There is a new current running through the world, a circuit being completed. It begins deep in the earth, in the extraction of lithium, cobalt, and nickel, and ends in the silent hum of an autonomous vehicle or the disembodied voice of an AI assistant. This vertically integrated system, from mine to motor to computational model, is what some industry leaders have called the “electro-industrial stack.” The term is anodyne and technical, masking a shift in the organization of power, a reconfiguration of national destinies and the texture of daily life.

Software, we were told , would eat the world. And it did, in a sense. It devoured communication and media. But it left the heavy machinery of civilization largely untouched. The mine, the factory, the power grid, these remained analog, re

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