The Star Wars TV series Andor, whose second and final season aired in May, deserves all the praise it has received. In two dozen episodes, Tony Gilroy’s prequel to the film Rogue One offers an unprecedented glimpse into the inner workings of the Galactic Empire that adds depth and texture to more than 40 years of Star Wars films and shows before it.

But Andor does more than show us the people behind a villainous regime typically represented by Stormtroopers, bumbling droids, and decrepit wizards. The show grapples with many problems familiar to 21st-century Earthlings, including government surveillance, mass incarceration, and, much to my surprise and delight, the messy politics of thmining.

Season 2’s main plotline, about the Empire’s quest to obtain a rare mineral needed to complete the Death Star, reveals a dark side of modern technology: It requires a lot of mining. Technologies ranging from electric vehicles to smartphones to artificial intelligence rely on so-called “critical minerals,” a geographically and chemically diverse suite of resources united by the fact that they’re damn useful and hard to replace. Add in rapidly rising demand and a steady exhaustion of the best-quality reserves, and it’s no wonder we are now seeing a 21st-century gold rush for unpronounceable elements. 

Unfortunately, as Andor shows, real communities are bearing the cost of that.