Australia’s Vital Metals is getting ready to kick off mining operations at its Nechalacho rare earths project in Canada’s Northwest Territories, which will make it the country’s first producer of the elements used in magnets for electric vehicles, aerospace, defence and electronics. Credit: Vital Metals.
The facts are nothing short of startling.
A high-tech F-35 stealth fighter jet contains 920 lbs. of rare earth elements (REEs).
Each US Navy Arleigh Burke-class AEGIS destroyer has 5,200 lbs., and a Virginia-class submarine has 9,200 lbs.
These commodities are also key to the future of alternative energy, electric vehicles, mobile phones, and even headphones.
Combine that with the fact that 80% of all American rare earth supplies come from China.
A nation now run by leader, Xi Jinping, who recently ordered his Marine Corps — in an act of sheer madness, or, to up the ante on the US — to prepare for war.
It now controls four-fifths of the global mined supply of rare earths, and an even larger share of the manufacture of powerful rare earth magnets — industries worth US$13 billion a year combined.
This gives the Chinese the ability to choke off the West’s economies while the struggle to produce the vital elements elsewhere is mounted.
Meanwhile, the Biden administration is reeling from a disastrous showing in Anchorage last week, where Chinese officials launched a history-making vindictive diatribe, attacking everything America stands for, and then some.
(If you want a sobering read, check out Bhim Bhurtel’s excellent piece, How China drew a red line in Anchorage.)
Biden has issued an executive order calling for a 100-day review of defense industrial supply chains — but is that enough for a crisis that looms larger with every passing day?
David Zaikin, a Ukrainian-born Canadian citizen working in London, is the CEO of Key Elements Group and founder of the Mining Club at the London Business School.
“China is out there and is trying to win every race globally. The West must do everything it can to subvert its efforts and find alternative nations to work with,” Zaikin told Inside Sources.
“The good news is that there are friendly nations like Canada, Australia, and India that are naturally very rich in rare earths. They are well-positioned to bridge the gap in potential rare earths shortages, or in the event those are weaponized by the PRC,” he says. Read more---
