How Geotechnology works

The tracker lists official actions that control technology, taken by the United States and its partners on one side and by China on the other. It covers six regimes: the United States, China, the European Union, Japan, Korea and the Netherlands.

Each action is one event: who acts, on which technology, aimed at which country, on what date, and its status: in force, suspended, proposed, revoked or agreed, or a suspension: a notice that pauses another measure; it is listed but not counted. We record actions at the level of the rule. Where a rule adds companies to a list, we give the count, such as "14 entities added", and link to the official list. We print no company or person names, and the tracker has no name search.

We source each event to the official text wherever one exists: the US Federal Register and the Bureau of Industry and Security, China's Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM) and General Administration of Customs, the EU Official Journal, Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI), Korea's Ministry of Trade, Industry and Resources (MOTIR), and the Government of the Netherlands, with the Staatscourant where a measure is published there. We link the official text in its original language and print our English summary beside it, with a language tag and a confidence grade.

Where we have found only a secondary report so far, such as a news report or a law-firm note, the event carries a visible low-confidence mark and names that source. We replace it with the official text once we find it. Where we link a copy of an official text, such as a state news agency's reprint, we name it as a copy.

We draft events from the official sources during the week. Each one is checked before it is published, and the tracker is updated once a week. The page shows the date of the last update. An action can reach the page up to seven days after its official publication, so the tracker is not an alert service.

Each action also carries a kind of measure: an export or import rule, an entity or end-user list, licensing, investment screening, a suspension, an agreement, or other.

Each action belongs to one of five technology families, or is marked dual-use when a broad listing covers no single technology:

• chips and chip tools;
• AI (models and compute);
• critical minerals and magnets;
• quantum;
• telecoms, cloud and data;
• dual-use, no single technology, for broad listings.

Each tech forecast is a question with a resolution date and a named official source that settles it, such as a Federal Register citation, a MOFCOM announcement number, the EU Official Journal or the Canada Gazette.

A forecast is sealed in a published Strature brief. Its full statement is hashed with SHA-256 on the day it is registered, it is listed on the forecast register when its brief is released, and it is never edited. Our probability does not change after sealing, so a forecast card shows no running line.

Forecast identifiers are given only when a brief is registered. Every tech forecast sits in the one public forecast register, beside every other Strature forecast. The Geotechnology pages show the same forecasts, filtered to technology; they keep no separate list.

On its resolution date each forecast is checked against the wording sealed in its brief, and its outcome is added: 1 if it happened, 0 if it did not. We score it with the Brier score, where 0 is perfect and lower is better. A yes/no forecast gets the square of the gap between our estimate and the outcome, and its score is shown beside 0.25, the score of always answering 50%. A question whose alternatives add up to 100% gets one multi-category Brier score for the whole set, from 0 to 2. For a set of four outcomes, even odds (25% each) score 0.75; lower is better. Until a forecast resolves, its score shows as a dash.

No aggregate claim about skill is made until enough forecasts have resolved for our 36-month rule to allow it. We show no crowd or market prices beside our forecasts.

Mine output comes from the US Geological Survey's Mineral Commodity Summaries 2026, which is in the public domain. We print each figure as USGS gives it.

Where USGS withholds a figure to avoid disclosing company data, its table shows "W". We print the "W" as given and do not estimate the missing figure.

For several minerals the largest shares are in refining, not mining. Until the terms of the International Energy Agency's Critical Minerals dataset are confirmed, we import no refining data from it. We quote the IEA's headline refining shares in a sentence, with the source and year beside each figure. A refining share from any other source is shown with its source and its confidence mark.

Every figure and every tracker source carries a grade: high, medium or low. We use sources in any language and print the language of each.

Some countries publish no trade figures by partner. Trade reported by the partner country, known as mirror data, can fill the gap, but it is less certain. We show a mirror figure only with a low-confidence mark, and only when a second, open source backs it. We never show a figure from UN Comtrade, WITS, the Observatory of Economic Complexity or ITC Trade Map on its own.

The grades are:

• High: an official record, such as a government notice, an official statistic or a USGS table.
• Medium: a copy of an official text, such as a state news agency's reprint; a think tank, a research body, an international agency or a company's own published page.
• Low: a secondary source, such as a news report relaying another source, or our own estimate. A low-confidence figure is always shown with its mark and its source.

Each figure names its source where it is shown. The sources the section uses, and their terms, are listed below. We use no data whose licence bars commercial use unless its owner has given written permission.

• It is not legal advice. Check the official texts and take legal advice.
• It is not a compliance or screening tool. It prints no company or person names and has no name search. To check a company, use the official lists, such as the US government's Consolidated Screening List.
• It is not an alert service. The tracker is updated once a week.

Anyone may write. A party named in a publication, or any reader, may send a correction to corrections@strature.net, with the passage and the source that shows the error.

Geotechnology pages are corrected in place, and the corrected item carries a dated note. You can also report an error through the Corrections page.

A forecast's words are fixed in its brief and are never changed on these pages.

Questions about this method go to contact@strature.net.