The scale of the capital enterprise required to pull this off in the next 50 years practically guarantees it will be a political issue if it happens in our life

The scale of the capital enterprise required to pull this off in the next 50 years practically guarantees it will be a political issue if it happens in our lifetime. You can't sweep space mining under the rug. We're a long way off freebooters with fusion drives. And when we have those, AI will see you from 5 AUs out