Alt cause to DIB collapse– lack of strategic minerals- triggers their China impact

Gregory Wischer is principal at Dei Gratia Minerals, a critical minerals consultancy. He has written about critical mineral issues in Newsweek, RealClearMarkets, RealClearEnergy, National Defense Magazine, Washington Times, The National Interest, 19FortyFive, the Wilson Center’s New Security Beat, and the Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s The Strategist.

Jack Little is an independent critical minerals and rare earths analyst. He has been published in the Wall Street Journal and the Idaho State Journal

THE U.S. GOVERNMENT SHOULD STOCKPILE MORE CRITICAL MINERALS; War On The Rocks; https://warontherocks.com/2023/09/the-u-s-government-should-stockpile-more-critical-minerals/

The 2022 National Defense Strategy describes China as America’s “most consequential strategic competitor for the coming decades.” Yet the United States is unprepared to fight a major war against the Chinese military — or even to arm Ukraine against the Russian military, as evidenced by the defense industrial base’s struggle to replenish munitions like artillery shells and Javelin missiles. A longer, more intense U.S.-Chinese conflict over Taiwan would expose even deeper cracks in the defense industrial base and undermine the U.S. military’s ability to defeat the Chinese military: The United States lacks sufficient stocks of critical minerals to support the defense industrial base, from nickel in superalloys for jet engines to rare earth elements in magnets for guided munitions. As a principal at Dei Gratia Minerals and as an independent critical minerals analyst, we, the authors, have an interest in increased U.S. government focus on critical minerals. But our combined years of experience in the sector and our desire to safeguard America’s national security and economic prosperity have led us to the conclusion that the U.S. government does not have enough critical minerals to effectively fight — and win — a war against China. To ensure the defense industrial base indeed has sufficient supplies of critical minerals, we believe that the U.S. government should increase critical mineral stocks in the National Defense Stockpile.