I used to work on a DoD special project that required rare earths that we could only get from China and we had to write a monthly memo about the risk to our $10B program that China would just stop selling it to us.
The problem boiled down to the Chinese government buying out and shutting down any competitors anywhere in the world, plus Congress requiring the DoD to go with the lowest cost, which was always China. We knew what the problem was, we made the problem clear, no one did anything about it.
Maybe this administration blowing up the government is good, actually.
mothballed · 19m ago
I'm shocked DoD doesn't have straw buyers in friendly (or neutral) 3rd party countries to deal with that possibility.
dgfitz · 7m ago
I’m shocked you thought the government was ever functional enough to do something like that.
j-bos · 5m ago
They used to, iirc that's how they sourced the titanium used in the b2 bombers, which was mined in the ussr.
selectodude · 3m ago
A-12 Oxcart
gjsman-1000 · 4m ago
The idea behind DOGE made a mountain of sense, even if the execution was all over the place.
Americans get sympathetic when they hear about the Air Force $1280 coffee mug. They don't forget that, even half a decade later, when they hear the word "waste."
"Having" and "willing to use" are two things, right?
The problem is that the US, for the most part, no longer has any appetite for projects that leave the landscape scarred and the waters polluted.
In California, we prefer to go through annual cycles of water rationing than to build new dams. I'm sure the mindset would change if things get sufficiently dire, but that threshold might be farther than we assume.
MisterTea · 53m ago
Well not thrown away, but discarded as tailings. Otherwise, that would be quite the garbage pail and matching truck to collect it! :-D
The BBC piece is an interesting attempt at garnishing attention. The reporter provides the google maps link to show how large and disgusting the process is. But it is actually a very small lake, if you compare it to things such as oil extraction.
Take a look at the oil sands of Fort Mcmurray, Alberta; and at the same zoom level as the reporter uses, you'll see this is absolutely massive and diminishes the "massive" rare earths waste lake by orders of magnitude: https://www.google.com/maps/@57.0304073,-111.55372,6025m/dat...
I don't think it is good, but let's be reasonable in comparing environmental harm.
soperj · 26m ago
I don't think that lake tailing pond even exists any more.
This isn't about China or the size of the lake, but the fact that there is a lake because the effluent is difficult to dispose of and currently has no use.
Edit: to further clarify, I am not against refining them in the USA. Just that we have to also address the consequences of doing so.
alephnerd · 47m ago
> Though it doesn't address the issue of waste
Either you eat the cost of the externality or you accept that countries that can will end up dominating the industry, and hold entire sectors like automotive or semiconductors hostage. This is what China did and what Vietnam [0] and India [1] are attempting to do as well.
It's like packaging for grid batteries - someone has to do the dirty work because manufacturing is inherently dirty.
The only rule that matters even in a "rules based order" is might makes right.
If we don't want to do it, then we need to cultivate partners who can - but the only countries who are not China and open to eating the externalities are Vietnam and India.
Would outsourcing the dirty production combined with a strategic stockpile of processed materials (and some processing capacity) be a smart solution?
Let China process the materials under normal circumstances, but keep 6 months of processed output on hand in case trade is disrupted (trade disagreement, pandemic, war, etc.).
kelnos · 33m ago
Six months feels insufficient. You'd want several years, at minimum.
I think there are two ways to effectively mitigate this risk: 1) have mining and manufacturing of your own that covers most of your needs, or 2) balanced trade where you get something critical from another country, but they also get something critical from you (and can't easily get it somewhere else).
(Of course when you have very solid allies, you can relax a bit more and rely on them, but you still have to be prepared for a situation where that ally has a shortage and prioritizes their own use.)
XorNot · 3m ago
China plans in 5 year increments and actually follows through on that.
Waiting out 6 months of production would be easy. And even the threat of interruption would drastically mess with prices.
alephnerd · 37m ago
> Let China process the materials under normal circumstances, but keep 6 months of processed output on hand in case trade is disrupted (trade disagreement, pandemic, war, etc.)
That's not enough of a leeway when dealing with a country who has active land disputes with 2 countries we have a defense treaty with and 1 with whom we have an ambiguous defense commitment.
And even the Chinese government knows that countries like the the US will try to stockpile. Almost all processing, mining, and exporting in China for REEs is managed by SoEs and under close monitoring from state regulators.
This is why the Biden admin initiated the Minerals Security Partnership with Japan, India, and Australia.
_DeadFred_ · 45m ago
"These minerals are being use to fortify our water supply."
bdamm · 37m ago
This is actually super interesting to me. Given that the US is actually blessed with mineral concentrations, why is it so assumed that only China can produce rare earths? Is it the land opportunity cost? Is it the cost of labor? Is it the cost of regulation? And in the end, this is only a motor, or a battery, and the actual rare earth content is not very high. If the cost of rare earths was double or even triple the amount of sourcing them from China, how much does that actually impact the end price of a consumer good?
The Mountain Pass Rare Earth Mine and Processing Facility, owned by MP Materials, is an open-pit mine of rare-earth elements on the south flank of the Clark Mountain Range in California, 53 miles (85 km) southwest of Las Vegas, Nevada. In 2020 the mine supplied 15.8% of the world's rare-earth production. It is the only rare-earth mining and processing facility in the United States. It is the largest single known deposit of such minerals.
Look at the history section to see how this mine initially dominated rare earth element production, then shut down due to low price competition, then reopened, then shut down due to low prices, then reopened.
The total addressable market for rare earth elements is small in dollar and tonnage terms, but opening mines and processing plants is expensive. One big new mine could tank the global market price.
The US used to maintain large stockpiles of many mineral resources for defense purposes, but mostly stopped in the 1990s after the end of the Cold War. The pendulum may be swinging the other way now. The Mountain Pass mine received DoD grants in 2022 and 2023 to support continued operation, regardless of open market prices.
jjk166 · 19m ago
Rare Earths aren't rare in the "there is a small supply" sense, but in the "very dilute" sense. Rare earths don't concentrate into ores the way that say copper does. Rare earth deposits are just places where you happen to have 300 ppm instead of the crust average of 220 ppm.
The only way to mine rare earths is to just process massive quantities of earth. Typically this is done as part of another mining operation, like mining nickel. It's labor intensive and requires nasty chemicals. Places with cheap labor, weak environemental regulations, and extremely large scale mining operations that they are going to be operating anyways are always going to be able to produce the cheapest rare earths. It's very easy to see why China naturally dominates the market.
pizzathyme · 23m ago
Refining. China has build up the entire pipeline from mining to raw ore to refining for industry use. It's the only place that has it all. Building the refining capacity took decades.
alephnerd · 33m ago
> why is it so assumed that only China can produce rare earths
You want carcinogens in you water supply, and a whole NYT expose about it? That's why. Mining and processing is VERY VERY VERY dirty.
Countries like China, Vietnam, Indonesia, and India are choosing the accept the externalities and/or make deals with shady partners if needed.
Add to that spamoflauge campaigns lead by nation state competitors trying to stoke opposition to these projects [0], and it becomes hard.
> mines many elements domestically, so why the sudden environmental concern specifically with rare earths
Optics mostly, along with a healthy dose of social media disinfo [0]. Processing is also a pain in the butt and causes severe externalities.
> while the US relied on market forces to handle supply chains.
Pretty much.
The recognition that the status quo is unstable arose after China weaponized exports to Japan during the Senkaku Diaoyu crisis (it was one of the first things I worked on in my short stint in policy), but "industrial policy" was a dark word you could never utter on the hill until the last 3-4 years.
Also, 13-15 years ago, China wasn't really viewed as a threat the same way it is today. Russia was viewed as the primary peer state competitor to the US back then. I yelled hoarse warning the people I reported to that we needed to deep dive into Chinese institutions back then, but no one listened.
cdmckay · 13m ago
The US mines many elements domestically, so why the sudden environmental concern specifically with rare earths?
Is there evidence that China’s rare earth mining creates more environmental damage than US coal, gold, or other domestic mining operations?
The real issue seems to be strategic: China made rare earth supply security a policy priority, while the US relied on market forces to handle supply chains.
kelnos · 28m ago
Curious why this is downvoted, as this matches my understanding. We have strong (ish) environmental and worker protections in the US that other countries don't have.
These are good things, but they make it a lot more expensive to do this stuff domestically.
Mining and processing is very dirty.
AceJohnny2 · 39m ago
Years ago I attended a USGS talk about Critical Minerals. (it's archived somewhere...) The federal government (at least a competent one, not sure about the current status) tracks the stability of Critical Mineral sources.
Turns out (to no surprise) that it's to the US's advantage to outsource very polluting mining and processing of critical minerals. (Nobody likes open-pit mines, see people thoughts about the Permanente quarry south of Cupertino)
Of course it's a trade-off, as the US becomes dependent on an external source, and the cost of bringing up internal production increases as internal mining sources are shut down and potentially skill is lost.
Why not do both, get minerals from other countries while it's polluting, spend some of your research budget on figuring out how to do the mining without the downsides.
AceJohnny2 · 13m ago
> spend some of your research budget on figuring out how to do the mining without the downsides.
Well now see that'd be government spending and the majority of our voters/government don't want none of that
Tangentially, attending the USGS talks gave me a huge appreciation for the excellent, useful work that (some?) of our federal agencies do, which just made me that much more livid at the senseless cuts that DOGE & Republicans have done.
spwa4 · 1m ago
> Well now see that'd be government spending and the majority of our voters/government don't want none of that
What do you mean? Trump spent more than the US government has ever spent before just this year. He did so in his last term too.
He just doesn't want to spend it on necessary things. After all, they're necessary. If he doesn't do it, someone will, right? There's a slight issue with this reasoning: it usually ends in the state having to do it anyway, at greatly increased cost, further increasing the already eye-watering spend Trump did.
eszed · 35m ago
This is a legitimate use-case for targeted tariffs and / or subsidies.
(And, you know, environmental regulations, so mining and refining sites don't turn into what's described in a sibling comment.)
alephnerd · 32m ago
The Biden admin worked on this as part of the IRA and CHIPS, and a lot of bilateral treaties with Japan, Australia, South Korea, UAE, and India but now it's up in the air.
The Chinese government even attempted to lead a spamoflauge campaign against North American REE projects initiated by the Biden admin [0]
Mining is first and foremost a material logistics problem. If I need to study significantly more material to retrieve a economically viable amount of sight after elements it will be always a difficult proposition.
alephnerd · 39m ago
The economics are out of whack in the mining industry in the 2020s as well.
North American mining firms tend to be private sector, but in Asian countries like China, Indonesia, India, and Vietnam the mining conglomerates and processors are state-owned enterprises, or in the case of Japan and South Korea, private sector firms with a controlling stake owned by a sovereign development fund.
This is why we need a Temasek or Mubadala for America.
kelnos · 30m ago
I feel like we'll see more and more of that style of ownership in the US when it comes to mining. We're already seeing the government buying stakes in semiconductor companies, as well as subsidizing manufacturing.
Mining seems like it should be firmly on the list of things that are of national security importance.
The problem boiled down to the Chinese government buying out and shutting down any competitors anywhere in the world, plus Congress requiring the DoD to go with the lowest cost, which was always China. We knew what the problem was, we made the problem clear, no one did anything about it.
Maybe this administration blowing up the government is good, actually.
Americans get sympathetic when they hear about the Air Force $1280 coffee mug. They don't forget that, even half a decade later, when they hear the word "waste."
https://www.airforcetimes.com/news/your-air-force/2018/10/23...
The problem is that the US, for the most part, no longer has any appetite for projects that leave the landscape scarred and the waters polluted.
In California, we prefer to go through annual cycles of water rationing than to build new dams. I'm sure the mindset would change if things get sufficiently dire, but that threshold might be farther than we assume.
Though it doesn't address the issue of waste from the refining process which currently looks like this: https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20150402-the-worst-place-...
https://www.ctvnews.ca/northern-ontario/article/company-work...
https://www.jxscmineral.com/blogs/gold-tailings-impacts-and-...
I don't think it is good, but let's be reasonable in comparing environmental harm.
https://www.google.com/maps/place/Mildred+Lake,+AB+T9K+2Z1/@...
Check the previous dates. 2018 yes, 2022, no.
This isn't about China or the size of the lake, but the fact that there is a lake because the effluent is difficult to dispose of and currently has no use.
Edit: to further clarify, I am not against refining them in the USA. Just that we have to also address the consequences of doing so.
Either you eat the cost of the externality or you accept that countries that can will end up dominating the industry, and hold entire sectors like automotive or semiconductors hostage. This is what China did and what Vietnam [0] and India [1] are attempting to do as well.
It's like packaging for grid batteries - someone has to do the dirty work because manufacturing is inherently dirty.
The only rule that matters even in a "rules based order" is might makes right.
If we don't want to do it, then we need to cultivate partners who can - but the only countries who are not China and open to eating the externalities are Vietnam and India.
[0] - https://en.mae.gov.vn/Pages/chi-tiet-tin-Eng.aspx?ItemID=811...
[1] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45093322
Let China process the materials under normal circumstances, but keep 6 months of processed output on hand in case trade is disrupted (trade disagreement, pandemic, war, etc.).
I think there are two ways to effectively mitigate this risk: 1) have mining and manufacturing of your own that covers most of your needs, or 2) balanced trade where you get something critical from another country, but they also get something critical from you (and can't easily get it somewhere else).
(Of course when you have very solid allies, you can relax a bit more and rely on them, but you still have to be prepared for a situation where that ally has a shortage and prioritizes their own use.)
Waiting out 6 months of production would be easy. And even the threat of interruption would drastically mess with prices.
That's not enough of a leeway when dealing with a country who has active land disputes with 2 countries we have a defense treaty with and 1 with whom we have an ambiguous defense commitment.
And even the Chinese government knows that countries like the the US will try to stockpile. Almost all processing, mining, and exporting in China for REEs is managed by SoEs and under close monitoring from state regulators.
This is why the Biden admin initiated the Minerals Security Partnership with Japan, India, and Australia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mountain_Pass_Rare_Earth_Mine
The Mountain Pass Rare Earth Mine and Processing Facility, owned by MP Materials, is an open-pit mine of rare-earth elements on the south flank of the Clark Mountain Range in California, 53 miles (85 km) southwest of Las Vegas, Nevada. In 2020 the mine supplied 15.8% of the world's rare-earth production. It is the only rare-earth mining and processing facility in the United States. It is the largest single known deposit of such minerals.
Look at the history section to see how this mine initially dominated rare earth element production, then shut down due to low price competition, then reopened, then shut down due to low prices, then reopened.
The total addressable market for rare earth elements is small in dollar and tonnage terms, but opening mines and processing plants is expensive. One big new mine could tank the global market price.
The US used to maintain large stockpiles of many mineral resources for defense purposes, but mostly stopped in the 1990s after the end of the Cold War. The pendulum may be swinging the other way now. The Mountain Pass mine received DoD grants in 2022 and 2023 to support continued operation, regardless of open market prices.
The only way to mine rare earths is to just process massive quantities of earth. Typically this is done as part of another mining operation, like mining nickel. It's labor intensive and requires nasty chemicals. Places with cheap labor, weak environemental regulations, and extremely large scale mining operations that they are going to be operating anyways are always going to be able to produce the cheapest rare earths. It's very easy to see why China naturally dominates the market.
You want carcinogens in you water supply, and a whole NYT expose about it? That's why. Mining and processing is VERY VERY VERY dirty.
Countries like China, Vietnam, Indonesia, and India are choosing the accept the externalities and/or make deals with shady partners if needed.
Add to that spamoflauge campaigns lead by nation state competitors trying to stoke opposition to these projects [0], and it becomes hard.
[0] - https://cloud.google.com/blog/topics/threat-intelligence/dra...
Edit: can't reply, so replying here.
> mines many elements domestically, so why the sudden environmental concern specifically with rare earths
Optics mostly, along with a healthy dose of social media disinfo [0]. Processing is also a pain in the butt and causes severe externalities.
> while the US relied on market forces to handle supply chains.
Pretty much.
The recognition that the status quo is unstable arose after China weaponized exports to Japan during the Senkaku Diaoyu crisis (it was one of the first things I worked on in my short stint in policy), but "industrial policy" was a dark word you could never utter on the hill until the last 3-4 years.
Also, 13-15 years ago, China wasn't really viewed as a threat the same way it is today. Russia was viewed as the primary peer state competitor to the US back then. I yelled hoarse warning the people I reported to that we needed to deep dive into Chinese institutions back then, but no one listened.
Is there evidence that China’s rare earth mining creates more environmental damage than US coal, gold, or other domestic mining operations?
The real issue seems to be strategic: China made rare earth supply security a policy priority, while the US relied on market forces to handle supply chains.
These are good things, but they make it a lot more expensive to do this stuff domestically.
Mining and processing is very dirty.
Turns out (to no surprise) that it's to the US's advantage to outsource very polluting mining and processing of critical minerals. (Nobody likes open-pit mines, see people thoughts about the Permanente quarry south of Cupertino)
Of course it's a trade-off, as the US becomes dependent on an external source, and the cost of bringing up internal production increases as internal mining sources are shut down and potentially skill is lost.
Related link: https://www.usgs.gov/news/science-snippet/department-interio...
And here's the 2025 draft report: https://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2025/1047/ofr20251047.pdf
Edit: here's the USGS talk, from 2017: https://youtu.be/N53Rm-aDCu8
Well now see that'd be government spending and the majority of our voters/government don't want none of that
Tangentially, attending the USGS talks gave me a huge appreciation for the excellent, useful work that (some?) of our federal agencies do, which just made me that much more livid at the senseless cuts that DOGE & Republicans have done.
What do you mean? Trump spent more than the US government has ever spent before just this year. He did so in his last term too.
He just doesn't want to spend it on necessary things. After all, they're necessary. If he doesn't do it, someone will, right? There's a slight issue with this reasoning: it usually ends in the state having to do it anyway, at greatly increased cost, further increasing the already eye-watering spend Trump did.
(And, you know, environmental regulations, so mining and refining sites don't turn into what's described in a sibling comment.)
The Chinese government even attempted to lead a spamoflauge campaign against North American REE projects initiated by the Biden admin [0]
[0] - https://cloud.google.com/blog/topics/threat-intelligence/dra...
North American mining firms tend to be private sector, but in Asian countries like China, Indonesia, India, and Vietnam the mining conglomerates and processors are state-owned enterprises, or in the case of Japan and South Korea, private sector firms with a controlling stake owned by a sovereign development fund.
This is why we need a Temasek or Mubadala for America.
Mining seems like it should be firmly on the list of things that are of national security importance.