Terra Magnetica

I have just uploaded the pre-print of a new white paper titled “Running the Gauntlet: Rare Earths, Specialty Metals and Turf Wars Within the Beltway“. I started work on this after discovering that rare earth materials feature prominently in current legislation going through the US Congress.  Posted below are the first few paragraphs of the paper:

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“In the past couple of years there has been a considerable uptick in public discussions on rare earth materials and their growing importance to the US economy. This is hardly surprising, given recent developments in hybrid vehicles, electric vehicles and innovative electrical generators for wind turbines. Such technologies make use of rare earth elements, after being incorporated into permanent magnets or batteries. Industry experts try to make sense of sometimes-conflicting projected numbers for future rare earth usage, while noting the lack of significant domestic production of rare earths at present. It is not surprising therefore, that there is an almost daily barrage of news describing impending doom for these emerging energy-related technologies, without a change in US reliance on rare earth material imports.

There is another dimension to these materials, however, that is now gaining greater attention, particularly as domestic sourcing of rare earth materials is actually thawing from its recent Ice Age, and as more potential rare earth plays are investigated and developed, both in North America and beyond.

We’re talking of course about the criticality of rare earth materials to US national security – economic security, yes, but more important, to national defense objectives. There have been recent moves to look at rare earths in the same light as other materials whose procurement for US Department of Defense (DoD) contracts are subject to import restrictions (the so-called specialty metals). A closer look at this trend is warranted, since, despite growing optimism in some quarters, it will be some years before the known rare earth resources in North America can be fully brought on line. The evaluation of rare earth materials in the context of import restrictions is in contrast to the related but distinctly different topic of domestic stockpiling and buffer stocks, which will be examined in a future article.

To better understand the impact of rare earth materials potentially being classified as strategic materials in the legal sense (and in particular as specialty metals), we need to see how they fit into the recent historical context pertaining to existing strategic and critical materials, which are deemed to be of potential national security interest of the US”.
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The paper then looks at the current defense authorization bills going through the US Congress, what they have to say about rare earth materials, and then looks at the potential consequences of this legislation and comparing it to existing strategic and critical materials. It also highlights the significant friction between the DoD and Congress, on this and related issues. I believe that it covers some ground relating to rare earths that has had little public exposure before now.

Feel free to download a pre-print of the paper, and to let me know what you think of it.