Highlights

• China's 85-90% control of rare earth processing—not mining—creates genuine leverage over defense supply chains, though claims of absolute dominance overstate reserves and accessibility constraints.
• Electronic warfare capabilities against Starlink exist but remain a fluid cat-and-mouse contest rather than the decisive theater-scale advantage suggested by polemical sources.
• Investor takeaway: Midstream processing control, not reserves, determines rare earth power, requiring Western industrial response through separation capacity, substitutes, and offtake agreements.

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So what about rare earths?  Is the leverage real?  Is Absolutism not?

A polemical essay by Eve Ottenberg via lefty leaning Counterpunch (opens in a new tab) argues that China has “trumped the Western empire” across rare earths, space-based communications, and information control.

Start with what holds up.

China does dominate rare earth processing—roughly 85–90% of global separation capacity—and this confers real leverage over downstream industries, including defense. U.S. primes such as Lockheed Martin and Raytheon depend on magnet-grade inputs (NdPr, Dy, Tb) where China remains the critical choke point. Export controls on gallium and germanium in 2023, and subsequent signaling around additional dual-use materials, demonstrated Beijing’s willingness to use this leverage.

Where the article stretches: claims that China “has 60% of the world’s rare earths” blur the difference between reserves, production, and processing. China’s reserve share is far lower than its processing share, and the “other 40%” is not “nearly inaccessible”—it is costly, slower to scale, and politically constrained. The vulnerability is real; the absolutism is not.

Starlink and the Fog of Electronic War

The piece asserts that China and Russia can broadly “jam Starlink” and implies decisive battlefield outcomes. It’s accurate that electronic warfare against Starlink terminals has been observed and that countermeasures evolve rapidly. It is not established that Starlink can be reliably disabled at theater scale without tradeoffs, nor that such capabilities are turnkey or universally replicable. EW is a cat-and-mouse contest, not a checkmate.

Information Space: Strategy Framed as Destiny

China’s long-term effort to firewall domestic information platforms and reduce reliance on U.S.-based social media is factual. Calling this an “unbeatable” model exports ideology as inevitability. Securing information space may enhance regime stability; it does not automatically translate to economic or technological supremacy abroad.

Note the authors fail to grasp China’s own crises, including their overproduction crisis and ongoing real estate bubbles Rare Earth Exchanges™ chronicles.

What Investors Should Take Away

This article’s tone is confrontational and speculative, but it surfaces a hard truth: midstream control—not mining—decides power. Rare earth separation, metals, and magnets remain China’s strongest card. The West’s response must be industrial, not rhetorical—build processing, qualify substitutes, and secure offtake. The rest is noise.

Source: Eve Ottenberg commentary