Video News/Mining Forum Americas 2026

Edward Fishman, Senior Fellow and Director of the Maurice R. Greenberg Center for Geoeconomics at the Council on Foreign Relations and author of Chokepoints: American Power in the Age of Economic Warfare, says economic power increasingly runs through currencies, critical minerals and supply chains that are difficult to replace. Speaking with Kitco Mining at the 2026 Mining Forum Americas in Colorado Springs, Fishman said the freezing of Russia’s central-bank reserves helped accelerate official-sector gold buying as countries looked for ways to hedge against dependence on the dollar system. Fishman also pointed to China’s dominance of rare earth processing as another major strategic chokepoint, arguing that Western governments remain years away from meaningfully reducing that dependence. He said the U.S. may need a “cold peace” with China while alternative critical-mineral supply chains are built, and warned that physical chokepoints such as the Strait of Hormuz and the Red Sea remain capable of disrupting global commodity markets.