Chart, page-13

The materials China just restricted aren’t random. They’re chosen with the precision of someone who’s read U.S. product spec sheets and defense procurement orders. Start with dysprosium. If your electric motor needs to function at high temperatures—and they all do—then mostly it is using neodymium magnets doped with dysprosium. No dysprosium, no thermal stability. No thermal stability, no functioning motor in your F-35 or your Mustang Mach-E. China controls essentially the entire supply of dysprosium, and no, there is no magical mine in Wyoming or Quebec waiting in the wings. If dysprosium doesn’t come out of China, it doesn’t come out at all. It’s the spinal cord of electrification, and right now China’s holding the vertebrae.
Then there’s tungsten. The metal that makes bullets bulletproof. Literally. Tungsten is what you use when you need to cut, drill, punch, or penetrate anything harder than stale marshmallow. The U.S. hasn’t produced meaningful amounts of it since the Obama administration, and China sits on 80% of global production. Oh, sure, you can try Vietnam or Portugal, but good luck getting those volumes at scale without waiting years and paying triple. Tungsten isn’t just in ammunition. It’s in the tiny vertical connections between layers of circuitry in semiconductor chip, CNC machine tools, and high-performance alloys that go into everything from jet engines to deep-drilling rigs. When China put tungsten behind a licensing wall, it wasn’t targeting one sector—it was targeting the industrial base of a specific big country that’s trying to re-grow precision manufacturing at scale.
Terbium, dysprosium’s equally awkward but equally vital cousin, got scooped up too. You want high-efficiency motors in your EVs and offshore wind turbines? You want night-vision goggles, sonar systems, or magnetostrictive actuators? You’re going to need terbium. Like dysprosium, terbium comes almost exclusively from Chinese soil, processed in Chinese facilities, and licensed by Chinese bureaucrats with a nuanced appreciation for geopolitical leverage. There’s no viable substitute that doesn’t involve performance compromises, re-engineering, or violating the laws of thermodynamics.