It’s great news that the Trump administration agreed this week with Australia to take steps toward breaking Communist China’s chokehold on rare earth minerals. [emphasis, links added]
In addition to a July announcement of a project to extract rare earths from coal mined in Wyoming, President Donald Trump is moving us in a desperately needed direction. But our vulnerabilities to China go much deeper, and much more and faster action is needed.
Rare earth minerals are essential for modern technology. The good news is that they are available virtually everywhere. The bad news is that they generally require strip-mining to produce ore, and then the ore must be processed and refined.
Because environmentalists oppose both mining and processing, neither activity has been undertaken on a meaningful scale in the U.S. for decades.
And while a few Western nations allow rare earth strip-mining, about 90 percent of rare earth processing occurs in China, where there is no green activism or bureaucracy to obstruct operations.
This means that virtually all our technology is dependent on China, including military technology such as the advanced F-35 fighter jet. Imagine not being able to build warplanes without China’s cooperation. Even if China were neutral toward the U.S., this situation would be unacceptable.
China plans to become the lone global superpower by 2049, if not sooner. Toward that goal, China is quietly but certainly preparing itself for confrontation, if not war.
This is evidenced, in part, by China’s focus on electrifying its economy to reduce its dependency on the global oil and natural gas market, which is dominated by the U.S.
China has also cleverly worked to avoid war against a superior foe by simply checkmating the U.S. and Western nations through economic and energy dependence, and even sabotage.
After being mildly criticized by Australia during COVID, China announced that it would use trade as a weapon and then promptly stopped trading with Australia.
More recently, in response to U.S. and European efforts to build EV batteries domestically, China announced export limits on the rare earths and processed graphite needed to make batteries.
The Trump administration moved to stymie this part of the Chinese plan through the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) enacted last July.
Our China-dependent technology includes all the wind turbines, solar panels, grid batteries, and EVs that greens have induced us to buy over the past two decades.
Worse than just the $250 billion in solar subsidies China expected to reap from U.S. taxpayers through the Green New Scam is the fact that electricity prices and equipment availability in the U.S. would be almost entirely dependent on the goodwill of China.
The OBBBA reduced Green New Scam spending by about $500 billion, but there is still another $500 billion or so left over from its passage that can be spent on technology from China.
Further, there are genuine concerns that our electricity grid may already be contaminated with pre-sabotaged Chinese technology. In 2024, Duke Energy removed Chinese-made batteries from the U.S. Marine Corps base at Camp Lejeune over concerns that China could communicate remotely with the batteries. In the U.K., there is concern that China can remotely control EVs.
Upcoming EV disaster.👇https://t.co/41dTlRIUp4 pic.twitter.com/lrqGthIhPx
— Steve Milloy (@JunkScience) March 22, 2024
At this point, we don’t even know how vulnerable to China we really are. It’s almost too scary to think about. But we must find out.
Here is how to start:
In the wake of the February 2022 invasion of Ukraine by Russia, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) notified publicly-traded companies that, given the war, they might have to disclose their dependence on, or involvement with, Russia.
Because our economy relies to a much greater extent on China than Russia, I subsequently petitioned the SEC to require that publicly traded companies report to their shareholders on their dependency on China. I didn’t expect the Biden administration to do anything, and it lived up to my expectations. But the Trump administration should follow up.
Over the past few decades, our political and business leaders have allowed and/or made us completely vulnerable to our chief geopolitical rival, if not enemy, China.
We don’t actually know how vulnerable we are and can’t possibly even develop a plan to do something about it. We need to find out before it’s too late.
Some may think that if we are vulnerable to China, then they must somehow be vulnerable to us, and the vulnerabilities would be offsetting.
But Communist China is a ruthless totalitarian state that is willing to do unspeakable things and impose conditions on its own population that Westerners can’t imagine or don’t appreciate.
If economic and societal pain comes from war or confrontation, China’s zero tolerance for internal dissent will be a key advantage.
To be prepared to defend ourselves, we must understand our vulnerabilities as soon as possible. Communist China already knows them and may be ready to exploit them at any time.
Steve Milloy is a biostatistician and lawyer who posts on X at @JunkScience.
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