War, lithium, and invisible dependencies: Taiwan at the heart of a militarized system

As tensions between the United States, Israel, and Iran dominate global headlines, most analyses remain focused on the most visible consequences: oil prices, inflation, and food security. Yet beneath these immediate effects lies a deeper reality—one that reveals how contemporary warfare is embedded in fragile global supply chains that sustain advanced military technologies.

A Patriot air defense system is deployed at a park during Taiwan's annual Han Kuang drills in Taipei in July 2025. © Reuters

As tensions between the United States, Israel, and Iran dominate global headlines, most analyses remain focused on the most visible consequences: oil prices, inflation, and food security. Yet beneath these immediate effects lies a deeper reality—one that reveals how contemporary warfare is embedded in fragile global supply chains that sustain advanced military technologies.

At the center of this system is the Strait of Hormuz. Far more than an energy corridor, it is a critical artery for the movement of industrial raw materials essential to both civilian and military industries. Among them, sulfur plays a discreet but vital role: processed into sulfuric acid, it is indispensable for extracting strategic metals such as lithium, cobalt, and copper.

It is lithium, however, that exposes the hidden infrastructure of modern war. This element is fundamental to advanced batteries, energy storage systems, and military electronics. From drones to communication systems, today’s military power is deeply dependent on lithium-based technologies. In this sense, control over lithium supply chains has become as strategically significant as control over oil once was.

This is where Taiwan becomes indispensable. The island is not only a global hub for semiconductor manufacturing; it is also a key node in transforming raw materials into high-precision technological components. Without Taiwan’s industrial capacity, a substantial portion of global high-tech—and by extension, military—production would be severely disrupted.

Yet this centrality also reveals a profound vulnerability. Taiwan depends heavily on imported energy and raw materials, many of which pass through unstable regions such as the Middle East. Any disruption in the Strait of Hormuz can ripple through supply chains, ultimately affecting Taiwan’s production capacity—and, indirectly, the manufacturing of military technologies used worldwide, particularly by the United States.

This exposes a fundamental contradiction: American military power rests on globalized supply chains that it does not fully control. As geopolitical tensions escalate, these supply lines become increasingly fragile, revealing a structural dependency often obscured by narratives of technological dominance.

In this context, the United States is being forced to rethink and diversify its sources of military supply, as disruptions challenge the assumption of uninterrupted access to critical materials. What is emerging is not just a temporary disruption, but the early signs of strain within a system built on global extraction and logistical complexity.

In contrast, Iran presents a different trajectory. After decades of sanctions, the country has been compelled to develop domestic production capacities. This imposed isolation has led to a form of relative self-sufficiency in several strategic sectors, including aspects of military production. Where Western powers rely on extended and vulnerable supply chains, Iran has gradually built a degree of autonomy that now appears, paradoxically, as a form of resilience.

From a pacifist and ecological perspective, this situation raises deeper questions. What does this war truly reveal? Beyond military confrontation, it exposes a global system structured around extractivism, technological dependency, and the militarization of resources.

Lithium—often portrayed as a cornerstone of the “green transition”—appears here in a different light. Its extraction damages ecosystems, its transportation depends on unstable routes, and its end use feeds into technologies that sustain and expand systems of war.

Modern conflict, then, is not confined to battlefields. It unfolds along invisible chains linking mines, shipping routes, industrial hubs, and technological centers. The Strait of Hormuz, lithium supply networks, and Taiwan are not isolated elements, but interconnected nodes in a global system where disruption in one location can trigger cascading effects worldwide.

In an era defined by ecological crisis, this deepening dependence on critical resources calls into question the sustainability of the military-industrial model itself. It reveals a fundamental impasse: a system that, in seeking to preserve its power, undermines the very environmental and material conditions on which it depends.

What emerges, implicitly, is the need for an alternative—one that breaks with cycles of militarization, reduces dependency on extractive supply chains, and rethinks the relationship between technology, power, and planetary survival.