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Chinese Defense Minister Wei Fenghe (center) speaks with U.S. Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis (not pictured) during their meeting at the Bayi Building in Beijing on June 27, 2018. Mark Schiefelbein/AFP via Getty Images
“I’ve flown in space over China many times, I’ve been around this planet hundreds of times. You look at China and you see what look like very strangely colored lakes. And that’s because they’re dealing with things like rare earths. It’s a very dirty process,” Kelly said, alluding to the pollution China has suffered from mining its minerals.
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Senator Tom Cotton said that if China were to cut off the United States from these resources, the current Defense Department stockpile would last less than a year.
The production and extraction of these materials in the United States is very limited due to strict environmental regulations. Other supply chain issues don’t help. Given growing tensions with China over Taiwan and Ukraine, Beijing’s monopoly on rare earth minerals is an alarming national security issue.
CHINA’S INTEREST IN U.S. AGRICULTURE POSE SECURITY THREAT, FEDERAL REPORT WARNS
Drew Horn, a former US Army Green Beret, saw how important these materials were to American security while fighting overseas. Horn started a company called GreenMet with the goal of securing these minerals in the supply chain. Horn explained the problem: “It’s incredibly difficult to synchronize and bring everything together in a way that really moves the needle. Because what you’re talking about is basically creating a vertically aligned supply chain that no longer exists than in China.”
Horn believes the United States has the capability to build the technology to process these minerals in the United States, and it may even be superior to what is being done in China. “It would actually be superior to what is happening now in China because there would be regular regulatory oversight and better technology that would be forced due to the environment here,” Horn explained.
The Ronald Reagan Institute underscored its concern in a task force report released last November about the need for the United States to become more self-sufficient. “China’s push for self-reliance stands in stark contrast to America’s growing reliance on imports, including in supply chains critical to national security such as rare earth minerals and semis. -drivers,” the report said.
Roger Zakheim, director of the institute, said: “We gave it to China. We basically gave it to China and it impacts everything from our F-35 fighter jets to the phones we we use every day in our lives.”