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Recent atomic force microscopy (AFM) experiments [ACS Nano 2014, 8, 12410–12417] conducted on graphene-coated SiO₂ demonstrated that monolayer graphene (G) can effectively screen dispersion van der Waals (vdW) interactions deriving from the underlying substrate: despite the single-atom thickness of G, the AFM tip was almost insensitive to SiO₂, and the tip-substrate attraction was essentially determined only by G. This G vdW opacity has far reaching implications, encompassing stabilization of multilayer heterostructures, micromechanical phenomena or even heterogeneous catalysis. Yet, detailed experimental control and high-end applications of this phenomenon await sound physical understanding of the underlying physical mechanism. By quantum many-body analysis and ab-initio Density Functional Theory, here we address this challenge providing theoretical rationalization of the observed G vdW …