For years, we have put technology into political boxes.
Solar was “green.” Nuclear was either controversial or essential, depending on which decade you were in. Recycling was an environmental issue. Critical minerals were a mining issue. Energy independence was a national security issue. Artificial intelligence was a technology issue.
But something important is happening in America. The lines are beginning to blur.
Republicans are talking about solar manufacturing, nuclear power, critical minerals, and domestic recycling. Democrats are talking about critical-mineral recovery, energy resilience, advanced technology, and domestic supply chains.
Both parties increasingly recognize that America’s ability to innovate, manufacture, and power its economy will determine whether we lead the next century or become dependent on countries that do.
That makes the future of American technology neither a red issue nor a blue issue. It is a red, white, and blue issue. And it is time we started treating it that way.
I have spent more than two decades in electronics recycling. When we co-founded ERI in 2002, electronic waste was hardly a national security conversation.
Few people were talking about “urban mining.” Even fewer understood that the discarded electronics sitting in American homes, offices, and warehouses contained materials that could become increasingly important to our economy and national defense.
Today, that equation has changed dramatically.
Our smartphones, computers, servers, office equipment, televisions, batteries, data centers, and other electronic devices contain copper, aluminum, gold, lithium, cobalt, and rare-earth-containing components.
These materials are essential to the technologies powering modern America. And we already own most of them.
A National Security Opportunity
Our nation has imported these resources, manufactured them into products, used those products, and then put many of them into drawers, closets, industrial warehouses, landfills, and recycling bins.
Traditional mining extracts resources from the ground. Urban mining extracts value from the enormous stockpile of materials already circulating through our economy.
And increasingly, Republicans and Democrats are recognizing that this isn’t simply an environmental opportunity. It is an economic, technological, and national security opportunity.
As Adam Smith wrote in Wealth of Nations in 1776, “Defense is of much more importance than opulence.” And no words ever rang truer in 2026.
American Competitiveness
Sen. Mazie Hirono, a Hawaii Democrat and member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, has pushed for the military to recycle and reuse strategic and critical minerals.
In the FY2027 defense bill, she secured a provision calling for a Defense Department public-private partnership program focused on recycling strategic and critical minerals.
That isn’t an abstract environmental argument. It is an argument about American competitiveness. And Republicans are making the same case from a somewhat different starting point.
In February, the Republican-led House passed the Critical Mineral Dominance Act, sponsored by Rep. Pete Stauber of Minnesota, with the stated goal of strengthening domestic production, processing, and refining and reducing dependence on foreign countries, particularly China.
Then, in July, President Donald Trump signed an executive order directing the federal government to strengthen domestic and allied supply chains for critical materials needed for advanced defense technologies.
The administration has also moved to restrict exports of certain recoverable critical-material waste streams, including battery waste and tungsten scrap, so more of those resources can be processed domestically.
Different motivations, same direction. Keep America’s resources in America. In other words, onshoring or domesticating all of our own resources.
A Remarkable Opportunity
Dominance and resilience should no longer be measured solely in barrels of oil, miles of pipeline, tons of ore, or megawatts.
The U.S. Government Accountability Office recently concluded that recycling technologies could help reduce America’s reliance on imported critical minerals, with battery recycling potentially reducing import dependence within two to three years.
That is a remarkable opportunity. And on the right timeline. Traditional “virgin” mines take at least 15 years to extract any value from, at best. Urban mines can be operational and recover these critical materials immediately.
We don’t have to wait decades to discover every new resource. We can start with the resources we already have.
At ERI, we see this every day. We operate eight facilities across the United States and process more than one million pounds of electronics every day.
What comes through our doors may look like waste. But most of it is really material waiting for another life. That is why I know recycling today and in the future looks very different from the recycling of the past.
Aging data centers, for example, can be huge sources of critical materials, containing rare earths in hard drives and other key components.
The environmental benefits remain enormous. But they are no longer the only argument.
A Red, White and Blue America
We can and should pursue responsible recycling because our military needs access to these critical minerals and magnets, we want more resilient and domesticated supply chains, we want more American jobs, and yes, we want to leave the beautiful country we all love and enjoy better than when we inherited it.
All of those compelling imperatives can be true at the same time. That is the bigger lesson.
America doesn’t need to agree on every reason for doing something. We need to agree that certain things are worth doing. And urban mining leadership is one of them. There is nothing inherently Democratic or Republican about recycling a rare earth magnet.
There is nothing partisan about protecting America’s national security. And there should be nothing partisan about ensuring that the next generation of American technology is powered, manufactured, and supplied by America.
We can be more powerful without abandoning our democratic values, more self-reliant without withdrawing from the world, and more prosperous without borrowing that prosperity from our children.
Our future does not belong to a “red” America or a “blue” America. It belongs to a red, white, and blue America.
John Shegerian is co-founder, chairman and CEO of electronics recycler ERI, which could benefit commercially from policies promoting domestic recovery of critical materials. The views expressed in this article are his own.
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