EVs, AI servers, power lines, wind turbines — they all start from the same thing: copper. But copper doesn't come out of the ground as a bar. It hides in rock that's only about 0.5–0.6% copper, and that number keeps “thinning” every year while the world wants more and more of it. This is the story of the “upstream” of the copper chain — the work of moving a whole mountain for a handful of metal, and the quietest chokepoint of the energy-transition era.