Why critical minerals now sit at the centre of economic security

America is reshaping markets to secure defence supply chains

America’s defence systems depend on materials most people have never heard of. Materials such as gallium, graphite and rare earth elements sit deep in the supply chains behind missiles, radar and communications systems. For many years, America assumed those materials would flow unhindered through global markets. That assumption looks increasingly fragile.

Critical minerals are now viewed as a strategic priority for economic and national security. Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and amid wider geopolitical tensions, US officials have become increasingly concerned about access to the critical minerals that underpin modern warfare. Many argue that America will need to move faster, accept more risk and reduce reliance on concentrated overseas supply chains. In April 2025, China’s new export controls and licensing requirements on medium and heavy rare earths underscored the concentration risk in critical minerals supply chains. Supplies to most commercial users have resumed under general licences, although military end-users remain denied.

Of the 58 minerals designated as critical by the US government in 2025, America depended entirely on imports for 13 and relied on imports for more than half its supply of another 20, according to the US Geological Survey. That dependence poses a particular risk for the defence supply chain, where small volumes of specialised minerals can have outsized consequences, according to a JPMorganChase report.

“The research shows a significant vulnerability to unreliable sources for the minerals inside our precision missiles,” says Derek Chollet, head of the JPMorganChase Center for Geopolitics. “Replacing just two high-end radar systems can require disproportionately large amounts of certain specialty minerals compared with standard munitions. This lopsided math favours the embargoer.”

“The research shows a significant vulnerability to unreliable sources for the minerals inside our precision missiles.”

Derek Chollet, head of the JPMorganChase Center for Geopolitics

The processing bottleneck

The problem lies upstream. Rare earths are not scarce, but the capacity to process them is. Much of that capacity is concentrated in a small number of markets. Concentration often increases at each stage of the value chain, with processing as a key source of dominance.

Processing those materials also requires reliable energy, another industrial constraint in America, which has a history of underinvestment in its energy infrastructure.

A disruption at any stage—from mining to refining to manufacturing—can slow the entire system.

That creates vulnerability. Many suppliers deeper in the chain are small companies with limited capital and little capacity to absorb shocks. Shortages of processed materials can therefore ripple quickly through production.

Current market concentration helps incumbent suppliers retain significant influence over pricing, licensing, technology access, and the pace at which alternative supply chains can scale. Some governments have also sought to extend export controls to third-party countries when products contain trace amounts of controlled minerals, pushing their influence deeper into global supply chains.

“We are not moving nearly fast enough or thinking radically enough about how to boost production.”

Robert Gates, former US secretary of defence

Rebuilding the system

To reduce dependence, the US government is taking a more active role. The July 2025 One Big Beautiful Bill Act allocated billions of dollars to support domestic critical mineral supply chains through stockpiling, including US$5bn for the Industrial Base Fund and US$2bn for the National Defence Stockpile. Efforts are also under way to rebuild the wider industrial base around critical minerals. One example is JPMorganChase’s Security and Resiliency Initiative, which aims to facilitate, finance and invest in industries linked to economic security and resilience.

America’s strategy rests on direct investment, trade measures, stockpiling and faster regulation. Of these, the clearest shift is the emphasis on speed. For years, strategic projects were slowed by reviews and permitting battles that often stretched over a decade, frustrating efforts to build domestic capacity quickly. Faster coordination can accelerate shovel-ready projects, but new processing capacity typically takes around two years to come online, and new mines require several years of lead time due to permitting and site preparation.

“We are not moving nearly fast enough or thinking radically enough about how to boost production,” warns Robert Gates, former US secretary of defence. Without predictable demand, companies struggle to justify the long investment cycles needed to expand mining and processing capacity. Policymakers increasingly want to reshape the market itself, rather than simply subsidise individual projects. In practice, that means financing support, procurement guarantees and stockpiling commitments to make new refining and processing facilities economically viable.

America is revitalising the National Defence Stockpile, sending a strong demand signal to miners. Backed by a US$2bn congressional appropriation to purchase critical minerals, the government is making domestic mining and refining more attractive to private lenders by providing the long-term certainty that markets often fail to deliver.

What success looks like

Success will require closer integration of supply chains into foreign policy, alongside deeper trade arrangements among trusted partners. It also means accepting that economic security and national security are now closely aligned. Policymakers increasingly argue that resilience does not require full self-sufficiency. In some cases, diversifying even a modest share of supply may be enough to reduce vulnerability and improve flexibility.

“Rather than thinking of it as everybody goes it alone, this is really a time to mobilise allies and to talk about what each and every one of us can do in this very dangerous transition,” says Condoleezza Rice, the 66th US secretary of state.

More than 50 countries participated in the inaugural Critical Minerals Ministerial, a forum hosted by the US State Department in February 2026, underscoring how central critical minerals have become to economic security. Washington is trying to build a new industrial ecosystem stretching from the mine to the missile. For decades, in contrast, it had focused on buying weapons, rather than securing the materials behind them.

Concentration risk in critical minerals will take years to reduce by any meaningful extent. America’s approach is increasingly viewed as a template for how governments may respond to vulnerabilities in other strategic supply chains.

Recent disruptions have made one point clear: economic security and national security are now inseparable—and military power depends as much on resilient supply chains as on defence systems themselves.

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