Exclusive Can the US and its allies break China’s grip on rare earths and AI technology?

South China Morning Post  |  Nayan Seth

United States Undersecretary of State for Economic Affairs Jacob Helberg has outlined a comprehensive whole-of-supply-chain strategy to reduce Western reliance on China for critical minerals and rare earth elements. This initiative aims to secure alternative supply chains essential for maintaining the democratic world's leadership in artificial intelligence and advanced technologies.

The initiative builds on the Pax Silica summit held in Washington in June 2026, which convened international partners to address vulnerabilities in the global semiconductor and mineral processing sectors. Currently, Beijing's dominant position in mining and refining presents a severe choke point for Western defense and commercial industries. To counter this, Washington is coordinating with allies to build redundant processing facilities, establish joint investment frameworks, and implement strict export controls. This coordinated effort seeks to establish a resilient, trusted supply network that insulates critical technology sectors from potential geopolitical coercion and supply disruptions.

Comment

The Mineral Security Partnership exposes the structural difficulty of replicating China's vertically integrated processing ecosystem. While mining operations can be diversified relatively quickly, establishing high-volume refining capacity for heavy rare earths requires years of capital-intensive development. This lag leaves Western defense supply chains vulnerable to targeted export restrictions on critical precursors like gallium and germanium. Consequently, near-term technological decoupling remains constrained by physical processing bottlenecks rather than political will.

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