Nokia’s (NOK) latest partnership is less about handsets and more about hardening the digital nervous system of modern defense—and it arrives just as another corner of the market scrambles to secure the metals that make those networks possible.
Quantum-safe goes mission critical
In late November, Australian defense cyber firm Senetas and Nokia unveiled a strategic alliance aimed squarely at governments and militaries that now treat gigabits as ordnance. The duo is fusing Senetas’ certified, quantum‑resistant network encryption with Nokia’s mission‑critical IP and optical platforms, promising end‑to‑end protection from core data centers all the way out to tactical edge gear in the field.
The pitch is straightforward: as Asia‑Pacific nations and other U.S. allies pour money into sovereign defense and critical infrastructure, they want hardware and software built in “friendly” jurisdictions, certified to the alphabet soup of FIPS, Common Criteria and similar standards. In practice, that means Nokia’s existing Defence‑in‑Depth architecture now comes pre‑loaded with Senetas’ quantum‑safe encryption so that militaries can push high‑speed video, sensor feeds and command data without handing hostile actors a man‑in‑the‑middle invitation.
From submarines to sovereign clouds
Senetas has spent years selling high‑assurance encryption into defense, government and critical infrastructure networks in more than 60 countries, with products hardened for everything from submarine cables to airborne platforms. Nokia, for its part, brings a sprawling portfolio of fixed, mobile and transport networks—underpinned by Bell Labs R&D—that already undergirds a large share of global critical communications.
The alliance is calibrated for a world where “mission‑critical” now spans fiber rings around military bases, ISR drones streaming HD video, and sovereign cloud environments that must stay online even when geopolitics does not. By jointly marketing to defense and government buyers, the companies are effectively offering a one‑throat‑to‑choke proposition: one stack, one certification path, and fewer excuses if packets go missing in action.
Cyber armor meets metal backbone
There is, however, an unspoken assumption hiding inside every quantum‑safe, mission‑critical press release: that the chips inside those routers and encryptors will actually show up. The same governments demanding sovereign, trusted networks are also scrambling to secure the critical minerals—gallium, rare earths and battery metals—that underpin semiconductors, power systems and advanced sensors.
That is where smaller players like M2i Global and Volato have begun to quietly redraw the map. While Nokia and Senetas work on sealing off attack vectors in the logical realm, M2i and Volato are trying to make sure the physical supply chain—the ores, refined metals and recycled feedstock—isn’t controlled by the very adversaries those encrypted networks are meant to deter.
M2i Global: plumbing the mineral stack
M2i Global, traded over‑the‑counter as MTWO, has positioned itself as a vertically integrated critical‑minerals house, focused on building a complete value chain for strategic metals serving the U.S. government and its free‑trade partners. The company’s mandate spans revitalizing domestic mines, advanced industrial recycling and the build‑out of a Critical Minerals Reserve designed to buffer the U.S. against foreign supply shocks.
Beyond mining, M2i is leaning heavily into technology, using research‑driven recycling to turn industrial waste and end‑of‑life batteries into high‑purity inputs for high‑end manufacturing. Recent collaborations, such as work with Nimy Resources to secure gallium supplies for defense and advanced electronics, highlight how the firm is threading itself directly into the semiconductor and defense industrial base.
Volato: jets, software and strategic ore
Volato Group, better known on the NYSE American as SOAR for its premium private‑aviation services, has recently executed a sharp turn into the $300‑plus‑billion critical minerals market via a definitive agreement to acquire M2i Global. The strategy hinges on pairing Volato’s aviation logistics and enterprise software capabilities with M2i’s mineral expertise to support the Critical Minerals Reserve (CMR) initiative.
Under joint announcements this year, M2i crafted the CMR framework while Volato’s software teams are now building the secure digital backbone for traceability, contracting and compliance across the critical‑minerals chain, leveraging experience from its Vaunt platform and real‑time fleet tracking. In effect, Volato aims to apply the rigor of FAA‑grade safety and compliance to “mine‑to‑manufacturer” minerals logistics, aligning with policy pushes to reduce reliance on China‑centric supply chains.
When bits need atoms to be brave
Taken together, Senetas and Nokia are building the cryptographic moat around national networks, while M2i and Volato are quietly pouring the concrete for the moat’s foundation in the form of reliable, domestic access to the metals that power defense‑grade hardware. One side ensures that mission‑critical packets remain confidential and intact; the other works to guarantee that the routers, satellites and smart munitions do not stall for lack of gallium, rare earths or recycled battery metals.
In an era where quantum‑safe encryption headlines and critical‑minerals policy papers share the same briefing folders, the market is discovering that secure communications and secure commodities are two halves of the same national‑security trade. For investors, that means the story does not end at the data center door: it extends down the fiber, through the fab and all the way back to the ore body—and, increasingly, to small‑cap names like MTWO and SOAR that are learning to turn rocks and flight plans into strategic leverage.
Sources
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