How American Red Tape Handed China Control of the World’s Most Strategic Minerals
For decades, the United States has talked tough about national security, technological dominance, and economic independence. But when it comes to one of the most strategically vital resources on Earth — rare earth minerals — America didn’t lose the race.
It opted out.
In a new episode of Breaking Battlegrounds, hosts Sam Stone and Chuck Warren sat down with Dr. Meg Reiss, founder and CEO of Solid Intel, to unpack a reality that should alarm policymakers, defense planners, and everyday Americans alike: China’s dominance of rare earth minerals isn’t the result of innovation or natural advantage — it’s the result of American self-sabotage.
Dr. Reiss, whose recent Washington Post column sparked national attention, laid out how decades of U.S. regulatory decisions have quietly transferred control of critical mineral processing to America’s largest geopolitical rival — with consequences that stretch from consumer electronics to battlefield readiness.
Rare Earths Aren’t Rare — Our Strategy Is
Despite the name, rare earth minerals are not actually rare. The United States is rich in them. What is rare, Dr. Reiss explains, is the political will to mine and process them domestically.
Beginning in the 1980s, environmental regulations — many well-intentioned — made mining and mineral processing increasingly difficult, expensive, and slow inside the U.S. Rather than modernize responsibly, America outsourced the problem.
The result?
Up to 90% of global rare earth processing now happens in China
For some minerals, China controls 100% of the refining
These materials are foundational to defense systems, aerospace, energy infrastructure, and advanced technology
In other words, the backbone of American power is increasingly dependent on Chinese supply chains.
Processing Is the Real Bottleneck
One of the most misunderstood aspects of the rare earth debate is that mining alone isn’t the problem.
The real choke point is processing — turning raw material into usable inputs for manufacturing and defense. While some mining still happens outside China, nearly all roads lead back to Chinese refineries.
That creates a dangerous asymmetry.
China doesn’t need to fire a shot to exert pressure. It simply needs to restrict exports — something it has already demonstrated a willingness to do.
National Security Isn’t Abstract Anymore
Dr. Reiss emphasized that rare earths aren’t just about smartphones and electric vehicles. They are essential to:
Precision-guided weapons
Aircraft and spacecraft
Advanced communications
Intelligence and surveillance systems
When supply chains are controlled by an adversary, national security becomes fragile by design.
Executive Orders Aren’t Enough
During the Trump administration, rare earth dependency finally received serious attention. An executive order issued in March aimed to cut regulatory barriers and empower private companies to rebuild domestic capacity.
But as Dr. Reiss noted, policy on paper isn’t the same as action in practice.
Environmental reviews, permitting delays, and bureaucratic inertia continue to stall progress. Even when the federal government signals urgency, the system often cannot move at the speed strategy demands.
The Path Forward: Strategic Realism
The solution, according to Dr. Reiss, is not environmental recklessness — it’s strategic alignment.
America must:
Streamline permitting without abandoning safeguards
Treat critical minerals as national security assets
Invest in domestic processing and allied supply chains
Accept that strategic independence requires trade-offs
Because the alternative is far worse: dependence on a geopolitical rival for the materials that power modern civilization.
The Bottom Line
China’s rare earth dominance is not inevitable.
It is policy-made — and policy-reversible.
But only if the United States decides that security, resilience, and strategic independence matter more than regulatory paralysis.
Transcript
Sam Stone: Welcome to another episode of Breaking Battlegrounds. With yours, Chuck Warren. I’m Sam Stone. Our first guest up today, Dr. Meg Reiss , is the founder and CEO of Solid Intel, the first generative AI company focused on de-risking supply chains and intelligence for the US government and commercial sector. And she wrote a great piece that came to our attention in the Washington Post. China’s rare earth dominance is secured by American red tape. Dr. Reiss , welcome to the program.
Dr. Meg Reiss: Thank you so much for having me.
Chuck Warren: All right, Dr. Reiss , you wrote a great article, a column in the Washington Post, China’s rare earth dominance is secured by American red tape. This is issue Sam and I have talked about for a while. It’s something President Trump, unlike any other president, has been focusing on like a laser beam. Explain why we cannot allow China to have rare earth dominance and refining, and why is America red tape killing us in this category?
Dr. Meg Reiss: Yeah, absolutely. So starting in the first Trump administration and continuing through today, the administration started recognizing a massive problem that we allowed ourselves to get into. Starting in the 1980s, when a lot of environmental protections started coming in place, we started deciding that critical mineral processing, as well as a lot of mining, was too dirty to allow to happen in the US. And so we started outsourcing it.
And what ended up happening is a lot of mines went overseas, but more than that, critical mineral processing. So critical minerals are the base components of pretty much every technology we rely on, and definitely the technology that the Department of War relies on. All of that processing, most of it started happening in China. And so for a lot of critical mineral processing, there’s 90 % processing in China.
For some of it, it’s 100%. So we started allowing in the 80s and through today, 100 % processing to happen for a lot of critical mineral and rare earths on what turns out to be a massive, our biggest adversary. And so recognizing that we needed to figure out how to bring that back to the US or to the US and our reliable allies became a huge priority of the administration and a number of people in Congress.
Chuck Warren: Two questions here, a little background for our listeners. First of all, why is it called rare earth minerals when they’re really not that rare? And two, how many of the rare earth minerals do we have here in the United States that we would not have to rely on other countries?
Dr. Meg Reiss: Yeah. So rare earths is really a misnomer. You can do the mining of these critical minerals. Rare earths is a subset that we’re more reliant on than the broader base of critical minerals. And it turns out the US is a rich, robust country for the mining of the majority of them. We have a couple that we have outside dependencies on, and some of those are necessary for aeronautics space in particular.
So we do have to make sure that we have access to places like the DR Congo and some of these other really kind of difficult places to operate in. And so, yeah, we’re kind of moving into figuring out what we can do here, what we can do in other places, make sure that we align our business and strategic objectives so that we’re getting at all of those capabilities. And sorry, the second part of your question.
Chuck Warren: Well, how many rare earth minerals are there and how many can we mine and process in the United States if we didn’t have all this red tape?
Dr. Meg Reiss: Yeah, the vast majority. I think that we’re in a position where if we kind of removed a lot of the red tape, was Donald Trump put out an EO or an executive order in March that basically put a ton of capabilities behind the private sector to start doing almost all of that mining and processing here.
And he basically said, we need to cut the red tape, and we need to give companies the authority to start doing this without having all of these environmental reviews coming down the pipeline. And unfortunately, it’s not happening as fast as the EO allows. So we need to try to figure out how do we make sure that they can act on this executive order? And when we’re saying, what is the exact percentage, I don’t have it in my head, but I’d say more than 90%.
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