ARGUMENT: CRITICAL MINERALSThe 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.

Gregory Wischer and Jack Little write in War on the Rocks that alonger, 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.

They add

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.

The statutory purpose of the National Defense Stockpile is to stockpile strategic and critical materials in order “to decrease and to preclude, when possible, a dangerous and costly dependence by the United States upon foreign sources or a single point of failure for supplies of such materials in times of national emergency.” In other words, the National Defense Stockpile should contain enough materials to support the U.S. military and essential civilian needs in a hypothetical war scenario. While classified, this war scenario is likely a U.S.-Chinese conflict over Taiwan, including a homeland defense situation. The Department of Defense says the Defense Logistics Agency — the agency responsible for managing the National Defense Stockpile — uses “a robust, data-driven modeling process” to determine the appropriate levels of minerals in the National Defense Stockpile, meeting these levels by acquiring more minerals when necessary and selling some minerals when possible.