The world is already in a war — just not the kind most people picture. There are no gunshots, troop movements or televised front lines. Yet its outcome will shape industrial competitiveness and long-term national resilience. The battlefield is the periodic table.
This “periodic table war” is the intensifying global competition for the elements that underpin modern industry and technology: copper, lithium, nickel, cobalt, manganese, graphite, rare earths, gallium, germanium, silver, aluminum — even uranium. These materials are essential to artificial intelligence, electric vehicles, the energy transition, carbon reduction and defense. They are no longer mere commodities; they are strategic assets.
Prices for many of these elements have risen in recent years, but price is only the surface. The deeper shift lies in how governments and global companies now treat them — not as a cost line, but as the starting point of industrial strategy, a tool of diplomacy and an asset tied to national security. The periodic table is becoming a map for 21st-century industrial policy.
Viewing this merely as a commodity supercycle or speculative spike misses the point. What is unfolding reflects five forces moving simultaneously and reinforcing one another: the AI boom, the shift to electric vehicles, the push toward net-zero, the institutionalization of ESG management and intensifying geopolitical competition. Their intersection is the periodic table.
Oil defined the industrial order of the 20th century. Countries that secured stable oil supplies grew; finance, military power and diplomacy followed. The 21st century, however, is moving from an economy powered by combustion to one that generates, stores and computes with electricity. That transition depends not on a single resource, but on a wide array of elements — and on the ability to combine and control them.
Artificial intelligence illustrates how physical this new competition has become. Hyperscale data centers consume electricity on the scale of small cities. Supplying that power reliably requires power plants, transmission lines, transformers, distribution equipment and cooling systems — all built from metals and critical elements.
Copper is central to power transmission and distribution. Aluminum is essential for long-distance lines. Nickel and graphite are core materials for energy storage. Silver is used in high-efficiency power equipment and solar installations. Uranium, which underpins nuclear power, is being redefined as a “power element” supporting stable baseload electricity in the AI era.
As data centers multiply, electricity demand surges. Renewables alone are unlikely to meet it, pushing countries to reconsider nuclear power — and with it, uranium and the entire nuclear fuel cycle, from conversion and enrichment to fuel fabrication. Rising uranium prices are therefore not mere speculation; they reflect a structural shift in how power systems are being rebuilt.
The transition to electric vehicles raises the stakes further. Internal-combustion vehicles were largely a steel-and-aluminum industry. EVs are products of the periodic table. Without lithium, nickel, cobalt, manganese, graphite and rare earths, not a single EV can operate. EVs also require a greater quantity — and variety — of minerals than gasoline-powered cars.
More importantly, EV adoption is not simply replacing one type of vehicle with another. It is turning the transportation system into a vast electricity-storage network. Millions of EVs function simultaneously as vehicles and batteries, becoming part of the power system itself. As this structure takes hold, demand for key elements is unlikely to fade quickly and may rise cumulatively, making this a long-term, structural contest.
The push toward net-zero reinforces the same trajectory. Wind and solar power, energy storage and the hydrogen economy are all metal-intensive. Solar requires silver and aluminum; wind relies on rare earths and massive steel structures; hydrogen depends on nickel and platinum-group metals. Cutting carbon, paradoxically, means consuming more metals. Carbon neutrality does not mean using fewer resources — it means digging deeper into the periodic table.
These shifts are already visible in markets. A recent Financial Times feature titled “In search of the copper to connect the AI boom” noted that AI is fundamentally reshaping copper demand. Data centers require far more power than traditional facilities, and the grids that connect them need vast amounts of copper. The paper argued that copper is being elevated from an industrial metal to a strategic resource — the “blood vessels” of the digital economy.
Citing International Energy Agency analysis, the report warned that planned mine output alone may be insufficient to meet a significant share of expected global copper demand by the mid-2030s. More troubling are supply constraints: new mines face years of delays from environmental rules, local opposition and permitting, while refining and processing remain concentrated in a handful of countries. In the AI era, competitiveness will depend not only on chip design or algorithms, but on secure access to copper itself.
The same dynamic is evident at the London Metal Exchange, long seen as a neutral pricing venue. Increasingly, it has become a strategic arena where countries and global firms compete for deliverable inventory. When stocks of a metal fall sharply, or when firms of a particular nationality lock up supply, prices can spike — not due to speculation, but because material control confers power.
The “nickel shock” on the LME in March 2022, which led to a trading halt and the unprecedented cancellation of contracts, exposed this vulnerability. As nickel grew in importance as a key EV battery material, market fragility became clear once refining and processing came under the influence of a single country. The lesson was unmistakable: core periodic-table elements are no longer just financial instruments; they are national strategic assets.
China’s tightening of export controls and licensing for materials such as gallium, germanium and graphite follows the same logic. The objective is not merely to raise prices, but to make global advanced industries structurally sensitive to policy decisions in Beijing. These elements may appear minor individually, but in semiconductors, AI, communications and defense they are difficult to substitute. Even brief disruptions can halt production lines. Markets now price supply availability and political stability above cost alone
U.S. and European industrial policies reflect the same shift. The U.S. Inflation Reduction Act and the European Union’s Critical Raw Materials Act are not simply subsidy programs. They begin with a strategic question: which elements on the periodic table can be secured within allied blocs? Both signal a decisive return of the state to industrial competition.
South Korea must confront its own reality. It is resource-poor. The greater risk, however, lies in treating this as a temporary price issue or a firm-level cost problem. Speaking about AI, semiconductors, EVs and batteries while neglecting elemental supply strategy would leave the industrial core exposed to external control.
The country’s survival strategy is therefore clear. Competing to own mines is neither realistic nor efficient. Instead, South Korea should secure leadership in refining, processing, materials engineering and recycling. Even without extracting raw elements, it can master their industrialization. High-purity refining, next-generation materials design, urban mining and recycling align naturally with ESG principles and Korea’s manufacturing strengths.
Finance and diplomacy form another pillar. Long-term offtake agreements — prearranged supply contracts — should be structured as national packages backed by sovereign credit. Such frameworks distribute political and currency risk beyond individual firms. This is not a war companies can fight alone; it is a test of state capacity.
Demand management must also be treated as resource strategy. Improving energy efficiency in AI data centers, substituting materials in EV batteries and reducing metal intensity through software and design are all forms of “invisible” resource policy. In this contest, the winners will not be those that consume the most, but those that create the most value with the least material.
The periodic table is no longer a classroom chart. It is an industrial strategy map, a diplomatic guide and a blueprint for national survival. The next era of competition will ask a simple but unforgiving question: Which box on the periodic table does your country take responsibility for? The world has already entered this periodic-table war — and time is short.
About the author:
▷Former deputy business editor and Tokyo correspondent at JoongAng Ilbo ▷Former visiting professor at Seoul National University’s College of Engineering ▷Former chair professor of technology management at Hanyang University ▷Former head of the Gyeonggi Institute of Science & Technology Promotion ▷Visiting professor at Gachon University and Hoseo University ▷Columnist at Aju Business Daily
* This article, published by Aju Business Daily, was translated by AI and edited by AJP.
