From Mojave to Beijing: how America quietly conceded the rare earth race
At the edge of California’s Mojave Desert, the Mountain Pass mine looks like any other stretch of dust and rock. But for decades, this lonely pit supplied the world with...
By Fox News · Fox News
At the edge of California’s Mojave Desert , the Mountain Pass mine looks like any other stretch of dust and rock. But for decades, this lonely pit supplied the world with the rare-earth elements that make modern technology — and modern warfare — possible. In the 1980s, Mountain Pass was the beating heart of a quiet American advantage. The ore pulled from its depths yielded neodymium, lanthanum and cerium — metals that powered radar systems, early computer chips and the guidance of precision munitions. At its peak, the mine met nearly two-thirds of global demand. Then, almost overnight, it went silent. As environmental rules tightened and global prices collapsed under China’s state-subsidized production, the U.S. abandoned what had once been its mineral lifeline. Trucks stopped rolling. Processing plants rusted in the desert sun. And the world’s most powerful economy became dependent on a rival for the elements essential to its defense. CHINA'S RARE EARTH TECH OBSESSION ENSNARES US RESIDENT AS CCP LOOKS TO MAINTAIN STRANGLEHOLD "The Middle East has oil; China has rare earths," former Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping declared in 1987. Just as Arab nations turned oil wealth into global power, Beijing recognized the leverage it could gain by dominating the materials modern industry would only grow more dependent on. Four decades later, that foresight has paid off. China now controls roughly 70 percent of global rare-earth mining and nearly 90 percent of refining — the most strategic and profitable step in the chain. The U.S. didn’t just lose ground in mining — it handed Beijing the technology that made rare earths valuable in the first place. In the early 1990s, a General Motors subsidiary called Magnaquench was producing 85 percent of the magnets used in precision-guided missiles and other defense systems. When GM sold the company in 1995 to a consortium that included two Chinese entities, the consequences were immediate. Within a year, the entire product line had been re…