Why America is Scrambling for Central Asian Critical Minerals

A US-Central Asia business forum that concluded February 5 in Kyrgyzstan highlighted the significant inroads Washington has made into the region’s mining sector. But it also has shown that much remains to be done if the United States is to gain a larger share of the region’s abundance of critical minerals and rare earths. A central focus of the second B5+1 forum -- which promotes public-private collaborations by bringing together policymakers and business leaders from across Central Asia and the US -- was on critical minerals.…