For now, AGI is realistically pursued by a handful of well-resourced groups, most notably DeepMind and OpenAI. Global data traffic travels through a limited number of fiber-optic cables bunched in key pinch points (off the coast of southwest England or Singapore, for example). A crunch on the rare earth elements cobalt, niobium, and tungsten could topple entire industries. Some 80 percent of the high-quality quartz essential to things like photovoltaic panels and silicon chips comes from a single mine in North Carolina.
