CHRISTINE PARTHEMORE of the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) explores a range of potential vulnerabilities that stem from the dependence of the U.S. defense supply chains on minerals such as lithium, gallium, rhenium, tantalum, niobium and rare earths such as neodymium, samarium and dysprosium on the back of China's supply blockade of rare-earth minerals to Japan in 2010.
In a CNAS report, "Elements of Security: Mitigating the Risks of U.S. Dependence on Critical Minerals", she states that minerals could affect U.S. interests through four factors: 1) an evolving energy paradigm, 2) increasing space exploration 3) accelerating seabed exploration and 4) a changing defense industrial base while policymakers were currently hampered by a lack of access to appropriate information and where hype could drive policy debates.
She states that vulnerability to mineral supply disruptions could cause high cost overruns for weapons, lags in delivery of equipment, provide leverage to supplier countries and also inhibit development of clean energy technologies. She concludes that the U.S. should conduct new assessments of its defense supply chains, enhance its data collection capabilities on critical minerals as well as promote information-sharing with the private sector, integrate mineral supply vulnerabilities into its war-gaming scenarios as well as for Senate to ratify the U.N convention on the law of the sea (UNCLOS). 