From rare earths to compute: Resource-control configurations and the geoeconomics of strategic leverage

This article examines how strategic resource-control configurations shape the form, scope, and durability of strategic leverage. It compares China’s rare-earth leverage over Japan with U.S.-centered control over access to frontier AI compute in the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia. The analysis distinguishes exclusionary leverage, which relies on restriction or denial, from allocative leverage, which relies on selective and conditional access. The comparison shows that rare-earth leverage weakened as Japan diversified its supply, whereas frontier compute allows more precise and recurring control through licensing, monitoring, and technological renewal. Recipient adaptation and private intermediaries, however, constrain broader geopolitical effects. Strategic leverage is therefore bounded, relational, and historically contingent.