The 17 Elements Holding the 21st Century Hostage

Why this exists

You've probably heard the phrase "rare earth minerals" in a headline recently. Maybe in the context of China, or electric vehicles, or some new trade war salvo. And you probably nodded along without being entirely sure what these things actually are or why they matter.

Here's the disconnect: rare earth elements are in every smartphone, every EV, every wind turbine, every guided missile, every MRI machine, every fiber optic cable, and every data center running AI workloads — and most people can't name a single one.

There are 17 of them. The name is a misnomer. They're not rare — most are more common in Earth's crust than gold or platinum. The "rare" part refers to how they occur: dispersed thinly through rock, chemically intertwined with each other and with radioactive thorium and uranium, requiring a brutal multi-stage chemical process to separate into usable form.

That separation process is the actual story. Not the mining, not the geology — the chemistry. And right now, one country controls roughly 90% of global capacity to perform it.

Interactive exploration

The explorer below covers three dimensions of the rare earth situation: the elements themselves (what they are and what they do), the supply chain (where China's control tightens at each stage), and the geopolitical timeline (how we got here and what's being done about it).

The chokepoint that matters

China controls about 60% of rare earth mining — a significant share, but not an insurmountable monopoly. The US, Myanmar, Australia, and others mine meaningful quantities. Mountain Pass in California, operated by MP Materials, produced about 51,000 tonnes of rare earth oxide (the raw powder you get after initial processing) in 2025, representing roughly 13-15% of global mined supply.

But mining is the easy part. The chokepoint is processing.

China controls approximately 87% of rare earth separation (chemically isolating each element), 90% of refining (converting oxides into pure metals), and 92% of permanent magnet manufacturing (turning those metals into the super-strong magnets inside EV motors, wind turbines, and weapons systems). Even ore mined in the United States has historically been shipped to China for processing — because almost nobody else has the chemical infrastructure to do it.

This asymmetry became a weapon in 2025. In April, China restricted exports of seven rare earth elements in retaliation against US tariffs. In October, China's Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM) issued Notice No. 61, which went much further: any product containing 0.1% or more of Chinese-origin rare earths — including finished magnets, chip components, and electronics assemblies — now requires a government export permit. Getting that permit takes two to three months or longer, and products headed for military use or advanced chip manufacturing can be denied outright.

The message was clear: China can not only restrict the raw materials, it can reach downstream into finished products.

Why processing is the real bottleneck

If rare earths are geologically common, why can't the US (or anyone else) just build processing plants? The simulation below walks through the six-stage chemical gauntlet required to convert raw ore into separated rare earth oxides. Step through it and watch the waste accumulate.

This is why China dominates the middle of the supply chain. The processing is chemically complex — separating elements that are nearly identical requires passing material through chemical baths over and over, up to 1,000+ stages for high-purity output. It generates massive volumes of radioactive and toxic waste, and requires enormous capital investment. Western nations didn't lose this capability by accident — they outsourced it, along with the environmental burden, over the course of two decades.

There is currently no EPA or national strategy in the United States for managing rare earth processing waste. The radioactive thorium and uranium that naturally sit alongside rare earth ores become concentrated during processing — the industry calls this TENORM (Technologically Enhanced Naturally Occurring Radioactive Materials). It's low-level radioactive waste, but it has to be contained, stored, and monitored essentially forever. And the scale is staggering: greater than 90% of all material extracted during rare earth mining becomes waste.

Building a domestic processing industry means accepting this environmental reality — with proper regulation, modern containment, and transparent monitoring — rather than pretending someone else can handle it forever.

The American response

The US government has moved aggressively in early 2026, though analysts caution these are "first steps of many."

Project Vault ($12 billion, February 2026): The largest initiative, combining a $10 billion loan from the US Export-Import Bank (the government agency that finances American exports) with $2 billion in private capital. The goal: build a strategic stockpile — a physical reserve warehouse — of 50+ critical minerals so manufacturers don't run dry if supply gets cut. General Motors, Boeing, and Google have signed participation agreements. Rather than trying to replicate China's processing dominance overnight, Project Vault focuses on having material on hand and locked-in purchase contracts to ride out supply shocks.

USA Rare Earth ($3.1 billion, January 2026): Secured a $1.6 billion government commitment plus $1.5 billion in private investment to build something the US currently doesn't have: domestic processing of heavy rare earths (the scarcer, more strategically critical subgroup) and manufacturing of NdFeB magnets — the neodymium-iron-boron permanent magnets that power EV motors, wind turbines, and missile guidance systems. Target: 10,000 tonnes per year of magnet production by 2030.

The 55-Country Alliance (February 2026): The US hosted a minerals summit where 11 country-to-country deals were signed, along with a three-way agreement with the EU and Japan. The US is actively pursuing mineral rights in Central Africa, particularly the Democratic Republic of Congo. The alliance also includes coordinated price floors — minimum prices that prevent China from flooding the market with cheap rare earths to bankrupt competing producers before they can scale up.

The gap that remains: Mountain Pass can mine 51,000 tonnes of ore but cannot fully process its own output. US rare earth exports collapsed from 37,500 tonnes in 2024 to 14,000 tonnes in 2025 — not because demand fell, but because material piled up at the mine with nowhere to be refined. The US remains 100% net import reliant for 12 critical minerals and over 50% reliant for another 29.

What happens if the supply breaks

The simulator below lets you model disruption scenarios. Drag the sliders to see how different combinations of Chinese export cuts, US domestic processing growth, recycling, and allied diversification affect the global supply gap, prices, and industry impact. Try the pre-built scenarios to ground the model in real events.

The lesson that emerges from playing with the sliders: no single lever is sufficient. Domestic processing alone can't close the gap. Recycling alone is too small. Allied diversification alone takes too long. But stack all three together with meaningful investment, and the numbers start to shift. That's the thesis behind Project Vault and the 55-country alliance — it's a portfolio strategy, not a silver bullet.

Engineering around the problem

The most durable long-term solution isn't just mining more — it's reducing dependence on rare earths entirely.

Magnet-free motors: Most EV motors today use powerful permanent magnets made from rare earths to convert electricity into motion. The EU's ReFreeDrive project demonstrated that alternative motor designs — using copper rotors or carefully shaped magnetic steel instead of rare earth magnets — can match or beat them: 30% more torque for their size, 50% less energy wasted as heat, and 15-35% lower manufacturing cost. Zero rare earths required. The performance gap is closing fast.

Recycling breakthroughs: High-temperature smelting techniques have demonstrated 91% neodymium recovery from scrapped magnets — you melt the magnet in a special furnace and chemically extract the rare earths. Newer electrical methods that dissolve rare earths in molten salt baths offer a potentially cleaner alternative, though they're earlier in development. The key insight is that the world's discarded smartphones, hard drives, wind turbines, and EVs already contain enormous quantities of rare earths. We just haven't built the infrastructure to get them back out at scale.

Alternative designs: Researchers are also exploring motors built around cheap, abundant ferrite magnets (the kind in refrigerator magnets — far weaker than rare earth magnets, but improving), advanced induction designs that use no magnets at all, and battery chemistries that avoid rare earths entirely. The economic incentive is now enormous — every dollar of rare earth price increase makes these alternatives more competitive.

The key insight

We didn't just outsource manufacturing to China over the past two decades. We outsourced the entire chemical supply chain that sits between a hole in the ground and a finished product. The mines, the acid baths, the chemical separation lines, the waste ponds, the metal smelting, the magnet factories — all of it.

Rebuilding that middle layer is a 10-to-20-year project under optimistic assumptions. New mines take a decade to permit. Processing plants require billions in capital and years to commission. The workforce expertise is concentrated overseas. And the environmental costs are real and unavoidable.

The short-term reality is volatility and strategic vulnerability. The medium-term bet is that a combination of stockpiling, allied supply chains, domestic processing investment, recycling, and engineering alternatives can diversify the risk enough to prevent any single point of failure.

Whether that bet pays off depends on sustained political will, continued private investment, and the willingness to do the hard, expensive, environmentally complicated work of building supply chain resilience — not just announcing it.