Registration for this event is full.
Please join the Belfer Center's Science, Technology, and Public Policy Program (STPP) and the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government (M-RCBG) for a talk with Krishnaswamy Sankaran, M-RCBG Senior Fellow and a senior executive and practitioner-scholar with 22 years bridging deep technology, sovereign strategy, and investment. Daniel Schrag, the Sturgis Hooper Professor of Geology, Professor of Environmental Science and Engineering, and STPP Co-Director, will moderate the discussion.
Strategic leverage today comes less from where reserves sit than from who controls the technology to convert ore into usable material — a layer decoupled from reserve ownership and largely ungoverned. Using battery-grade lithium conversion as a case study, Sankaran shows published cost estimates for the same process diverge by more than a factor of two, and that roughly half that gap is a reporting problem, not a chemistry problem: it disappears once studies share common methodological ground.
The other half does not disappear. Real differences remain between processing routes and technologies. That edge is where sovereignty is made possible. The same pattern holds across other critical materials, and it matters: the EU's €28 billion Critical Raw Materials Act programme, and the broader push toward reshoring in the US, are being evaluated on evidence too inconsistent to tell the two apart.
Researchers, philosophers, and political economists have long warned that technical framing can quietly displace political judgment. Sankaran argues that is exactly what has happened with critical raw materials — though the argument travels to two other domains he works on, AI governance and energy infrastructure.
RSVP required. This event is open to all Harvard University ID holders. Please note that this seminar is in-person only and will not be streamed or recorded.
The Belfer Center and the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government welcome individuals with disabilities to participate in their programs. To request accommodations or ask questions about access provided, please email ehanlon@hks.harvard.edu.
