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The AI race between China and the U.S. took a major turn over the weekend when the U.S. arrested Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.

Maduro had been indicted on very serious charges in the U.S., but as many commentators have rightly noted, the larger issue and perhaps the real reason the U.S. took this decisive action was to secure Venezuela’s natural resource assets, most importantly, oil as well as natural gas, iron ore, bauxite, gold, nickel, copper, zinc, diamonds, coal, and rare earth elements.

Why is the U.S. doing this?

As the Trump administration has made clear, the AI-arms race between the U.S. and China is a matter of grave national security. As the AI revolution transitions from software based Large Language Models (LLMs) to agentic and physical AI (robotics, automated machines, etc.), the natural resource demands will be MASSIVE.

Consider that a single data center requires 5,000 to 10,000 metric tons of copper for cabling and equipment. An AI-controlled robot can require anywhere from 50-100lbs of copper… and experts are anticipating MILLIONS of robots to hit market by 2030. Indeed, by some estimates, AI could increase copper demand by 15%-20% annually through 2030.

Copper is not the only natural asset physical/agentic AI requires to function. Uranium, lithium, cobalt, concrete, steel, rare earth minerals and other hard assets will experience extraordinary demand as the U.S. and China compete for AI global dominance.

The markets are illustrating this fact clearly.

Copper is about to close at an all-time high.

The same is true of steel SLX…

Even uranium URA, which has been left for dead for years, is catching a major bid driven by AI’s ravenous demand for energy.

Again, the dominant theme for the global economy today is the arms race for AI supremacy between the U.S. and China. And this race is igniting a MAJOR bull market in hard assets

Those investors who are correctly positioned for this could generate life-changing returns. 

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