General Motors and Lockheed Martin have announced a collaboration to strengthen the US manufacturing and defense industrial base, a partnership facilitated by the Department of Defense in response to the growing demand for production capacity that the depletion of munitions stockpiles has created.

The collaboration, which extends to talks between GM and other major weapons makers including RTX and L3Harris, exemplifies the integration of automotive manufacturing into defense production that the era of rearmament and the strain of active conflict have made an urgent strategic priority.

The “wingman” drone took center stage at last week’s Berlin airshow, showcasing Europe’s latest-generation defense technology designed to accompany fighter jets and embodying the convergence of artificial intelligence, drone warfare, and the European drive for defense sovereignty that the conflicts of the era have made urgent strategic priorities.

As the war in Ukraine has underscored the growing importance of drones and electronic warfare, European and American defense forces are rapidly developing AI-powered drones to complement their fighter jets and carry additional sensors, jammers, and weapons, with the Berlin showcase featuring competing designs from Airbus, Boeing, Helsing, and General Atomics.

Australia’s iron ore miners have emphasized how growing steel demand in India and Southeast Asia could offset the stagnating Chinese market, even as they confront the dual challenge of declining Chinese steel production and the hardball negotiating tactics of China’s state-owned iron ore buyer.

The miners’ focus on the emerging Asian markets reflects the recognition that the era of Chinese-driven growth that fueled their fortunes for two decades is ending, forcing them to seek new sources of demand to replace the slowing Chinese consumption that has long dominated their business.

A nationwide surge in off-grid natural gas power plants built to feed the artificial intelligence industry’s voracious appetite for electricity is proceeding rapidly and often under a cover of secrecy, raising significant concerns about air quality, climate, transparency, and the rights of communities to know what is being constructed across the street from their homes.

The phenomenon, illustrated by the Meta data center and adjacent Apollo gas plant in Ohio, represents one of the most consequential and under-examined consequences of the AI boom, as the technology industry’s power demands drive a construction wave that is bypassing the permitting, environmental review, and public input that such projects would ordinarily require.

Phoenix Tailings has secured a conditional commitment of 500 million dollars in long-term debt financing from the Pentagon’s Office of Strategic Capital to construct a rare earth processing plant in the United States, marking another significant step in the broader Western effort to build the domestic critical minerals supply chains that would reduce dependence on Chinese refining.

The federal commitment anchors a billion-dollar project to build the Freedom Facility, which will process raw mined concentrates and recycled scrap into the critical light and heavy rare earth metals essential to military and commercial applications.

President Trump has invoked the Cold War-era Defense Production Act in an effort to increase production of critical munitions, a step that signals serious concern about a potential weapons shortfall after the heavy expenditure of the Iran conflict and that exposes the strain the war has placed on the American defense industrial base.

The decision, detailed in a June 11 memo to Defense Secretary Hegseth, comes amid doubts that American weapons makers can meet the surging demand, with Trump citing limited production capacity, fragile supply chains, long-lead dependencies, and production bottlenecks as conditions that may pose a direct threat to national defense.

China is pushing gas drilling into deeper and more ancient shale formations in the Sichuan basin that could lift domestic output of the unconventional fuel by more than a third by 2035, a technological frontier effort that reflects the country’s determination to reduce its dependence on the imported gas whose vulnerability the Gulf conflict has so starkly exposed.

With shale gas output lagging government targets and making up just ten percent of China’s gas production, the state oil giants are tackling terrain some 5,000 meters below the surface, among the deepest in the world, to arrest slowing growth and unlock the domestic resources that energy security increasingly demands.

The Group of Seven summit at Evian-les-Bains concluded with a unified pledge of support for Ukraine and fresh sanctions against Russia, a welcome for the US-Iran peace deal, and a push toward Western coordination on critical minerals, all conducted under the shadow of President Trump’s tongue-in-cheek declaration to the assembled leaders that “I’m the boss.”

The remark, delivered as Trump took his seat at a session on global economic security, captured the unspoken truth hanging over the summit: that the United States, having triggered the Gulf crisis through its strikes on Iran and now resolved it through the peace deal, dominates the proceedings of a forum nominally composed of equals.