After decades of neglect, Washington has adopted a coherent and “forceful” response to China’s dominance over critical minerals. Today, we’ll explore China’s dominance in autonomous mining technology and what to do about it. Through its state-coordinated intelligent mine programme, China is building what amounts to the world’s largest training corpus for mining AI. At the level of operational technology, space extraction and autonomous Arctic mining present strikingly similar challenges. Imposing tariffs on them and simultaneously expecting them to co-develop autonomous mining AI constitutes an unwarranted contradiction that will not resolve in Washington’s favor.