Unlocking Critical Mineral Security: Redesigning Recovery Systems in Today's Mining Operations

ABSTRACT The resilience of national infrastructure increasingly depends on secure access to critical minerals. Despite the U.S. government's strategic investments and growing urgency, our mineral strategy still relies heavily on future mining projects or geopolitically entangled imports. Overlooked, however, is the latent potential in what domestic mining already produces—but fails to recover. This article presents a systems‐based perspective on redesigning mineral recovery within existing mines, arguing for a new policy, research, and incentive architecture to improve critical mineral supply security from within.