Why Is the US War Department Buying into a BC Mining Company?

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Oct. 16, 2025

Global instability is creating a rush for critical minerals, which are useful for green energy. And the military.

Last week, Vancouver-based Trilogy Metals announced that it had signed a deal with the U.S. Department of War.

The United States’ military arm, known until recently as the Department of Defense, plans to purchase a 10 per cent stake in the mining company, an investment of more than $35 million that would go toward “unlocking” a 2,000-square-kilometre mineral deposit in remote northern Alaska.

“The Department of War’s interest underscores the strategic importance of the Upper Kobuk Mineral Projects in supporting U.S. energy, technology, and national security priorities,” Trilogy president and CEO Tony Giardini said in a statement posted to the company’s website.

Trilogy’s stock values tripled in response. The company did not respond to The Tyee’s request for an interview.

It’s not the first time the current U.S. government has invested in a B.C. mining company. On Oct. 1, the Department of Energy announced a five per cent stake in Vancouver-based Lithium Americas, as well as a five per cent stake in its Thacker Pass lithium mine in Nevada.

The announcements follow the Pentagon’s unusual move earlier this year to invest in Las Vegas-based MP Materials, which owns the only operational rare earth elements mine in the United States.

Werner Antweiler, associate professor in strategy and business economics at the University of British Columbia Sauder School of Business, said that government buying a stake in a company is “rare.” It’s more common, he said, for them to support business in the form of loans or loan guarantees.

“Historically, governments have always invested in industries that they found to be of national importance,” Antweiler said. “But most of the time, governments actually did not take direct ownership, at least not in western countries.”

The companies the U.S. government has invested in all have one thing in common: they mine critical minerals.

Critical minerals have long been touted as the key to the global energy transition because they’re used in everything from electric vehicle batteries to solar panels and wind turbines.

They’re also essential to the production of military equipment.

Current geopolitical turmoil, including an escalating international trade war and conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East, appears to be driving U.S. interest in the materials.

China, which produces the majority of the world’s critical minerals and about 90 per cent of all rare earth elements, has increasingly limited their export to the United States over the past six months, which has raised concerns about a shortage.

President Donald Trump’s threats to annex Canada, comments about buying Greenland and his recent deal with Ukraine for its critical minerals appear to be aimed at securing U.S. supply.

But it’s unlikely that Trump’s goal is to further a climate agenda. The president has repeatedly expressed disdain for renewable energy.

That raises the question of why the United States is investing in mining companies, Antweiler said. “The only explanation I have is that, since they’re not interested in the electrification aspect, they’re interested in safeguarding what the military needs.”

Mining companies looking at ‘tsunami of capital’

Global military spending has risen dramatically in recent years.

In September, the United Nations released figures showing that military spending reached an unprecedented $2.7 trillion last year. That’s nearly 10 per cent more than the previous year and the steepest rise since the Cold War.

“The world is spending far more on waging war than in building peace,” UN Secretary-General António Guterres lamented, noting that ending extreme poverty would cost significantly less. “A more secure world begins by investing at least as much in fighting poverty as we do in fighting wars.”

Canada has joined other NATO allies in pledging to increase defence spending to five per cent of GDP over the next decade. In a statement that followed the agreement, Trump said it was “vital” that the money be spent on “very serious military hardware, not bureaucracy.”

Canada’s commitment represents a nearly fivefold increase in military spending, Peace Brigades International Canada executive director Brent Patterson told The Tyee.

“It’s going from about $33 billion a year on military spending to about $150 billion a year by 2035,” he said, adding that the investment is creating a “headlong rush towards military spending and seeming inevitability of global conflict.”

That has been a boon for the natural resource industry. Critical minerals are needed in everything from F-35 fighter jets — manufactured by U.S. weapons giant Lockheed Martin, which the United Nations recently linked to human rights abuses in Gaza — to submarines, missiles, ammunition and assault rifles, Patterson said.

Canada’s announcement about NATO spending was “music to the ears of any junior or operating company” mining critical minerals, Vancouver-based Military Metals CEO Scott Eldridge said in a recent YouTube interview.

“None of us are cheering for war,” Eldridge said, adding that the western world is currently vulnerable to “evil powers” as its military stockpiles dwindle.

If the junior mining company’s website looks like a video game, there’s good reason. Military Metals rebranded last year from X1 Entertainment, a company focused on competitive gaming, to focus on mining antimony, a flame retardant used in military equipment such as ammunition and night-vision goggles.

“We had great timing when we secured these assets just approximately 12 months ago,” Eldridge said about projects in Nova Scotia, Slovakia and Nevada. “The only thing we can do as a company is move these projects forward as fast as we can, and having access to government capital will only assist with that.”

Eldridge described a “tsunami of capital” coming into the sector, particularly from the United States, and predicted greater investment from Canada and the European Union.

The Tyee reached out to Eldridge for an interview but did not receive a response.

In addition to increased military spending, Canada has also increased its support for the critical minerals industry. Two years ago, the federal government launched the Critical Minerals Infrastructure Fund, which provides up to $1.5 billion in funding for the industry.

In March, the federal government announced $50 million for critical minerals developers to “bolster our energy security by reducing reliance on authoritarian governments.”

Among the recipients was Vancouver-based Defense Metals, which received more than $850,000 in conditional funding for a feasibility study to bring power into its proposed Wicheeda project, located 80 kilometres north of Prince George.

Proposed northern BC mine has US government ‘support’

Mark Tory was living in Perth, Australia, where he had worked in the rare earth elements industry for more than a decade, when he got a call last year from Defense Metals, which was looking for someone to lead the company.

“I’d analyzed nearly every project globally,” he told The Tyee in an interview. The Wicheeda project “stood out like a sore thumb” as one of the richest rare earth deposits in the world.

“I basically packed up my wife and dogs and moved over to Vancouver to get this developed,” said Tory, who began as president and CEO in January.

Rare earth elements are a group of 17 elements that are found globally but rarely in high concentrations. The Wicheeda project is the only rare earth element deposit on the Mining Association of BC’s list of “world-leading” critical minerals projects and among the most significant outside China, Tory said.

Specifically, the Wicheeda site contains neodymium and praseodymium, rare earth elements used to manufacture permanent magnets, which are used in both renewable energy and military equipment.

A year ago, Defense Metals signed an agreement with the Saskatchewan Research Council, North America’s first rare earth elements processing facility.

The deal is meant to help “strengthen the rare earth element supply chain within Canada” and includes facilitating negotiations for the “sale and purchase of Defense Metals’ mixed rare earth carbonate.”

In April, the company entered into a non-binding agreement with a “major potential strategic partner” to purchase a “significant portion” of its product.

Tory said he could not name the potential buyer.

“It’s not to go to China,” he added.

The Canadian government has been supportive of the project, said Tory, who was among those who joined Prime Minister Mark Carney on a recent trip to Germany meant to strengthen critical mineral supply chains.

B.C.’s response to the project has also been “fantastic,” Tory said. Premier David Eby invited the company to meet with provincial representatives in May.

“He did his own research in relation to critical minerals,” Tory said. “He wanted to find out what we’re doing and where we’re at.”

The company intends to enter the environmental assessment process early in 2026, and while Tory said the province couldn’t offer much in the way of financial support, he hopes the relationship will help streamline permitting.

In February, Eby announced that the province would fast-track 19 natural resource projects in response to U.S. tariffs.

While the Wicheeda project was not on this initial list, the government indicated at the time that it planned to add more projects. In response to questions from The Tyee, B.C.’s Ministry of Mining and Critical Minerals wrote in an email that no new projects had yet been identified but that it “remains committed to improving permitting times without sacrificing our strong safety measures or environmental standards.”

Defense Metals has also been in discussions with the U.S. government, Tory confirmed.

In 2020, it brought in two strategic advisers with close ties to U.S. national defence to help with business development and securing purchase agreements. Andrew Leland is a systems engineer with Lockheed Martin. Karl T. Wagner spent 29 years working for the CIA and, later, as head of global security at Tesla.

“We’ve got support,” Tory said about the company’s links to the Republican party, adding that Defense Metals is “open to any potential funding” the United States might offer.

Pressure to stop arms exports

The critical minerals push comes as Canada is under increasing pressure to stop arms exports to countries accused of human rights abuses.

While the United States is the largest source of weapons destined for Israel, with Germany trailing a distant second, there’s evidence that Canada has continued to export military components to the Middle Eastern country as recently as this summer — well after Israel was credibly accused of genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.

The lack of transparency in the critical minerals supply chain means that it’s unclear whether materials mined in Canada are going toward the energy transition or toward violence, said Nikki Skuce, co-chair of the BC Mining Law Reform network and director of Northern Confluence.

“Mines can claim that they’re critical mineral mines and needed for the energy transition, but there’s no ability to track that,” Skuce told The Tyee. “I think it’s important to know if the mine in your backyard is going to help dump bombs on Gaza or if it’s going to help with an electric battery in your kid’s school bus.”

The end use for critical minerals isn’t considered in approvals like the environmental assessment process, Skuce said.

“There’s no pushback on the greenwashing” when companies claim, without evidence, that their products are contributing to the energy transition, she said.

“Our critical minerals strategy is full of so many holes,” Skuce said. “It’s just being used as a tool to push for more mining, whether it’s for gold to sit in the basement of a bank or a rare earth element to be used in an F-35.”

In response to a question from The Tyee, a spokesperson with the Environmental Assessment Office wrote: “While the EAO does not consider end-use specifically as part of its assessment, if this information is brought up during technical reviews, First Nations consultation or engagement with stakeholders or the public, it may be considered by decision-makers, who may consider anything relevant to their decision on a project, including public interest.”

“Decisions regarding limitations to exports of certain materials because of concerns over end-use would fall within the jurisdiction of the federal government,” the spokersperson added.

UBC’s Antweiler said U.S. interest in Canadian mining companies isn’t yet cause for alarm, as the relatively small stakes don’t provide a controlling interest and wouldn’t give the Trump administration meaningful influence over the businesses.

It would be more concerning if the U.S. government were buying companies with projects in Canada, he added.

But he agreed that it “looks problematic” in the context of current Canada-U.S. relations.

“It’s the particular circumstances that make this look somewhat suspicious, because it’s not clear what the ultimate agenda is here,” Antweiler said. “We haven’t had a president in the United States who was trying to make Canada the 51st state.”

[Top photo: Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney is dealing with two world powers as Chinese President Xi Jinping, right, increasingly restricts critical mineral exports to the US and President Donald Trump, left, takes an interest in BC mining companies. Photo of Donald Trump by Gage Skidmore via Wikimedia, Creative Commons licensed. Photo of Mark Carney via Wikimedia. Photo of Xi Jinping via Wikimedia.]