Rare Earths: Uses, Processing Challenges, and Geopolitical Stakes

Rare-earth elements (REEs) — the 15 lanthanides plus yttrium and scandium — enable many technologies we take for granted. They improve display and camera optics, refine petroleum, remove steel impurities, and form high-performance magnets used in hard drives, earbuds, EV motors, medical devices, and many defense systems such as radar, lasers, missiles, and drones. REEs are chemically common in Earth’s crust, but economically concentrated deposits are rare. They occur bound in minerals, require multi-step processing—mining, mineral separation, oxide production, metal conversion, and alloy/magnet manufacture—and demand specialized facilities, chemicals, and know-how. Separation generates hazardous wastes, sometimes radioactive, posing remediation and permitting challenges that raise costs and slow project development. China dominates the supply chain: roughly 60% of mining, over 90% of refining and oxide separation, and the vast majority of magnet production. The United States mines a fraction of global output and historically exported much raw material for processing abroad. To reduce dependence, the U.S. Department of Defense has committed substantial funding and purchase guarantees to scale a California processing and magnet facility, aiming to increase output dramatically. Some observers suggest this could cut reliance within three to five years, but environmental, permitting, and market-pressure obstacles make timelines uncertain. Strategic, environmental, and industrial considerations now converge around rebuilding resilient domestic REE supply chains.