In July 2025 the Pentagon bought a stake in America's main rare earth mine, Mountain Pass in California, and guaranteed the price of what it produces for 10 years.1 Days later Apple signed a $500 million contract with the same company, MP Materials, for magnets made in the United States.2 And Masato Sagawa, who invented the neodymium magnet in 1983, had already put his name to a paper on what happens when you try to make that magnet without the one element China controls.3

All three were pointing at the same step in the same chain. The thing everybody wants is the magnet strong enough to turn the motor of an electric car, steer a missile or an air defense interceptor, and hold a wind turbine together.4 China used to dig about 97% of the world's rare earths.5 In 2025 it dug about 69%.6 It still makes 94 out of every 100 sintered magnets those rare earths are mined for.7 The gap between those two numbers is the subject of this article.

Most rare earth news is about mines: a new mine in Australia, a deal in Brazil, a deposit in Greenland. That coverage is accurate, and it covers the least important part of the chain. I argue three things here. The mines have spread out and the magnet has stayed in China, because the choke point is the chemistry after the mine. For the magnets that have to survive heat, the grip is getting tighter. And money alone has not fixed it yet, which makes the investable question narrow.

This is the pillar of a 5-part series adapted from my video, Episode 4 of the 10-layer AI infrastructure series on The Investment Thesis (watch it on YouTube). Each step below has its own deeper article: why rare earths are called rare and why they take 1,000 steps to separate, dysprosium and terbium, the heavy rare earths that decide electric motors, a dated timeline of China's rare earth export controls and the rare earth companies outside China. The figures are as stated in the video, published on 10 October 2026.

This article is adapted from a video. Watch it on YouTube

Chapter 1

China's grip sits in the chemistry after the mine

The mines have spread out, and the steps after them have stayed in China. In 2025 the US Geological Survey put China's mine output at 270,000 tons out of a world total of 390,000, about 69%. Australia, Brazil, Burma, Madagascar, Nigeria, Thailand and Vietnam all appear in the same table.6

The International Energy Agency measured all 3 stages of the chain for the magnet rare earths in April 2026, using data from 2024. China mined 60% of them, refined 91% and made 94% of the world's sintered neodymium magnets.7 The two mining shares differ because the USGS counts all rare earths and the IEA counts only the magnet elements. Either way, the further down the chain you go, the bigger China's share gets.

Even the Western flagship ran through China. Until the middle of 2025, Mountain Pass shipped most of what it dug to China for processing, because that is where the plants are. MP Materials says so in its own annual report, and the shipments stopped in July 2025.8

One more number tells you this was once a competition. Japan made nearly half of the world's sintered magnets in 2005. By 2024 its share was about 5%, while China went from about half to 94%.7 Japan kept its technology. Shin-Etsu, TDK and Proterial still make advanced, high-performance magnets.7 What Japan lost was the volume, and in this industry the volume pays for the next plant.

Chapter 2

Separation is the expensive step, because the 17 elements are almost identical

Rare earths are common. There is more cerium in the Earth's crust than copper, and even thulium, the scarcest stable one, is about 200 times more common than gold.9 Everything ever mined adds up to about 5.9 million tons of rare earth oxides, and stated reserves are more than 75 million tons, about 12.6 times that.10

The problem is that geology hands them over glued together. Each new electron along the row drops into an inner shell, and chemistry only sees the outside of the atom, so all 17 look almost the same. One thing changes: each element is very slightly smaller than the one before it. Neodymium and praseodymium, the pair the magnet industry cares about most, differ in size by about 1.8%.11

Every separation plant on Earth exists to turn that 1.8% into a 99.9% difference in purity. The method is solvent extraction: you wash the dissolved ore against an oily liquid that very slightly prefers the smaller ion, and one pass leaves you about 1.5 times purer than you started.11 Then you do it again. Researchers at China's General Research Institute for Nonferrous Metals put the real number in a 2015 paper: more than 1,000 stages of continuous extraction to separate the individual elements.12

MP Materials' own filings for Mountain Pass put a price on the two halves of the business. Mining a short ton of ore costs $1.50. Concentrating that ton costs $51.28. Separating a short ton of the concentrate that comes out costs $1,080.59.813 Next to the chemistry, the digging is a rounding error. The whole chemistry, step by step, is in are rare earths rare?

Chapter 3

Magnets that must survive heat need dysprosium and terbium, and China refines over 99% of both

The next decade comes down to temperature. A neodymium magnet is the strongest permanent magnet in commercial use, and it gets weak when it gets hot. At room temperature a typical grade holds about 1.2 tesla of resistance to being demagnetized. At 160 degrees Celsius, roughly where the motor of an electric car runs, it holds about 0.2.3 Put your foot down, the motor's own field pushes back, and the magnet permanently loses some of its strength.

Dysprosium and terbium fix that. Put a little of either into the mix and the magnet survives the heat, which is why a traction motor magnet needs them and a fridge magnet or a stereo speaker does without.3 A coating method called grain boundary diffusion cut the amount needed by roughly a factor of 10, and then it hit a wall: it only reaches about 4 millimeters into the magnet, and a magnet that starts with no dysprosium tops out at about 2.1 tesla, short of the roughly 3 tesla the hottest motors need.14

A bigger hard rock mine mostly gives you more of the cheap elements. At Mount Weld in Western Australia, the best rare earth deposit outside China, lanthanum and cerium make up 68% of the reserves. Dysprosium and terbium together make up 0.78%.15 In 2025 lanthanum oxide sold for about $1 a kilogram and terbium oxide for $1,010.616 Both come out of the same rock. America's own mine says the quiet part in its filings: the heavy elements at Mountain Pass "are not accounted for" in its resource estimate,13 and among the things MP Materials would lose if its Department of War partnership failed is help with "sourcing of heavy rare earth feedstock".8

Adamas Intelligence is a commercial research firm, and I name it because this number is its estimate. On its count, China refined over 99% of the world's dysprosium and terbium in recent years.17 A 94% share of magnets is a monopoly. Over 99% of the ingredients that let a magnet survive heat is tighter than that, and you can see it in the price.

On 19 February 2026 a kilogram of dysprosium oxide cost $207 inside China and $1,125 in Europe, a premium of 443%. On the same table and the same day, the neodymium praseodymium (NdPr) oxide that goes into the body of the magnet carried a premium of 8%.18 For NdPr, Europe and China are one market. For dysprosium they are two, because you cannot buy it in China and ship it out without a license. Inside China it is priced like a normal product. Outside China it is priced like something you cannot get. The full story of the two heavy elements is in dysprosium and terbium.

Chapter 4

China's export controls fall on the heavy elements it cannot fully supply from home

The policy here is published and dated. In April 2025 China put 7 elements under export license: samarium, gadolinium, terbium, dysprosium, lutetium, scandium and yttrium.19 In October 2025 it added europium, holmium, erbium, thulium and ytterbium, extended the controls to processing equipment and technology, and added a rule that reaches into other countries. A product made anywhere needs a Chinese license if controlled rare earths of Chinese origin are worth 0.1% or more of its value.20

In November 2025 China suspended that October package for one year, to 10 November 2026.21 On 24 September 2026, with President Xi Jinping in Washington, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the two sides would extend that truce into January 2027.22 The April controls were never part of the truce. As of 24 September 2026 they were still in force, and nothing announced that week lifted them.

Enforcement has tightened since. The 2026 licensing catalogue brought samarium, gadolinium and lutetium compounds into the license net,23 and China's commerce ministry set up a public channel under which a person who reports a company for exporting without the paperwork can be rewarded.24 On 22 June 2026 China added 10 American firms to its export control list, among them MP Materials and USA Rare Earth, two companies the US government is backing to replace Chinese supply.25 Every date, in order, is in the timeline of China's rare earth export controls.

Apart from samarium, the 7 April elements are the heavy end of the table.19 China has plenty of the light ones. The heavy ones it runs short of itself, because it gets much of them from Myanmar. The ore that carries dysprosium and terbium is a weathered clay, and it sits in two places: 7 provinces of southern China and Kachin State in northern Myanmar.26 The IEA estimates that Myanmar mined over 40% of the world's dysprosium and terbium in 2024.7 Myanmar publishes no audited production figures, and in the USGS table its reserves are marked "not available".6

Those mines do not answer to the government of Myanmar. In October 2024 the Kachin Independence Army took the mining towns of Chipwi and Pangwa, exports were disrupted, and China's imports of heavy rare earths fell sharply until trade resumed the following spring.27

Then comes the number that reframes the controls. China sets an annual ceiling on its own mining, split between hard rock and the clay that carries the heavy elements. From 2018 to 2024 the hard rock quota rose 149%. The clay quota has been frozen at exactly 19,150 tons since 2018.28 China expanded its mining enormously and left its own heavy mining flat, while depending on a border region it does not control. The April 2025 controls came a month after a disruption to Myanmar's exports, and they landed on the heavy elements. The Royal United Services Institute reads them as China ensuring its own access to heavy rare earths. That is their reading, and I find it persuasive.29

Chapter 5

Markets could not keep a Western supply chain alive, so governments now pay for one

An American mine supplied most of the planet's rare earths from the 1960s to the 1980s, and it was the same Mountain Pass.30 What ended it was the waste: the EPA's own account records repeated failures of the pipeline that carried its wastewater to evaporation ponds in the desert.31 The cleanup and the permits got expensive just as Chinese producers started selling the same materials for less, and the mine stopped digging in 2002.30

A private company cannot lose money year after year to hold a strategic position, because its shareholders will not let it. A state can. That asymmetry is the history of this layer, and it is why a government usually has to break the deadlock.

In July 2025 the Department of War bought $400 million of MP Materials preferred stock plus a warrant, together about 15% of the company. It set a floor of $110 per kg for MP's NdPr from 1 October 2025 to 31 December 2035, and pays MP the difference every quarter. Above the floor, the government takes 30% of the upside.18 In the fourth quarter of 2025 alone, MP recognized $51 million of income under that agreement.8 The USGS puts the 2025 average price of NdPr oxide at $69 per kg.6 The same $110 floor then appeared in two more agreements, a letter of intent between Lynas and the Department of War in March 2026, and a Lynas agreement with Japan's JARE days earlier.32

The floor exists because the market price does not pay. Lynas runs one of the two largest rare earth operations outside China.7 In the year to 30 June 2025 it turned A$556.5 million of revenue into A$8 million of net profit, a margin of 1.4% in a record year for its main product.33 In 2024, on record production, MP Materials' materials segment lost $14.1 million of adjusted EBITDA, a measure of operating profit. It returned to a positive $16.8 million in 2025, and it got there by recognizing $51 million of government price protection income.8

MP Materials has now stopped reporting the market price it gets for its main product, telling its own investors that the number is "no longer meaningful in evaluating and understanding our business or operating results".8 For the largest rare earth producer in the United States, a government number has replaced the market price. There is also no exchange and no futures contract for any of this, so a new project carries the full price risk for its whole life.7

Keep the spending in proportion. The Center for Strategic and International Studies counted more than $7.3 billion committed across 5 US government departments by April 2026.34 The cash that could be verified as actually delivered to US rare earth companies through 30 June 2026 is about $714 million, and essentially all of it went to MP Materials.35

Chapter 6

Watch 3 dates and 3 numbers to see whether the West is catching up

I look at every resource in layers, from the rock in the ground up to the geopolitics on top. The top layer is access: a resource can exist and a company can produce it, and if the political relationship breaks, the supply may as well not exist. The question I ask every time is where the bottlenecks are and who sits on them.

Outside China the field is small. As of August 2026, 5 operations sell rare earth product at commercial scale: MP Materials, Lynas, Neo Performance Materials, Solvay and Serra Verde.36 Lynas is the only proven separator of dysprosium and terbium outside China. It produced 62 tons of the two across a full financial year, against world use estimated at 1,500 to 2,000 tons of dysprosium alone.37 The companies, group by group, are in rare earth companies outside China.

Three dates to put in your calendar:

  • 11 December 2026. The Defense Production Act authorities that the price floor depends on expire unless Congress acts. Congress extended them by 10 weeks in September inside a stopgap funding bill, and H.R. 7688, a bill to extend them by 5 years, had not passed when I recorded.38
  • January 2027. The truce Scott Bessent extended on 24 September 2026 runs out. If nobody renews it, China's suspension of the October package ends and the 0.1% rule comes back into force.22
  • 1 January 2027. American defense contractors lose a route to using Chinese magnets.39

Three numbers to watch quarter by quarter, because they will show whether any of this is working before a headline does:

  • Whether Lynas produces more than 30 tons of dysprosium and terbium in a single quarter. I doubt it.
  • Whether MP Materials says out loud where its heavy rare earth feedstock comes from.
  • Whether the Caremag separation plant at Lacq in France is commissioned on schedule.40

The verdict is the sentence I opened the video with. China's share of the mines has fallen from 97% to about 69%. It still makes 94 out of every 100 magnets, and it refines more than 99% of the two elements that let a magnet survive heat.

The mine was never the moat. The chemistry was.

Questions people ask

Why does China control rare earth magnets?

China controls the separation chemistry that sits between the mine and the magnet. In 2025 it mined about 69% of the world's rare earths, by the US Geological Survey's count, but in 2024 it refined 91% of the magnet rare earths and made 94% of the world's sintered magnets, according to the IEA. Separating the 17 nearly identical elements takes more than 1,000 stages of solvent extraction, and most of that capacity is in China.

Are rare earths actually rare?

Rare earths are common in the Earth's crust. There is more cerium than copper, and thulium, the scarcest stable rare earth, is about 200 times more common than gold. The world has mined about 5.9 million tons of rare earth oxides in all of history and holds more than 75 million tons of reserves. The hard part is separating them, because the 17 elements behave almost the same in chemistry.

What are rare earth magnets used for?

Neodymium magnets are the strongest permanent magnets in commercial use. They turn the motors of electric cars, guide missiles and missile defense systems, and run wind turbines, and smaller ones sit in phones, earbuds and speakers. Magnets that run hot, such as those in an electric car's traction motor, also need dysprosium or terbium.

Why are dysprosium and terbium so important?

A neodymium magnet loses most of its resistance to demagnetization at about 160 degrees Celsius, roughly the temperature at which an electric car's motor runs. Adding a little dysprosium or terbium lets it survive that heat. On Adamas Intelligence's count, China refined over 99% of both in recent years, and on 19 February 2026 dysprosium oxide cost 443% more in Europe than inside China.

What are China's rare earth export controls?

In April 2025 China put 7 rare earth elements, mostly heavy ones, under export license, and those controls are still in force. In October 2025 it added 5 more elements and a rule covering foreign products whose Chinese rare earth content is worth 0.1% or more of their value. That October package was suspended to 10 November 2026, and on 24 September 2026 the truce was extended into January 2027.

Which companies produce rare earths outside China?

As of August 2026, 5 operations outside China sell rare earth product at commercial scale, MP Materials, Lynas, Neo Performance Materials, Solvay and Serra Verde. Lynas is the only proven separator of dysprosium and terbium outside China, with 62 tons in its last full financial year. This is commentary and education, and it is no recommendation to buy any of them.

Notes

  1. MP Materials, Form 8-K, Item 1.01, Transaction Agreement with the Department of Defense and NdPr Price Protection Agreement, 10 July 2025: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1801368/000119312525157310/d43796d8k.htm ↩ ↩2

  2. MP Materials, "MP Materials and Apple Announce $500 Million Partnership to Produce Recycled Rare Earth Magnets in the United States", 15 July 2025: https://mpmaterials.com/news/mp-materials-and-apple-announce-500-million-partnership-to-produce-recycled-rare-earth-magnets-in-the-united-states/ ↩

  3. Li, Sepehri-Amin, Sasaki, Ohkubo, Hono and Sagawa, "Most frequently asked questions about the coercivity of Nd-Fe-B permanent magnets", Science and Technology of Advanced Materials 22(1), 2021, section 2.1 (1.2 tesla at room temperature, about 0.2 tesla at about 160 degrees Celsius): https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8183520/ Sagawa's patent on the magnet, US 4,770,723: https://patents.google.com/patent/US4770723A/en ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  4. US Department of Commerce, Bureau of Industry and Security, The Effect of Imports of Neodymium-Iron-Boron (NdFeB) Permanent Magnets on the National Security, September 2022: https://www.bis.doc.gov/index.php/documents/section-232-investigations/3141-neodymium-magnets-232-public-report/file and US Government Accountability Office, GAO-16-161, February 2016 ("missile guidance systems, antimissile defense systems"): https://www.gao.gov/assets/gao-16-161.pdf ↩

  5. US Geological Survey, Mineral Commodity Summaries 2010, Rare Earths, world mine production table for 2009: https://d9-wret.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/assets/palladium/production/mineral-pubs/rare-earth/mcs-2010-raree.pdf ↩

  6. US Geological Survey, Mineral Commodity Summaries 2026, Rare Earths (China 270,000 of 390,000 tons in 2025; reserves above 75 million tons; lanthanum oxide about $1 per kg and NdPr oxide $69 per kg in 2025; Burma reserves not available): https://pubs.usgs.gov/periodicals/mcs2026/mcs2026-rare-earths.pdf ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5

  7. International Energy Agency, Rare Earth Elements: Pathways to secure and diversified supply chains, April 2026, CC BY 4.0, pages 8 and 29 to 31 (60% mined, 91% refined, 94% of sintered magnets in 2024; Japan nearly half in 2005 and about 5% in 2024; Myanmar over 40% of mined dysprosium and terbium in 2024), page 46 (the two largest facilities outside China) and page 57 (no exchange): https://www.iea.org/reports/rare-earth-elements ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6 ↩7

  8. MP Materials, Form 10-K for fiscal year 2025, filed 26 February 2026: sales to a principal distributor in China, pit optimization unit costs, the Department of War partnership risk factor, Note 3 (price protection agreement), the Materials segment adjusted EBITDA table and the Key Performance Indicators paragraph: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1801368/000180136826000008/mp-20251231.htm ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6 ↩7

  9. US Geological Survey, Fact Sheet 087-02, Rare Earth Elements: Critical Resources for High Technology, 2002: https://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/2002/fs087-02/fs087-02.pdf ↩

  10. US Geological Survey, Rare Earths Statistics, Data Series 140 (world production 1900 to 2020): https://d9-wret.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/assets/palladium/production/s3fs-public/media/files/ds140-rare-earths-2020.xlsx plus world production for 2021 to 2025 from Mineral Commodity Summaries 2023 to 2026: https://pubs.usgs.gov/periodicals/mcs2026/mcs2026-rare-earths.pdf ↩

  11. Kevin L. Lyon, Separation of Adjacent Rare Earth Elements Using Solvent Extraction, MS thesis, University of Idaho, May 2016 (ionic radii, a separation factor of about 1.5 for neodymium and praseodymium, magnet-grade purity of 99 to 99.9%): https://objects.lib.uidaho.edu/etd/pdf/Lyon_idaho_0089N_10815.pdf ↩ ↩2

  12. Huang, Long, Wang and Feng (GRINM), "Technology development for rare earth cleaner hydrometallurgy in China", Rare Metals 34(4), 215 to 222, 2015: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12598-015-0473-x ↩

  13. SRK Consulting (U.S.) for MP Materials, SEC 2024 Technical Report Summary Update, Mountain Pass Mine, February 2025, Table 18-4 (variable separation cost of $1,080.59 per short ton of concentrate treated) and the mineral resource notes: https://minedocs.com/28/Mountain-Pass-TR-10012024.pdf ↩ ↩2

  14. Podmiljsak et al., "The Future of Permanent-Magnet-Based Electric Motors", Materials, 2024 (up to 11% dysprosium by weight in bulk alloying against under 1% with grain boundary diffusion): https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10890235/ Yan, Wang et al., "Significant Progress for Hot-Deformed Nd-Fe-B Magnets: A Review", Materials, 2023 (diffusion depth of about 4 mm): https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10343483/ The 2.1 tesla ceiling for a dysprosium-free magnet is in Li et al. 2021, section 3.3 (note 3). The factor of 10 is the ratio of those two weight shares. ↩

  15. Lynas Rare Earths, 2024 Mineral Resource and Ore Reserve Update, Mount Weld, Table 7, 5 August 2024: https://wcsecure.weblink.com.au/pdf/LYC/02835257.pdf ↩

  16. US Geological Survey, Mineral Commodity Summaries 2026, Rare Earths, Heavy (terbium oxide $1,010 per kg in 2025): https://pubs.usgs.gov/periodicals/mcs2026/mcs2026-rare-earths-heavy.pdf ↩

  17. Reported. Adamas Intelligence, Rare Earth Magnet Market Outlook, Top Predictions for 2026, February 2026, quoting its Outlook to 2040 (December 2025). This is a commercial estimate from a single source: https://www.adamasintel.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/Adamas-Intelligence-Rare-Earth-Magnet-Market-Outlook-Top-Predictions-for-2026.pdf ↩

  18. Energy Fuels, Form 10-K for fiscal year 2025, Benchmark Mineral Intelligence price table dated 19 February 2026, in US dollars per kg: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1385849/000138584926000009/efr-20251231.htm ↩

  19. Ministry of Commerce of the PRC and General Administration of Customs, Announcement No. 18 of 2025, 4 April 2025: http://english.mofcom.gov.cn/Policies/AnnouncementsOrders/art/2025/art_0dd87cbee7b045bf93fabe6ab2faceee.html ↩ ↩2

  20. Ministry of Commerce of the PRC, Announcement No. 61 of 2025, 9 October 2025 (the 0.1% of value rule): https://www.mofcom.gov.cn/zwgk/zcfb/art/2025/art_7fc9bff0fb4546ecb02f66ee77d0e5f6.html and Royal United Services Institute, China and Rare Earth Supply Chains, June 2026, printed page 24 (the October package): https://static.rusi.org/china-and-rare-earths-supply-chain-june-2026.pdf ↩

  21. Reported. MOFCOM and GACC Announcement No. 70 of 2025, as summarized by Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman, 7 November 2025: https://www.pillsburylaw.com/en/news-and-insights/china-suspends-export-controls-certain-critical-minerals-related-items.html ↩

  22. Reported. Associated Press, "Trump welcomes China's Xi to Washington with planeside ceremony and extension of trade truce", 23 September 2026: https://www.local10.com/news/world/2026/09/23/chinas-xi-kicks-off-state-visit-to-washington-on-wednesday-with-a-rare-planeside-welcome-from-trump/ The Treasury readout of Scott Bessent's statement on 24 September is still to be captured. ↩ ↩2

  23. Reported. China Briefing (Dezan Shira and Associates), "China import and export licensing 2026: key compliance updates", 27 February 2026: https://www.china-briefing.com/news/china-import-export-licensing-2026-key-compliance-updates/ ↩

  24. Ministry of Commerce of the PRC, Announcement No. 26 of 2026, 24 June 2026, clause 5, full text via Xinhua: https://www.news.cn/politics/20260624/ff05599a2939483e8ce6ba3820f91f63/c.html ↩

  25. Reported. Morgan Lewis, "Recent China export control actions signal active enforcement for rare earths and strategic minerals", 1 July 2026: https://www.morganlewis.com/pubs/2026/07/recent-china-export-control-actions-signal-active-enforcement-for-rare-earths-and-strategic-minerals ↩

  26. Li and Yang, "Ion-adsorption rare earth deposits of southern China", ERES 2014: https://www.eurare.org/docs/eres2014/firstSession/XiaoshengYang.pdf ↩

  27. University of Manchester, University of Warwick and Kachinland Research Centre, Addressing the environmental impacts of rare earth mining in Kachin State, Myanmar, Briefing Paper 5, March 2025: https://pure.manchester.ac.uk/ws/files/1574944927/Briefing_Paper_5_-_Addressing_Environmental_Impacts.pdf and Institute for Strategy and Policy, Myanmar, Political and Conflict Economy Tracker PCET2025-03, 27 November 2025: https://ispmyanmar.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/PET2025_03_ENG.pdf ↩

  28. Reported. The 2018 split between rock and clay is from US Geological Survey, Minerals Yearbook 2018, Rare Earths, China section: https://pubs.usgs.gov/myb/vol1/2018/myb1-2018-rare-earths.pdf The 2024 quota is from Global Times, "Rare-earth mining output quotas hit new high", 21 August 2024: https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202408/1318443.shtml ↩

  29. Royal United Services Institute, Henry Sanderson, China and Rare Earth Supply Chains: Export Controls, Dual-Use Governance and UK Exposure, June 2026, printed page 18: https://static.rusi.org/china-and-rare-earths-supply-chain-june-2026.pdf ↩

  30. US Geological Survey, Fact Sheet 087-02, Figure 1 (the Mountain Pass era runs to about 1984): https://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/2002/fs087-02/fs087-02.pdf and US Geological Survey, Professional Paper 1802-O, Rare-Earth Elements, 2017, page O5: https://pubs.usgs.gov/pp/1802/o/pp1802o.pdf ↩ ↩2

  31. US Environmental Protection Agency, Rare Earth Elements: A Review of Production, Processing, Recycling, and Associated Environmental Issues, EPA/600/R-12/572, December 2012, section 4.5.2: https://cfpub.epa.gov/si/si_public_record_report.cfm?dirEntryId=251706 ↩

  32. Lynas Rare Earths, "Lynas and US DoW sign Letter of Intent for rare earth supply", 16 March 2026: https://wcsecure.weblink.com.au/clients/lynascorp/headline.aspx?headlineid=61316463 and, reported, "Enhanced JARE Agreement for Japanese Industry", 10 March 2026: https://wcsecure.weblink.com.au/clients/lynascorp/headline.aspx?headlineid=61315680 ↩

  33. Lynas Rare Earths, Full Year 2025 Results, 28 August 2025: https://wcsecure.weblink.com.au/pdf/LYC/02985264.pdf ↩

  34. Reported. Center for Strategic and International Studies, "Rare Earth Export Restrictions One Year Later", 27 April 2026: https://www.csis.org/analysis/rare-earth-export-restrictions-one-year-later ↩

  35. The research behind the video tallied federal cash received from company filings, mainly MP Materials' Form 10-K for 2025 and its Form 10-Q for the quarter ended 30 June 2026: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1801368/000180136826000048/mp-20260630.htm ↩

  36. MP Materials, 2026 Sustainability Report: https://mpmaterials.com/images/mediakit/mpmaterials-2026-sustainability-report.pdf Lynas, Full Year 2025 Results (note 33). Neo Performance Materials, second quarter 2026 results: https://www.neomaterials.com/neo-performance-materials-reports-second-quarter-2026-results/ Solvay, La Rochelle press release, 8 April 2025: https://www.solvay.com/sites/g/files/srpend616/files/2025-04/20250408%20Inauguration%20La%20Rochelle%20PR%20-%20EN_0.pdf USA Rare Earth, Form 10-Q for the quarter ended 30 June 2026 (Serra Verde, which sells a mixed rare earth carbonate): https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1970622/000197062226000057/usar-20260630.htm ↩

  37. Lynas Rare Earths, Quarterly Report for the period ended 30 June 2026: https://wcsecure.weblink.com.au/clients/lynascorp/headline.aspx?headlineid=61334860 The demand range is an estimate; the nearest published dataset is European Commission Joint Research Centre, The role of rare earth elements in wind energy and electric mobility, 2020: https://data.jrc.ec.europa.eu/dataset/aa1fc9e1-360d-478e-a6da-51b092f30d32 ↩

  38. Public Law 119-60, National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2026, section 8101: https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/PLAW-119publ60/html/PLAW-119publ60.htm Reported: the 10-week extension to 11 December 2026 is in section 125 of the Continuing Appropriations and Extensions Act, 2027, and the status of H.R. 7688 is as stated in the video: https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/7688 ↩

  39. US Government Accountability Office, GAO-24-107176, Critical Materials, September 2024, page 9 (the DFARS prohibitions): https://www.gao.gov/assets/gao-24-107176.pdf ↩

  40. USA Rare Earth, Form 8-K Exhibit 99.1, Definitive Agreements for Strategic Investment in Carester (Lacq), 23 July 2026: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1970622/000121390026080645/ea029900101ex99-1.htm and JOGMEC, Equity and Debt Financing to Caremag SAS, 17 March 2025: https://www.jogmec.go.jp/english/news/release/release_00412.html ↩

Sources and further reading

  1. Video: Rare Earths, Episode 4 of the 10-layer AI infrastructure series, The Investment Thesis on YouTube, www.youtube.com/watch?v=V7_zAL1UE8k
  2. US Geological Survey, Mineral Commodity Summaries 2026, Rare Earths, pubs.usgs.gov/periodicals/mcs2026/mcs2026-rare-earths.pdf
  3. US Geological Survey, Mineral Commodity Summaries 2010, Rare Earths, d9-wret.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/assets/palladium/production/mineral-pubs/rare-earth/mcs-2010-raree.pdf
  4. International Energy Agency, Rare Earth Elements, Pathways to secure and diversified supply chains (2026), www.iea.org/reports/rare-earth-elements
  5. MP Materials, Form 10-K for fiscal year 2025, www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1801368/000180136826000008/mp-20251231.htm
  6. MP Materials, Form 8-K, 10 July 2025 (Department of Defense transaction and price protection agreement), www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1801368/000119312525157310/d43796d8k.htm
  7. SRK Consulting for MP Materials, Mountain Pass technical report summary (February 2025), minedocs.com/28/Mountain-Pass-TR-10012024.pdf
  8. Huang, Long, Wang and Feng, Technology development for rare earth cleaner hydrometallurgy in China, Rare Metals (2015), doi.org/10.1007/s12598-015-0473-x
  9. Li, Sepehri-Amin, Sasaki, Ohkubo, Hono and Sagawa, Most frequently asked questions about the coercivity of Nd-Fe-B permanent magnets (2021), pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8183520/
  10. Adamas Intelligence, Rare Earth Magnet Market Outlook, Top Predictions for 2026 (commercial estimate), www.adamasintel.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/Adamas-Intelligence-Rare-Earth-Magnet-Market-Outlook-Top-Predictions-for-2026.pdf
  11. Energy Fuels, Form 10-K for fiscal year 2025 (Benchmark Mineral Intelligence price table, 19 February 2026), www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1385849/000138584926000009/efr-20251231.htm
  12. MOFCOM and GAC Announcement No. 18 of 2025, english.mofcom.gov.cn/Policies/AnnouncementsOrders/art/2025/art_0dd87cbee7b045bf93fabe6ab2faceee.html
  13. MOFCOM Announcement No. 61 of 2025, www.mofcom.gov.cn/zwgk/zcfb/art/2025/art_7fc9bff0fb4546ecb02f66ee77d0e5f6.html
  14. Royal United Services Institute, China and Rare Earth Supply Chains (June 2026), static.rusi.org/china-and-rare-earths-supply-chain-june-2026.pdf
  15. Lynas Rare Earths, Full Year 2025 Results, wcsecure.weblink.com.au/pdf/LYC/02985264.pdf
  16. US Environmental Protection Agency, Rare Earth Elements, A Review of Production, Processing, Recycling, and Associated Environmental Issues (2012), cfpub.epa.gov/si/si_public_record_report.cfm?dirEntryId=251706
  17. Center for Strategic and International Studies, Rare Earth Export Restrictions One Year Later (April 2026), www.csis.org/analysis/rare-earth-export-restrictions-one-year-later