The Iran and Ukraine conflicts have drained U.S. missile stockpiles — and restocking requires rare earth materials that China controls with an iron fist.
Cobalt is easy to obtain outside of China but the issue is the Samarium. It can be obtained from Acid Cracking a mineral called Monazite which was once historically mined in South Carolina until a massive reserve was discovered in india, and it actually has a higher yield per weight than the Chinese Bastnäsite which can also be found in a couple of places in Africa.
The problem is even if the USA could source from other places than China in theory, the actual infrastructure to do so is not currently in place, and furthermore the Trump admin’s capability in securing a deal for the future is practically nonexistent.
Sometimes economists don’t/can’t factor in changes in production starting from near 0. Kind of like, any economist before the space program would have said a moon landing was 100% economically unfeasible.
Cobalt is easy to obtain outside of China but the issue is the Samarium. It can be obtained from Acid Cracking a mineral called Monazite which was once historically mined in South Carolina until a massive reserve was discovered in india, and it actually has a higher yield per weight than the Chinese Bastnäsite which can also be found in a couple of places in Africa.
The problem is even if the USA could source from other places than China in theory, the actual infrastructure to do so is not currently in place, and furthermore the Trump admin’s capability in securing a deal for the future is practically nonexistent.
Sometimes economists don’t/can’t factor in changes in production starting from near 0. Kind of like, any economist before the space program would have said a moon landing was 100% economically unfeasible.