Corneille Nangaa stood in a hot, crowded room in Goma on May 6 and told the truth. The rebel leader of the Alliance Fleuve Congo watched the cameras and declared that the United States has failed as a peace mediator. According to the Associated Press, the Trump administration is too busy carving up the region’s mineral wealth to bother with a ceasefire. This paper identifies the price of that silence: $9 billion. Per Stratfor reporting, a U.S.-linked consortium and Glencore signed a memorandum of understanding for a 40% stake in Congolese mining assets.

The dirt in the Congo is the fuel for the new world. Washington wants the copper and cobalt; the lives of the people living on top of it are a secondary concern. In a separate move, the Democratic Republic of Congo is now moving to seize an equity stake in a $270 million power link with Zambia. Business Insider Africa reports that power shortages are choking the copper belt. The Congolese state is desperate to keep the lights on for the excavators, even as its citizens sit in the dark.

Further west, the greed for bauxite has triggered a different kind of explosion. Guinea has successfully squeezed the UAE’s Guinea Alumina Corporation. The Africa Report notes that Conakry forced a settlement to transfer massive assets to a state-run firm. The era of polite negotiation is over. Global powers are no longer pretending to care about stability or human rights. They are simply grabbing the shovels.

Read together, these events describe a coordinated scramble for the physical inputs of the AI and energy transition. The U.S. government claims it wants peace in the Great Lakes region, but its financial filings show a different priority. The memorandum of understanding signed on February 3 proves that the Pentagon’s logistical security is bought with the blood of the Global South. The causal link between the failed peace talks and the $9 billion mineral grab is visible in every dollar flowing into the Orion Critical Mineral Consortium.