Magnet Wars: How the U.S. Plans to Break China’s Grip on Rare Earths

The struggle for geopolitical supremacy is rapidly becoming a struggle over one critical resource – rare earth magnets.They will determine whether the United States can build military equipment at scale, whether weapons can be replaced as fast as they are used, and whether industry can keep pace with demand across an economy measured in the tens of trillions of dollars. For the United States, winning this strategic competition hinges on a single, difficult capability: the domestic production of magnet materials at scale. While many other Western…