A rare point of bipartisan consensus in American politics today is that critical minerals and rare earth elements are vital to national defence and to leading the industries of the future. They are essential to semiconductors, data centres, fibre optic communications, artificial intelligence and many civil and defence applications.
But the world’s needs are also a vulnerability, because the critical mineral supply chains are dominated by China. It extracts, processes or controls more than 70 per cent of the world’s cobalt and lithium and nearly all the graphite on the market. It is also the leading refiner of 19 of the 20 most important industrial minerals.
