Economy, Rare Earths, and the Defense of Brazil’s Future
Economy, Rare Earths, and the Defense of Brazil’s Future
Democratic Sovereignty 5.0 — National Security from the Body-Territory
A country’s sovereignty also lives in its economy.
It lives in the energy that lights our homes, in the minerals that sustain technology, in the industry that creates work, in the currency that circulates among us, in the credit that finances production, in the water that supplies cities, in the schools that educate children, in SUS that protects lives, and in the strategic companies that allow Brazil to negotiate with strength in the world.
When we look at Brazil as Body-Territory, the economy appears as the circulation of social energy.
It is the way territory transforms work, nature, knowledge, technology, and trust into shared life.
For this reason, defending Brazil’s future involves critical minerals, rare earths, national industry, technology, energy, public digital currency, and protection against economic warfare.
The State lives in us.
The State is us, organized to care for what we share.
The economic capture of the State
The capture of a State happens in layers.
Certain groups concentrate access to the rules.
Then they influence financial norms.
Then they shape privatizations.
Then they control credit flows.
Then they organize funds, holdings, companies, banks, consultancies, and legal structures to turn collective assets into continuous private income.
In this process, public resources and strategic assets may be displaced from the Body-Territory into closed circuits of accumulation.
The hypothesis that a very small group of individuals, hidden behind companies, funds, and ownership structures, concentrates power over central economic decisions should be treated as a strategic question of State.
It requires data.
It requires COAF.
It requires the Federal Revenue Service.
It requires the Central Bank.
It requires CVM.
It requires the Judiciary.
It requires sovereign artificial intelligence.
It requires transparency over beneficial ownership.
When a few control rules, debts, interest rates, privatizations, and financial flows, many lose the capacity to live the territory.
Privatizations and territorial metabolism
Privatizations must be analyzed through the central question of sovereignty:
who controls the metabolism of the territory?
Mining is a strategic decision about tomorrow.
Electricity is national metabolism.
Water is life circulating through the territory.
Fuel is mobility, production, and supply.
Health is the continuity of collective life.
School is the formation of the future.
These structures sustain the Brazilian Body-Territory.
When they operate mainly according to financial logic, dividends, funds, and external interests, the territory may lose part of its ability to care for itself.
Democratic Sovereignty 5.0 evaluates every private participation through public criteria:
does strategic control serve the Brazilian Body-Territory?
does regulation protect life?
does the income generated return to the territory?
does technology remain in the country?
are data protected?
does the population gain autonomy?
Interest rates as drainage of collective energy
Brazil pays enormous amounts in public debt interest.
When high interest rates become a permanent source of income for a few, the economy works like a suction pump.
Part of the energy that could finance schools, hospitals, infrastructure, science, industry, defense, technology, and territorial belonging flows into financial rent-seeking.
This is a matter of National Security.
A country may have protected borders and still lose its future when its fiscal energy is captured by financial structures that live from public debt.
The debate on interest rates must leave the closed technical field and enter the field of democratic sovereignty.
The central question is:
who receives, who defines the rules, who benefits from maintaining public scarcity, and who loses when the State reduces investment in the Body-Territory?
Tax havens and the return of money as investment
Part of the wealth extracted from peripheral countries circulates through tax havens, offshore structures, funds, holdings, and opaque jurisdictions.
Later, it may return as foreign investment, credit, asset acquisition, or equity participation.
This movement creates a curious appearance: money that left the territory can return as if it were saving external capital.
Foreign investment can bring technology, production, jobs, and productive integration.
At the same time, it can also repurchase strategic assets with money previously drained from the territory itself.
For this reason, economic sovereignty requires transparency of beneficial ownership, financial traceability, international cooperation, and public intelligence to distinguish productive investment from predatory asset recycling.
Rare earths and critical minerals
The twenty-first century will be disputed through energy, data, semiconductors, batteries, AI, defense, satellites, sensors, telecommunications, and critical minerals.
Rare earths, lithium, niobium, graphite, nickel, copper, and other strategic minerals now compose the infrastructure of the future.
The national defense question is direct:
will we export raw minerals or build complete industrial chains?
When Brazil only extracts and sells cheaply, it gives away part of the future.
When it develops research, processing, semiconductors, batteries, advanced materials, sensors, defense, AI, and clean energy, it transforms minerals into sovereignty.
Critical minerals must be treated as Body-Territory.
They are geological memory converted into political decision.
Public digital currency and DREX Citizen
Economic sovereignty also passes through currency.
Drex, as the Brazilian digital currency under development by the Central Bank, opens a strategic discussion on financial infrastructure, tokenization, settlement, and digital circulation of the real.
Democratic Sovereignty 5.0 proposes expanding this debate toward retail CBDC and DREX Citizen.
The idea is simple and profound: part of monetary circulation can be born directly in the citizen, as a minimum public energy of belonging.
This would reduce dependence on debt, excessive intermediation, predatory interest, and artificial scarcity.
DREX Citizen would be a civic technology.
A recognition that each living body is a unit of the State.
When money is born only through debt, the territory breathes with difficulty.
When part of money is born in the citizen, the territory gains circulation, economic health, and democratic belonging.
Strong, efficient, and constitutional State
National sovereignty depends on a strong State.
Strength means capacity.
Capacity to plan.
Regulate.
Inspect.
Invest.
Protect data.
Defend infrastructure.
Train scientists.
Coordinate productive chains.
Use public AI.
Reduce technological dependency.
Fight institutional capture.
Strategic positions need technical competence, constitutional commitment, and a vision of sovereignty.
A strong and efficient State needs less political patronage and more public intelligence.
More technical careers.
More transparency.
More control of beneficial ownership.
More sovereign technology.
More coordination among the Central Bank, Federal Revenue, COAF, CVM, universities, Armed Forces, BNDES, Judiciary, and oversight bodies.
Conclusion
Economy, rare earths, and the defense of Brazil’s future belong to the same strategic field.
Sovereignty lives in water.
In energy.
In currency.
In industry.
In critical minerals.
In PIX.
In DREX.
In DREX Citizen.
In public schools.
In SUS.
In national technology.
In the capacity to prevent a few from capturing the State through debts, privatizations, interest rates, funds, tax havens, and colonial financial rules.
We need an economy that serves the Body-Territory.
An economy that transforms natural wealth into technology.
That transforms public currency into belonging.
That transforms the State into capacity.
That transforms critical minerals into industrial future.
That transforms Brazilian AI into democratic defense.
Brazil already has territory, people, science, energy, minerals, biodiversity, and creativity.
The next step is to protect the country’s economic metabolism.
When the economy serves the Body-Territory, sovereignty stops being discourse.
It becomes organized life.
References
Brazil. Constitution of the Federative Republic of Brazil of 1988.
Central Bank of Brazil. Fiscal statistics — nominal interest of the consolidated public sector.
National Treasury of Brazil. Federal Public Debt — recent reports and statistics.
Central Bank of Brazil. Questions and answers — Drex / Digital Real.
Central Bank of Brazil. Drex Pilot.
Ministry of Mines and Energy. National Policy on Critical and Strategic Minerals.
Agência Brasil. Brazilian Chamber approves fund of up to R$ 5 billion for critical minerals.
ECLAC / CEPAL. Foreign direct investment in Latin America and the Caribbean.
MDIC. Reports on foreign direct investment in Brazil.
FGV IBRE. Updating the decomposition of nominal interest payments.
FAPESC. Public Call No. 60/2025 — Program to Stimulate Technologies of Interest for National Sovereignty and Defense.
FGV Direito SP / CEPI; ISOC Brasil. Digital Sovereignty: For What and for Whom? 2024.
