. In July, images of leveled forest along the coast of the Hai Van Pass, widely considered the most scenic drive in the country, went viral. Once netizens learned it is for a real estate development by the country’s biggest private company, Vingroup, Vietnamese Threads exploded with many users enraged by the environmental destruction and calling for the boycott of the company.

But soon, users started complaining about their posts being reported and removed for violating Threads’ terms of service. So far, there has been no public news about anyone getting fined for speaking up against the project.

“If they remove 2k (2,000) posts, we’ll post 4k,” one user commented.

Tatiana Dias is a fellow at Tech Policy Press. Maurício Angelo is the executive director of the Mining Observatory, a journalism and research organization.

While the Brazilian federal government was preparing a national rare earths policy aimed at 

positioning the country as a global leader

 in the sector — on its own sovereign terms — the governor of Goiás, the Brazilian state home to the largest reserves of these minerals critical to the technology industry, moved first. He not only enacted his own policy, sidelining the Lula administration, but also signed an agreement with the United States that squarely served President Donald Trump's ambitions.

To build his rare earths policy, Goiás Governor Ronaldo Caiado — now a presidential pre-candidate — enlisted a prominent Brazilian lawyer, Ronaldo Lemos, who serves on Spotify's advisory board; sits on the Oversight Board, the quasi-independent content moderation oversight body established by Meta; writes a technology column for Folha de S.Paulo, Brazil's most influential newspaper; and directs ITS-Rio, a technology and law think tank.

Shortly after the law was enacted — in line with the lawyer's recommendations, 

 around the same time — the Goiás government signed a memorandum of understanding with the US stipulating that strategic geological data would be "jointly owned" by Goiás and the US, and could be granted on an exclusive basis to entities designated by the US, drawing 

 over the transfer of strategic Brazilian information and raising serious questions about national sovereignty.

In February, Caleb Orr, the US Secretary for Economic, Energy and Business Affairs, 

 the US viewed Brazil as a "strategic partner" for the supply chain, and expressed interest in processing critical minerals in the country.

, Brazil holds the world's second-largest rare earth reserves, after China. That makes Brazil strategically vital for Trump, who is seeking to reduce American dependence on Chinese exports. Today, production is concentrated in the state of Goiás, which took the lead in negotiations.

Internal records from the Goiás state government show that the administrative process that gave rise to the agreement with the US was opened two weeks after the law was enacted — meaning negotiations were already underway when the white paper was published. According to the Goiás government, the state "got ahead of the global debate" following a 

 in July 2025, during which it identified "a growing concern among governments such as those of the US and Japan over Chinese hegemony in the supply chain." "The conversations with these two countries were merely a consequence of the urgency of the debate on the issue," the state government said.

The Goiás government stated that Ronaldo Lemos's role in producing the white paper was carried out "in an individual capacity, on a pro bono basis, helping to draft the regulatory proposals."

Lemos told Tech Policy Press that he took no part in negotiations between governments and the state of Goiás. According to him, the report was produced in the first half of 2025 and delivered to the Goiás government on August 5. On August 27, the law was passed in a flash — in just two days — by Goiás state legislators. According to the government statement, the law was approved "within the legal timeframe," and aligns with a "national development strategy that prioritizes industrialization and technological sovereignty."

By launching its own policy ahead of the federal government, Goiás put itself on a collision course with Lula, who is also a presidential pre-candidate in the upcoming election. For Lula's allies, Caiado opened the door to US interests and ran roughshod over the Brazilian Constitution, which establishes that mineral resources are federal property.

"These people are going to sell Brazil and we cannot allow it," 

. Caiado fired back: "He's the one selling. He's giving everything away, developing no technology in Brazil, and we keep selling raw timber, just like in the colonial era."

At the federal level, Brazil's strategy for critical minerals is to refuse agreements that require exclusivity. Brazil did not join Pax Silica, the 

 to secure the supply of resources essential for semiconductor and artificial intelligence supply chains. In February, US government representatives invited Brazil to participate in the 

 in Washington, an event with the express aim of "reshaping global trade." Brazil sent only a junior diplomat as an observer and rejected the 

 signed by the US with several other countries.

The issue has already become a flashpoint in the electoral race. In March, Lula's main rival, Flávio Bolsonaro — son of former president Jair Bolsonaro — signaled his intention to advance negotiations with the US. "Brazil is the solution for the United States to no 

 on China for rare earths and critical minerals," he declared at CPAC.

 with the US in critical mineral exploration, but insists he will not compromise on sovereignty. "Critical minerals are ours, rare earths are ours, and we want to develop them here at home," he declared.

The dispute over mineral sovereignty between Lula and Flávio Bolsonaro appears set to occupy a 

significant share of the presidential campaign

. Lula's party, PT, has just placed rare earths — alongside Brazil's Pix payment system and Trump's tariffs — at the center of the launch of Lula's reelection campaign. But US influence across all these issues, Trump's direct interference, and Washington's alignment with the Bolsonaro family have the potential to shape who becomes Brazil's next president in what promises to be another tight race.

The white paper that architected Goiás' policy

The Brazilian Constitution establishes that mineral extraction is a federal competence, precisely to safeguard national sovereignty. In recent months, the Lula government, working with mining-aligned legislators in Congress, has been discussing a National Critical and Strategic Minerals Policy — belatedly, and with no socio-environmental safeguards in sight.

But Goiás did not want to wait, and found an important ally to craft its own rare earths policy. The starting point was the creation of the Autoridade Estadual de Minerais Críticos do Estado de Goiás — the AMIC/GO — which had been proposed in Ronaldo Lemos's white paper.

According to Lemos, the law and the regulatory decree published in June "concretize a good part of what he has been writing and saying about the topic." For him, the texts reflect "the need to have a sovereign mining policy in the country, promoting development, local value addition, autonomy and technological mastery of mineral production in Brazil." He also says there was no payment or agreement involved in producing the white paper. "I have been speaking and writing frequently about mining policy, which has sparked interest in the topic in the public sector," he said, adding that he has a "personal interest" in the subject.

Lemos leads ITS-Rio, a technology and law think tank founded by lawyers who also work on cases involving tech companies in Brazil. Lemos and ITS-Rio had previously worked with the Goiás government on the passage of 

what they called "Brazil's first AI law,"

 in May 2025. As with the rare earths project, the state-level bill was enacted before federal AI regulation — still being debated in the Brazilian Congress — could be approved.

On that occasion, ITS-Rio justified the speed in the same terms, arguing on its website that the bill being debated in Congress "insisted on copying Europe," while "Goiás creates an original model that takes into account the country's capabilities and interests." The bill 

 Goiás Governor Ronaldo Caiado visited Google's headquarters in New York, and passed the following day as well, in a snap vote. The Goiás AI law, which included provisions for AI in schools, healthcare and public services, and established an "ex-post" regulatory regime, 

drew criticism for creating legal uncertainty

 through two overlapping regulatory frameworks on the same issue.

In the case of rare earths, shortly after Governor Caiado announced and enacted the law in August, Lemos and ITS-Rio published the white paper that underpinned the state's policies. The document was posted on September 16 — the same day the internal government process that would give rise to the exclusivity agreement with the US was opened. ITS-Rio told Tech Policy Press that the institution didn’t participate in the initiative and just published the report written by one of its directors.

In the document, Lemos proposes a series of actions for the Goiás government to leverage its reserves of rare earths, niobium, nickel, copper, titanium and phosphate — minerals that, according to him, would give Goiás "greater geopolitical weight."

The report recommended the creation of the AMIC-GO, the body responsible for coordinating critical mineral extraction and representing the state institutionally in international partnerships and agreements, as well as the so-called "Special Critical Minerals Zones," with economic and fiscal incentives and expedited environmental licensing. The institutional roadmap was followed closely in the legislation enacted.

For Ricardo Júnior de Assis Fernandes Gonçalves, a professor of Geography at the State University of Goiás, the expansion of mining in the Cerrado — Goiás's native biome — will deepen the territorial suffocation of local communities. "It is a continuation and attempt to reinforce the extractive-mineral dependent model that will keep Goiás and the territories of the Cerrado as global extractive peripheries," 

Goiás's law enabled the US purchase of the only rare earth producer outside Asia

Seven months after the law was published, the Goiás government — through the newly created AMIC-GO — signed the memorandum of understanding with the US, following the example of other countries such as Australia, Japan and Malaysia. The timeline suggests that the enactment of the law and the construction of the legal framework ran in parallel with the US negotiations.

The MOU, reviewed by Tech Policy Press and Observatório da Mineração, explicitly states that "any data produced from US-supported geological survey projects shall be jointly owned by Goiás (or an entity designated by Goiás) and the US (or an entity designated by the US), with the expectation that such data shall be treated as confidential business information." It also provides for a five-year exclusivity window.

Intellectual property from data produced in US-supported geological survey projects would be shared "in mutually agreed arrangements," with both parties having full access to such intellectual property.

The memorandum, however, states that it is "a voluntary arrangement expressing good faith intentions and not a legally binding document under international or domestic law." According to both governments, the memorandum of understanding amounts to a 

The Goiás initiative was challenged on several fronts. Federal congresswoman Dandara Tonantzin of the PT — Lula's party — 

 Brazil's Attorney General investigate the Goiás government and move to suspend the memorandum. "A member state cannot assume, directly or indirectly, strategic commitments in mineral matters before a foreign power," her petition states.

"We cannot hand over our riches to the North American government and submit our country to Trump's neocolonial agenda. This means deepening Brazil's economic dependence and reproducing a historical pattern of subordination," she declared.

The Goiás government argues that the state critical minerals law does not interfere with the federal government's sovereignty over the subsoil because it "focuses on the stage after extraction."The memorandum explicitly references the development of "a complete local supply chain for permanent magnets (NdFeB or others) and related technologies" used in defense applications, electric motors and smartphones.

Just one month after the signing of the memorandum, 

a rare earth mine in Goiás belonging to Serra Verde

 — the only producer of the four essential magnetic rare earth elements outside Asia — was sold to USA Rare Earth for US$2.8 billion. Serra Verde produces neodymium and praseodymium, the foundation of NdFeB magnets.

Regarding the Serra Verde acquisition, Lemos says that, based on what he read in the press, "the model has moved away from the principles established by the law and its decree," but argues that the legislation contains provisions that, in his assessment, allow for a response to such situations. The laws protect, for example, against the export of raw minerals and set local industrialization targets — but the obligations are "voluntary in nature" and apply only to companies that opt into state benefits.

 in Goiás is already impacting protected areas and fueling conflicts over water. There are currently 2,732 applications for rare earth research and exploration in Goiás registered with Brazil's National Mining Agency. Only seven hold extraction permits — all concentrated in the Goiás city of Minaçu, and all belonging to Serra Verde.

The sale of the Brazilian mining company triggered an intense national debate about sovereignty, with politicians calling for the creation of a state-owned enterprise and student groups launching campaigns toward the same goal, including demands to cancel the Serra Verde acquisition. The Rede party 

 the Supreme Court, filing for a suspension of the agreement.

For the transaction, USA Rare Earth drew on direct support from Trump, who has invested in mining companies — 

 for a sitting US president. Another rare earth company operating in Brazil, Aclara Resources, has also received US funding. 

 Australia and Canada as foreign powers with dominant stakes 

For Luis Eslava, professor of International Law at La Trobe University's Faculty of Law in Australia, a structural tension that could emerge from the US stake in Serra Verde is one of "value capture." "Unless Brazil integrates such investments into a coherent industrial strategy, it risks reproducing the historical pattern of supplying strategic raw materials while higher-value segments remain abroad," Eslava told Observatório da Mineração.

The researcher notes that Brazil is part of a new frontier of mineral extraction in the Global South, and that the central debate should be framed around the terms and conditions of extraction: respect for free, prior and informed consent; meaningful community consultation; distributive justice mechanisms; and concrete pathways toward advancing within global value chains.

Despite the deals, the US remains far from critical minerals independence

Trump's race to secure, increase and improve US stockpiles and access to critical minerals and rare earths is not driven by any desire to bet on the energy transition, electrification or climate action — he has repeatedly said 

 to unravel what the US once built toward fulfilling its commitments under the Paris Agreement.

Rare earths and other scarce minerals are essential to the 

 — two sectors that form a crucial pillar of support for Trump. Without these contested inputs, both the military-industrial complex and the artificial intelligence data center boom risk serious disruption, a result Trump and his allies are working relentlessly to prevent.

And reaching a point of real impact on global supply chains will not come quickly for the US or any other nation. The US currently 

for 70% of its rare earths, 50% of its graphite and 55% of its antimony, among others. Trump does not want Chinese market maneuvers to 

 that could damage American industry — and, by extension, his electoral base and political capital.

He has therefore invested in bilateral agreements to "build secure and resilient critical mineral supply chains" and "anchor strategic links in the global technology supply chain," as embodied in the Critical Minerals Ministerial, which convened the subgroup of countries that has come to be known as the Pax Silica.

Trump also launched what has been called “

,” a $12 billion investment to support American mining companies. The bulk — $10 billion — would come from the US Export-Import Bank, with the remaining $2 billion from private capital. The goal is to build up US reserves of critical minerals and support industries including technology and automotive manufacturing. Companies such as Lockheed Martin, General Motors and Google's parent company Alphabet are among the first beneficiaries.

This initiative, however, would build strategic reserves sufficient for only 60 days of consumption — 

This dynamic illustrates the enormous difficulty of challenging Chinese dominance in the critical minerals supply chain, and especially in rare earths — one of the main drivers behind Trump's multibillion-dollar investments and political maneuvers.

Caught in the middle is Brazil, with its own interests, contradictions, strategic role in global mining, and historical tendency toward non-alignment in diplomacy — whose resources are now being wielded as a political weapon in a country bracing for yet another polarized election.

Ever since DeepSeek surprised the world with a capable, open-weight reasoning model in January 2025, observers have 

 that China’s government will eventually force a more closed AI ecosystem. Open weights means anyone with access to the needed computing power can download and use the model however they like, including for cyber attacks or other malign purposes. Yet the open releases have kept coming. Today, closed models from the likes of OpenAI and Anthropic face lower-priced, self-hostable, customizable competition from DeepSeek, Z.ai, and Moonshot. China’s leader, Xi Jinping, last month 

, “We must … encourage open source and openness, cooperation and sharing.”

To some, that single line of Xi’s speech seemed to have settled it: China is doubling down on open-weight releases, risks be damned. Yet Xi offered “four views” on international AI development. “Persist in openness and common benefit, and drive innovation and development” was the first. But the second speaks directly to the need for control: “strengthen risk awareness, and ensure security and controllability.” Those who (voluntarily or not) marinate in Chinese government verbiage will recognize this as a version of Xi’s 2014 

 that “development is the foundation of security, and security is a precondition of development.” This duality is enshrined in legal texts, pertinently including a key generative AI regulation, which 

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