Given the ability of the words “rare earths” to bring the leadership of the world’s largest economy to its knees, it’s tempting to think that establishing a supply chain to produce the minerals outside of China is a challenge on the scale of putting a man on the moon.

In fact, that’s a vast overestimate.

Only a tiny amount of government spending is needed to bulletproof most of the world’s supplies of the elements, essential for high-strength magnets used in military aircraft and munitions as well as electric cars and wind turbines. It’s probably in the order of a single White House ballroom ($US200 million) or, among Silicon Valley’s hyperscalers, six hours of spending on AI data centres ($US350 million). By some measures, governments might even turn a profit on the transaction.

China knows that its dominance of rare earths, and rare earth magnets in particular, gives it tremendous leverage over the US.Credit: Bloomberg

What’s been missing until very recently is sustained attention and follow-through from officials in Europe and the US. Beijing’s latest export controls appear to have changed that for good. In thinking that rare earths were a geopolitical weapon equal to developed democracies’ hold over the semiconductor supply chain, China has vastly overplayed its hand.

That’s because minerals processing is not rocket science. Nor is it the 3-nanometer chip design enabled by extreme-ultraviolet-lithography machines – a true moonshot innovation that’s involved decades, and tens of........

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