GAO Finds the US Cannot Tell Who Owns the Critical Mineral Mines on Federal Land

The federal government doesn’t know how much foreign money is behind the critical mineral mines on its own land, GAO reported on 16 October. The 1872 Mining Law doesn’t ask, so the Bureau of Land Management and the Forest Service don’t collect it.

GAO released two reports that day, both on hardrock mining, which is where most US-mineable critical minerals come from. The first, GAO-27-108094, tried to measure foreign investment in mines on federal land. The second, GAO-27-108196, looked at whether BLM checks that mining claimants are allowed to hold claims at all. Both found the same gap. The agencies that manage the land collect almost nothing on who’s behind the claims.

Fourteen of 32

The 1872 law lets US citizens and companies incorporated in the US stake claims on federal land and take the minerals. Foreign companies can’t hold a claim directly. They can through a US subsidiary, which is legal.

GAO took 43 claimants and operators tied to critical mineral mines on federal land and tried to trace who owns them, using whatever sources it could find. It identified the owners of 32. Of those, 14 were subsidiaries of foreign companies. None had a Chinese-owned parent. In at least two cases, though, Chinese entities held a financial interest in the foreign parent company.

That’s the extent of what the federal government can say. GAO couldn’t establish ownership for 11 of the 43. And the sample is small next to the system: as of February 2026 BLM and the Forest Service had 632 approved plans of operation for hardrock mines. Under the law, claimants and operators don’t have to report a foreign parent or foreign investment, and the agencies don’t have to ask.

The second report shows how loose the basic check is. BLM generally doesn’t collect citizenship information from claimants, doesn’t record whether they qualify and rarely verifies it. GAO pulled 15 claimants that looked like businesses and found no evidence that 7 of them were incorporated in the US, as the law says they must be. BLM couldn’t help settle the question, because it didn’t have the information either. GAO recommended that BLM collect citizenship information and document that each claimant qualifies. Interior didn’t comment on the report.

Where the ore goes

Ownership is one gap. Destination is another. GAO says the US exports large quantities of ore mined at home to Canada, Mexico and China, among other countries. GAO points to the constraints: mines need a lot of capital, and the US has little domestic processing capacity. A mine on federal land can be owned by a US subsidiary of a foreign company and send its ore abroad for processing, and none of it has to be reported to the land agencies.

That sits awkwardly with current federal policy. The government is spending to keep minerals at home. The Pentagon took an equity stake in MP Materials, as covered in our post on equity stakes, and Project Vault was set up as a stockpile for the 60 minerals the US Geological Survey lists as critical, described in our post on Project Vault. Meanwhile the main law that governs access to the minerals on federal land doesn’t record who’s digging them up.

CFIUS can look, if someone tells it

The one federal tool aimed at the question is the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States. GAO notes that CFIUS, chaired by Treasury, can review foreign investment in mining for national security risks. But CFIUS reviews transactions. It doesn’t keep a register of who owns which mining claim, and the land agencies don’t have one to give it.

Other mining countries do it differently. GAO found that Australia and Canada collect detailed information on foreign investors in their businesses and use it to block or condition deals in mining and other sectors, and both have done so in recent years. Both also limit foreign state-owned companies and other foreign investors from taking control of critical minerals businesses.

The questions aren’t new. In May 2024 House Democrats asked GAO to look into foreign extraction on federal land. Raúl Grijalva, then ranking member of the Natural Resources Committee, signed it with Jared Huffman, Melanie Stansbury, Joe Neguse, Teresa Leger Fernández and Raja Krishnamoorthi, the ranking member of the select committee on China. They wanted to know what’s known about foreign investment in federal land mining and how well the government monitors it, especially when an adversary holds a controlling stake.

GAO’s answer is that the government can’t say. Of the 32 owners it could trace, none led back to a Chinese parent. That’s a finding about a sample. For the rest of the 632 approved mining plans, the government holds no ownership data at all.