![]() “This industry in the upstream is going to be totally dominated by the Chinese. The company has also begun building a new manufacturing facility in Fort Worth, Texas, that will convert the refined minerals from Mountain Pass into metals, alloys and magnets. In November, MP announced that it had begun commissioning assets for the second stage of production, which is currently done primarily in China: separation and purification. MP’s goal is to restore the full supply chain to the United States, becoming the world’s sole “vertically integrated” rare earth magnetics producer that performs all stages of the process. MP Materials wants to be the solution to America’s rare earths challenge. ![]() “If we don’t prioritize onshoring this, then we are going to have weak points that don’t enable us to really defend ourselves.” “There are choke points that we can’t control,” Najieb-Locke said. military - roughly 600 planes - contain the Chinese alloy starting in the spring, the jets coming off the production line will contain a new alloy that complies with DoD regulations. To date, all of the F-35s that have been delivered to the U.S. In the end, the DoD granted manufacturer Lockheed Martin a waiver allowing it to resume deliveries for national security reasons. DoD’s rule is designed to incentivize the defense industry to rely on only American contractors. But the presence of Chinese-made materials may have violated a new defense federal acquisition regulation requiring contractors to disclose any work in China on certain military contracts. The alloy, which is sourced only in China, does not transmit sensitive information, or put the fighter at risk, Najieb-Locke said. The risk of relying on Beijing for these components was brought into stark relief in September, when the Pentagon suspended deliveries of the F-35 for about a month after discovering that a magnet in the jet’s turbomachine was made with cobalt and samarium alloy that came from China. Rare earth alloys and magnets that China controls are critical components in missiles, firearms, radars and stealth aircraft. As of today, China accounts for 63 percent of the world’s rare earth mining, 85 percent of rare earth processing, and 92 percent of rare earth magnet production. Then in 2019, China threatened to include certain products using rare earths in Beijing’s technology-export restrictions, a response to the Trump administration’s pressure on telecom giant Huawei.Ĭhina could easily decide to restrict access to rare earths again with disastrous consequences. ![]() Indeed, Beijing once blocked Japan’s access to rare earth elements during a 2010 dispute over Tokyo’s detention of a Chinese fishing trawler captain. “This should worry us all.”Īll of which leaves the U.S.’s access to rare earths, a critical market still dominated by China, highly vulnerable. “We’ve seen an alarming increase in the number of unsafe aerial intercepts and confrontations at sea by PLA aircraft and vessels,” Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said this summer. ![]() The increasing number of close calls between Chinese and American military pilots over the Pacific this year has raised concerns in the top ranks of the Pentagon that a misunderstanding or provocative action could spark an all-out conflict. The Department of Defense last month named China its top strategic threat, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan this summer escalated tensions in the region to new highs. And the administration and MP Materials, the company that owns the Mountain Pass mine, are making quick moves to try to close that gap. government officials are worried that the gap in the United States’ rare earths industrial base leaves the country - and particularly the Pentagon - increasingly vulnerable to any disruption in the supply chain. plan to rival China’s iron grip on rare earth elements. This rust-colored crater dug deep into the volcanic rock is at the center of a new U.S. Ultimately, the refined materials are converted into powerful alloys and magnets for users around the world. for long: the concentrate produced at Mountain Pass is sold to refiners in China. ![]()
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