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As of August 2025, deep-sea mining has become another flashpoint in international diplomacy, an ecological high-stakes power struggle centered on the International Seabed Authority (ISA) and its long-delayed “Mining Code,” which would govern commercial mineral extraction in international waters and the profit fundamentalists who see the deep ocean not as a shared inheritance, but as a balance sheet to be liquidated.
The rush to mine the deep sea is being framed as harmless ocean extraction for minerals needed to build and maintain green modern technology that benefits people and our planet. That is bullshit. It is about exploitation, greed and profit at any cost.
Two visions are now clashing: one demanding a moratorium to protect fragile ocean ecosystems, and another by the United States under President Donald J. Trump who is advancing US unilateral exploitation in defiance of the global consensus enshrined in the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS).
The logic of the predatory capitalist: if it can be mined, it can be sold; if it’s not owned, it’s up for grabs, even if it is owned it’s still fair game if the price is right or the power is great enough. Under US doctrine, no commons is sacred, no ecosystem too vital, no international agreement too binding. The deep sea isn’t a shared inheritance, it’s the next frontier of plunder.
This is what happens when a predatory capitalist sits in the Oval Office: the public good is dismantled, the commons are privatized, and the ocean floor becomes just another asset to strip and sell.
The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), adopted in 1982 and in force since 1994, is the foundational treaty for all ocean governance. It establishes that the seabed beyond national jurisdiction known as “the Area” is the “common heritage of humankind.” This principle means no single nation may claim ownership, and any resource exploitation must be managed for the benefit of all, especially developing states.
To date, 169 countries and the European Union have ratified UNCLOS, including every major maritime power: China, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Japan, India, Brazil, and Australia.
Another Rigged Game
The United States helped draft the treaty and still cherry-picks its rules by sailing its warships under the flag of UNCLOS while tossing the rest overboard the moment it begins to constrain them.
It’s the Washington con or in today’s political climate the art of the deal: shape the deal, bend the rules, and walk away free of obligation.
In other words, using more recent “negotiations” as an example: the Art of the Deal looks like this: Trump sets the table, invites the guests, debates the menu, then will refuse to sign on the dotted line, will continue to ignore all the rules, and walks away with a Nobel Prize he’s been advocating for himself. Three and half years from now, someone else sits in the Oval Office.
Previous administrations have been blocked by Senate opposition rooted in concerns over sovereignty and international oversight. Even thought many members don’t give a hoot about the exploitation of resources and its impacts on people and ecosystems, let’s hope that legal caution around deep-sea mining persists, even under a presidential administration aligned with aggressive capitalist interests.”
ISA
Established under UNCLOS and headquartered in Kingston, Jamaica, the ISA is mandated to regulate all mineral-related activities in the Area. Its responsibilities include negotiating exploration contracts, setting environmental standards, and ensuring equitable benefit-sharing. The ISA’s August 2025 Assembly was the first to confront a comprehensive marine protection policy and it ended without approving the final Mining Code. Instead, a record 38 member states, including Germany, France, Spain, *Canada, *Switzerland, Zealand, and the UK, publicly called for a moratorium or precautionary pause, warning that scientific understanding of deep-ocean ecosystems remains too incomplete to justify industrial-scale mining.
In direct confrontation, the United States moved decisively in April 2025 to assert its own authority. On April 25, President Trump signed an executive order titled “Unleashing America’s Offshore Critical Minerals and Resources,” directing federal agencies to accelerate deep-sea mining permits under the Deep Seabed Hard Mineral Resources Act of 1980 (DSHMRA). Just five days later, The Metals Company USA filed for approval to harvest polymetallic nodules from the Clarion-Clipperton Zone under this framework.
Framed as a bold stride toward energy independence, it is in truth a unilateral power grab, cloaked in the language of national interest but rooted in the same old logic: if you have the technology and the will, the rules don’t apply.
The US argues that DSHMRA grants it the authority to authorize exploration and recovery operations beyond its territorial waters, positioning deep-sea minerals as essential to national security and the green-energy transition. But this interpretation is controversial: DSHMRA was designed for research and exploration, not commercial exploitation in international waters; and it does not override the ISA’s exclusive regulatory role under international law.
The international response was swift and critical. On April 30, ISA Secretary-General Leticia Carvalho issued a statement warning that the U.S. action undermines the global legal order
The International Seabed Authority (ISA) responded swiftly and unequivocally. Secretary-General Leticia Carvalho, a respected oceanographer and diplomat, called the move “surprising” a characteristically restrained rebuke from someone who has spent decades building consensus among 169 nations. She reminded the world that the deep seabed is not a frontier for conquest, but the common heritage of humankind, a principle enshrined in international law and decades of painstaking negotiation. The US, she noted, had once been a reliable partner in that work. Now, it stands as the chief disruptor.
A Test of Power, Principle, and the Ocean’s Future
The Trump administration’s April 25, 2025, executive order did not just accelerate a permitting process it launched a direct assault on the fragile architecture of global ocean governance.
How many futures must be stolen
before we admit the truth?
The elite aren’t just waging war with weapons
they’re weaponizing permission.
Drones. Missiles. Permits.
Same targets:
the exploitation of our planet and slaughter of humans.
And the triggers?
Nods, winks, threats, force.
Greenwashing
The ISA formally acknowledged the April 29 application by The Metals Company USA, a newly minted subsidiary created solely to exploit a loophole in the 1980 Deep Seabed Hard Mineral Resources Act. But acknowledgment is not endorsement. Delegates at the July 2025 ISA Assembly condemned the bid in no uncertain terms. Palau’s President Surangel Whipps Jr., speaking for many small island states who see the ocean as kin, not commodity, accused the U.S. of breaking promises and choosing profit over planetary stewardship.
The video below was posted by CBS – The National, A documentary about a mining ship called The Hidden Gem. The mining ship Hidden Gem is owned by The Metals Company (TMC), a *Canadian company formerly known as DeepGreen Metals Inc. The vessel was acquired by TMC’s strategic partner, *Allseas, which is a Dutch offshore engineering specialist and a significant shareholder in The Metals Company. Allseas provided the ship for conversion into a nodule collection vessel and is responsible for its operation
Meanwhile, back in Washington, Congress has not rubber-stamped the president’s decree, yet. Lawmakers from both parties are debating: Can the president unilaterally override an international legal order the U.S. helped create? Can a 1980 law designed for research be twisted into a license for industrial strip-mining two miles below the surface? And at what cost to our alliances, our credibility, and the ocean itself?
No permit has been issued to-date. The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) is reviewing The Metals Company’s application under DSHMRA, conducting what it calls an environmental assessment. But “assessment” is a generous term for a process that lacks independent science, public transparency, and any real mechanism to say no. When the decision comes, likely within months, it will be met with lawsuits, diplomatic rebuke, and global condemnation.
This is not about energy independence. It is about resource imperialism the latest chapter in a long American tradition of treating international norms as suggestions, not constraints. The United States will not ratify UNCLOS, but it demands the right to exploit the seabed. It dismisses the ISA as “bureaucratic,” offering no alternatives but corporate license and national fiat. It claims to protect national security, while destabilizing the very institutions designed to prevent a free-for-all on the high seas.
The European Union has already signaled it may ban imports of minerals mined outside the ISA framework, but I don’t trust their signals, they will follow Trump into the abyss.
Over 38 nations now support a moratorium. More than 700 scientists warn of irreversible harm. And still, the drill ships inch closer.
We stand at a threshold.
Think of the ocean as Earth’s pulsing heart—primal, deep, and alive. Far below the waves, in an eternal night, a hidden universe thrives: ancient ecosystems and undiscovered creatures going about their existence in the vastness of the deep, currents of life we know little to nothing about. Our planet’s oceans drive the currents that shape our climate, it produces over half the oxygen we breathe, and absorbs vast amounts of carbon, slowing the climate crisis. It connects continents through migration, nutrients, and cycles older than humanity itself and predatory elites want to damage it, weaken it, and are willing to push Earth’s climate system past critical tipping points, unleashing a chain reaction of catastrophic events—from runaway warming to ecosystem collapse—that will abruptly reshape life on our planet.
The question is not should THEY mine the deep sea. It’s whether WE have the wisdom, the strength of character and moral fortitude and the collective influence and power to say no.
The unfortunate reality is that the individuals in power are the same ones responsible for destroying our planet.
