Every device you own runs on materials most people have never heard of. The USGS 2025 Critical Minerals List ↗ identifies 60 minerals essential to US economic and national security — materials with supply chains that are vulnerable to disruption and no near-term substitutes. The IEA ↗ reports that for copper, lithium, nickel, cobalt, graphite and rare earth elements combined, the average market share of the top three refining nations rose to 86% in 2024. Almost all supply growth coming from a single top supplier.

This is not an energy story. It is a control story. The country that processes these minerals controls the hardware layer of the entire global economy — every EV, every wind turbine, every semiconductor fab, every advanced weapons system. The Belfer Center ↗ documents rare earth magnets made of neodymium and dysprosium in F-35 jet actuators, Virginia-class submarines, and Tesla humanoid robot motors. China holds a monopoly on the separation of dysprosium and terbium — the two elements that make those magnets function at high temperature. That is the chokepoint.