The world has changed. We are living in a new era of AI infrastructure, data centers, green technology factories, and new-age military industries (missile and drone factories), as the West and East duke it out for economic and political dominance.

It’s a race forcing both sides to develop new-age green and military industries, which will require bigger, newer power infrastructure within the next decade or two if they are to prevail in this AI-digital arms race.

 

 

The development of these new platforms will require the world to mine, in the next 18 years, the same amount of minerals—copper, lithium, cobalt, tungsten, and rare earths—equivalent to what has been extracted in the last 10,000 years. It is almost an impossible task, but it will be done with the aid of AI, robots, and cheap labor (slaves) from the Third World.

The problem is that the West does not have time, sufficient sources, or meaningful stockpiles of these essentials, as the Third World shuts them out and China monopolizes the supply chains of the main strategic minerals. As a result, they (the West) are desperate to get them at all costs, for the survival of their civilization. The U.S. and her allies have thus lost patience and are ready to do whatever it takes to acquire and control these resources before China shuts them out and starves them.

It is a scenario envisaged and warned about in 1921 in the book The Rising Tide of Color, written by Lothrop Stoddard. In this book, Stoddard warns the West (the white world) that if the yellow man [the China], Asia, and Africa were to unite, they could close the West out of their 5.6-billion-person markets and, more critically, out of access to the strategic minerals and resources needed to drive Western industry and military power—an outcome he suggested would end Western or White civilization.

As we speak, China currently controls the majority of supply chains for rare earths, lithium, cobalt, copper, and other minerals critical for the new economy. This is why, in the first three months of 2026, the U.S. moved quickly against Maduro, eliminated Khamenei, and hit what they called Islamic militants who were killing Christians in Nigeria in late 2025. This was done to control over 80% of the world’s oil, so that the Americans could deprive China of fuel and maintain the petrodollar system, which depends on fossil fuels being sold in U.S. dollars.

Now that they have secured the fuel, they are approaching Third World countries with bilateral deals in health and loans to try and access strategic minerals. If they fail to get them through negotiations, they are willing to use force to acquire and control these minerals.

Trump has even gone as far as showing readiness to take Greenland by whatever means necessary, illustrating that even cousins who hold them back U.S. progress are not exempt from the excesses of primitive accumulation if that is what it takes to maintain U.S. primacy.

Washington has taken off the gloves and is ready to go medieval, because if they don’t, they risk falling back to the Stone Age, surrounded by a powerful China, Russia, and Asia propped up by controlling Third World resources.

Third World, be warned: the bully is coming for your lunch. So if you have resources and you want to survive, you had better keep your head down and start making deals with the West and China alike, because China and Russia will not protect you when the West comes for your resources.

Before, Third World countries had the luxury of choice on who to sell their resources to, because the politically correct West would not attack unless truly given an excuse. Moreover, in a worst-case scenario, we believed China and Russia would come to the rescue. Well, now we know those were pipe dreams.

The West has dusted off the colonial brass knuckles and is prepared to use them—to kill and die for the survival of the race—while China continues to rely on diplomacy to persuade Third World countries and even Europe to grant access. However, to its own peril, China is not prepared to counter the return of the age of piracy that saw England destroy China through the Opium Wars and ascend into the First/Fist World at China’s expense.

It is out of this knowledge that I keep warning our government that it is raising too much attention upon itself of late, and in a world ruled by a ravenous America, this is suicidal.

More problematic is the way we are attracting this attention: ridiculing an immature U.S. President by publicly rejecting his health deal and getting Africa to cheer Zimbabwe as a means to jeer at Trump. Then, soon after, we close off the export of the very raw minerals that the West wants, to force their factories to shed American jobs and open in Zimbabwe. In the same week, South Africa—also being eyed by the Trump administration—echos Zimbabwe’s move by saying that Africans can no longer continue to export rocks.

Now, as much as I am a devout Pan-Africanist who believes in sovereignty and resource nationalism, this is the wrong time for it in a world where the West has become petulant and has been revising Stoddard’s principles.

Trump and his administration, which is seeking a third term, will not allow any Third World country to deny them raw minerals if it means losing jobs at home, facing prospects of civil unrest, or losing to China. Like a cornered lion, they will kill for this.

It is almost guaranteed that among their targets will be the Persian Gulf of strategic mineral resources: Southern Africa. The lowest-hanging fruit will be those they can label illegitimate or human rights violators—just as they are doing with the “white genocide” issue in South Africa.

The current constitutional amendment, and violence upon the opposition perceived to be done by an already sanctioned President who is being lauded for rejecting U.S. advances for resources, offers the perfect premise for retribution while setting an example to other Africans, in line with the Willy Lynch principles of Making A Slave.

Nevertheless, while Trump is still caught up in the mess he created in Iran, we as a nation still have a window of opportunity to walk back some of the steps we have taken by opening up to the various U.S. envoys being sent through official and informal channels to begin talks about how Donald Trump’s America can get what it wants while we get what we want.

This is not an option; it is prudence. Because if Trump returns from the Iranian adventure bruised, he will be seeking a nation to make an example of—to set the precedent that when America asks, you either give or lose it.

I, for one, have been approached by various people within the corridors of the American system warning me that Harare is overplaying its hand and that Washington has begun to pay attention. These same people have suggested that we, as a nation, can still salvage this situation into an advantage before it gets out of hand.

Written by Rutendo Matinyarare, Chairman of ZASM.