AI, Technological “Noise”, and Occupation

By Javier Surasky

A version in Spanish will be available next Thursday

Introduction: Why Speak of “Noise”

The conflict over Western Sahara is a paradigmatic case of unfinished decolonization: a Non-Self-Governing Territory, a blocked self-determination process, a de facto administration that consolidates facts on the ground, and a multilateral framework unable to enforce international law. Now, it can be understood as an AI geopolitics-related occupation case.

In this process, natural resources have played a central role because of their material importance and their capacity to reshape alliances, alter narratives of legitimacy, and mold expectations. This text argues that Morocco is introducing a new kind of “noise” into the process, understood here as communications or projects that promise future value, require no immediate proof, and shift the axis of debate from status/consent to development/security.

This is the situation created by the suggestion that critical minerals may exist there, potentially linked to value chains associated with the artificial intelligence (AI) industry, alongside sustainable energy and digital infrastructure projects in the occupied territory, as a device for generating value and, through that path, a factor in prolonging the status quo.

This blog will allow us to view from a different angle issues previously addressed, such as sovereignty in times of AI and AI as a colonial force. We will examine historical-cultural, legal-political, and regulatory aspects applicable to natural resources in Non-Self-Governing Territories, as well as the emergence of the narrative “noise” being built in the region around the category of “critical minerals” and its association with digital economies.

The Conflict in Three Milestones: 1963, 1975, and 2002

For the United Nations, Western Sahara is a “Non-Self-Governing Territory” and therefore the continuation of an unresolved colonial situation. “Western Sahara has been on the United Nations list of Non-Self-Governing Territories since 1963” (United Nations, 2024).

In the 1970s, the dispute intensified. From a sociohistorical perspective, Mateo’s thesis underscores the large-scale political mobilization that marked the moment of Moroccan occupation and that “would go down in history as the ‘Green March,’ which involved the movement of more than 350,000 people into the Sahrawi area in order to occupy that territory” (Mateo, 2016:49). It is in this scenario that the POLISARIO Front was born, the national liberation movement of the Sahrawi people, which took up arms in defense of their right to self-determination.

A new turning point came with the “Madrid Accords” of 1975, signed secretly by Spain, Morocco, and Mauritania, which reorganized the administration of the territory by dividing it between the latter two, treating the Sahrawi people as an object with no rights whatsoever. The then UN Legal Counsel, Hans Corell, was particularly clear in emphasizing that this arrangement did not amount to a transfer of sovereignty: “The Madrid Agreement did not transfer sovereignty over the Territory, nor did it confer upon any of the signatories the status of administering Power” (S/2002/161, para. 6).

This historical background sets up the legal framework of the conflict: the discussion over the status of the territory remains anchored in the application of the principle of self-determination, which by its very nature is sensitive to discursive shifts.

Blocked Self-Determination

In the same year the illegal Madrid Accords were signed, the International Court of Justice(ICJ) issued its Advisory Opinion in the “Western Sahara Case,” in which it stated that “the materials and information presented to it do not establish any tie of territorial sovereignty between the territory of Western Sahara and the Kingdom of Morocco (...). Thus the Court has not found legal ties of such a nature as might affect the application of resolution 1514 (XV) in the decolonization of Western Sahara and, in particular, of the principle of self-determination through the free and genuine expression of the will of the peoples of the Territory” (ICJ, 1975, para. 162). Nothing has changed.

Although it is not a legally binding document, The Office of the Legal Counsel and Directorate for Legal Affairs of the African Union Commission issued a legal opinion in 2015 whose paragraph 66 expresses the same view, while calling for action: “it is evident that both the United Nations and the African Union must exercise their responsibilities and put pressure on Morocco to comply with the principles of the United Nations and relevant international law regarding the right to self-determination and the exploitation of natural resources” (African Union, 2015).

Going back further, in 1991, the UN Security Council (S/RES/690/1991) approved the creation of the United Nations Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara (MINURSO), which still exists today but has never been able to fulfill its mandate because of Morocco’s constant obstruction. The Secretary-General’s 2025 report places the conflict in its “fiftieth year” (considering only the contemporary phase of the conflict) and records the persistence of political and humanitarian tensions (S/2025/612). This combination of a clear legal situation and weak results creates a context in which “economic facts” can distort the dynamics of the decolonization conflict.

Natural Resources, Permanent Sovereignty, and Consent

The international regime governing natural resources is particularly sensitive when it comes to territories under colonial domination or occupation. As early as 1962, the General Assembly affirmed that permanent sovereignty over natural wealth and resources must be exercised “in the interest of national development and of the well-being of the people” (Resolution 1803 (XVII)).

However, it was not until 2002 that, in response to questions concerning contracts related to resources in Western Sahara, Corell, who, as noted above, was the UN Legal Counsel, formulated what has become a central standard, stating that if the parties to an agreement act “in disregard of the interests and wishes of the people of Western Sahara, they would be in violation of the principles of international law applicable to mineral resource activities in Non-Self-Governing Territories” (S/2002/161). That formula introduces a crucial distinction for our current purpose, since the stages prior to the exploitation of a natural resource in a territory under colonial occupation, prospecting, announcements, can produce political and economic effects if they do not incorporate the interests and wishes of the people subjected to that occupation, even when no benefits or extraction have yet materialized.

In parallel, the case law of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) has operated as an additional arena for consolidating the criterion of consent by addressing the legality of certain agreements between the EU and Morocco applicable to Western Sahara. In a judgment concerning the territorial extension of trade preferences between Morocco and the EU, the Court recalled the logic of the “third party” within the framework of the relative effect of treaties and the requirement of that party’s consent: it “held that, in either case, such application had to be consented to by that third party” (CJEU,C-104/16 P, 12.21.2016). Later, in a judgment concerning the sustainable fisheries agreement in the waters of occupied Western Sahara, it reiterated its position by reaffirming the need for the “consent of the people of a Non-Self-Governing Territory holding the right to self-determination as a third party to an international agreement” (CJEU, C-266/16, 02.27.2018).

Thus, the conflict moves within a structural tension: international and European law reaffirm self-determination/consent, while economic and administrative practices tend to normalize the integration of the territory into the Moroccan sphere. This is where mineral “noise” may become functional to the interests of the occupying colonizer.

“Critical” Minerals: Geology as the Occupier’s Strategy

In recent years, the category of “critical minerals” has expanded in the vocabulary of policies on access to natural resources. What matters here is its performative power: the label “critical” does not describe a geological property, but rather a strategic status that revalues territories as potential suppliers.

In the case of Western Sahara, this semantics can turn a territory already under colonial domination, with proven economic value through its phosphates, particularly Bou Craa, and its fishing grounds, into an imagined future node in technological supply chains. When the discussion shifts from traditional resources to strategic inputs for AI, the conflict takes on a new dimension linked to “digital transition,” “data sovereignty,” and “technological security.”

To put it clearly, the mere suggestion that “critical minerals” for the digital industry may exist introduces a new “political noise” that makes it harder to hear the voice of international legality. And Morocco seems to have begun playing that card through the publication of three institutional briefs by its National Office of Hydrocarbons and Mines (ONHYM), announcing prospects for the presence of “rare earths” and metals such as niobium and tantalum in the Dakhla/Lahjeyra–Glibat Lafhouda area (ONHYM, 2009; 2021; and 2024), in the occupied zone of Western Sahara.

Material	Characteristic	Use in the digital industry
Rare earths	A term grouping multiple elements that are key to digital industries	Used in high-performance permanent magnets, lasers and specialized optical applications, and screens, lighting, and sensors, all indispensable in display and detection technologies
Niobium	Superconducting alloys and superconducting magnets	Used in telecommunications, photonics (the detection and manipulation of light to transmit information), and high-strength alloys
Tantalum	High capacity to store electrical charge (capacitance) in a small support	In demand in compact electronics (mobile devices, computer equipment, telecommunications) and in processes and materials that increase the reliability and performance of electronic components

ONHYM and the Problem of Disclosure Without Standards

None of the three ONHYM “reports” has been published under internationally recognized standards for identifying natural resources, which were established precisely to limit the margin of public ambiguity that can result from a lack of technical verification.

The CRIRSCO standard operates as a minimum international template for public reporting of exploration results, resources, and reserves, and emphasizes comparability and professional responsibility (CRIRSCO, 2019).

JORC establishes criteria for public disclosure and requires that information be prepared by a competent person, that standardized terminology be used, and that potentially misleading wording be avoided (JORC, 2012). Along the same lines, NI 43-101 functions as a regulatory regime for the disclosure of scientific and technical information on mineral projects, ensuring conditions for oversight or approval of published information and restricting public claims about resources outside recognized categories (Ontario Securities Commission, 2023).

The Moroccan entity’s suggestive but uncertified announcements may be effective in creating doubt through unverifiable claims, and in that sense their main effect is political: they introduce a specific “noise” by installing a discussion about horizons of future value that operates in two directions. As a “centripetal force,” it reinforces a narrative of “development” and “prosperity” under Moroccan administration, supporting its strategy of consolidated facts. As a “centrifugal force,” it produces a narrative that attracts state and non-state economic actors.

The mechanism is simple: even without actual extraction, the expectation of future value reshapes perceptions of risk, reputation, and opportunity. When that happens, incentives for the administrative normalization of the territory are strengthened, and the practical centrality of the principle of self-determination is weakened: a problem of public disclosure that fosters expectations and displaces the discussion on self-determination.

Dakhla: Data, Energy, and the Normalization of Occupation

The second component of contemporary noise is digital infrastructure. “The installation of a 500 MW hyperscale data center for artificial intelligence is planned in the occupied territory” (Western Sahara Resource Watch, 2025b), more precisely in Dakhla. The mere announcement of this construction within the territory of Western Sahara produces an effect of territorial normalization over the disputed space, sustained by an agenda of digital transition and security in data storage. The colonial conflict undergoes a new displacement, pushed by the language of technological governance.

That digital component of and within the occupation is linked to an energy dimension that, in Western Sahara, forms part of the political economy of occupation. Critical literature has shown that the supposedly neutral and universalist languages of the energy transition can be used as devices for legitimizing and prolonging situations of territorial domination. A recent report by Western Sahara Resource Watch (WSRW) frames the problem especially directly: “Morocco’s push to build energy infrastructure in Western Sahara is not limited to the generation of clean energy, but entrenches and normalizes an illegal occupation” (WSRW, 2025a:6), stressing that through processes implemented without the consent of the Sahrawi people, a façade of legitimacy is created and material incentives are generated that consolidate de facto control: “renewable energy has become an instrument of control” (WSRW, 2025a:3).

Read together with the announcement of the data center in Dakhla, these elements co-produce an integrated imaginary of transition and development under Moroccan sovereignty: “projects developed in occupied territories obstruct any meaningful effort to end military action and, on the contrary, entrench occupying powers and grant them legitimacy in the eyes of the world” (Alkhalili et al., 2023:6).

In this way, “The green transition is being used as a tool of occupation, allowing Morocco to consolidate control over the territory under the appearance of environmental leadership” (SONREP, 2025:34).

Unless unmasked, Moroccan narratives seek to turn economic promise into a substitute for consent, leaving unanswered the central political question of the case: who is entitled to decide over the territory, and under what conditions the collective will of the occupied people is expressed. In that sense, the promise of development tends to translate a dispute over international legal status into an instrumental discussion about future benefits, stability, and economic opportunities. Here the edge of the argument appears: “noise” does not seek to prove anything, but to reframe the discussion by promoting a “politics of expectation.”

Conclusion: The Politics of Expectation

Nothing in this text can categorically affirm or deny the existence of critical minerals in Western Sahara, nor is that our objective. Our claim is quite different: in a conflict of incomplete decolonization, the public introduction of the issue of critical minerals for AI, combined with announcements about data centers and renewable energy, functions as a set of arguments that add “noise” to the decolonization process, which must implement the principle of self-determination of peoples, a fundamental pillar of contemporary international law.

That noise shifts the international legal axis toward languages and narratives of investment, technological security, and local development that take shape without regard for the rights, wishes, and needs of the occupied population. The result is uncertainty oriented toward reinforcing the status quo within a broader framework in which the passage of time already operates as a structural factor consolidating the occupation.

What we are talking about is the use of promises of a technological future as a mechanism for normalizing and consolidating persistent colonial structures, occupation, resource appropriation, and denial of the right to self-determination, through languages of development, innovation, and transition that displace the centrality of the legal-political problem. AI and digital technologies can be a factor of colonization through the introduction of biases, but also through facts on the ground.

 

References

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