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Highlights

• China controls over 90% of rare earth magnet manufacturing, creating a critical national security vulnerability for the United States.
• Vulcan Elements represents a pioneering effort to rebuild the U.S. rare earth magnet supply chain through domestic and allied sourcing.
• The podcast highlights the strategic risks of technological dependence and calls for rapid industrial policy intervention to reclaim manufacturing capabilities.

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This NatSec Tech podcast episode (opens in a new tab), hosted by Jean Meserve (opens in a new tab) for the Special Competitive Studies Project (SCSP), probes the United States’ dependence on China for rare earth magnets—key components in nearly every high-performance technology, from smartphones to F-35 fighter jets. The episode features Nadia Shadlow, (opens in a new tab) a national security expert, and John Maslin (opens in a new tab), co-founder and CEO of Vulcan Elements (opens in a new tab), a U.S.-based magnet manufacturer. Framed as both a national security crisis and a market failure, the conversation follows a patriotic-industrial narrative: the U.S. was once dominant in magnetics, ceded the field to China through decades of inaction, and now must urgently reclaim it—or risk strategic impotence.

An Overview

Shadlow and Maslin stress that rare earth magnets are mission-critical to modern electronics and defense systems. These components drive systems from drones to nuclear submarines, converting electricity into motion. China manufactures over 90% of them globally and controls the majority of processing capacity despite only mining about 55% of rare earth ore—underscoring a value-chain chokepoint in processing and component production, not geology.

Rare Earth Exchanges (REEx) suggests that identifying China’s dominance over the processing and manufacturing (not merely mining) of rare earth magnets is crucial and often misunderstood. Maslin clarifies that holding rare earth ore is insufficient—conversion into components is the strategic gap.

Also, Maslin asserts that China’s rare earth dominance is not merely a natural advantage but the result of decades of strategic state subsidies, vertical integration, and price manipulation. This has hollowed out Western capacity and made profitable magnet manufacturing outside China nearly impossible. Flooding the market with cheap materials discouraged U.S. investment.

While the narrative of Chinese underpricing is well supported by historical events (e.g., the WTO rare earths dispute), the podcast does not explore counterexamples such as at least somewhat successful Japanese or Australian mitigation strategies. There is little quantitative economic analysis of how much U.S. firms were undercut or how pricing mechanisms worked.

The 2022 pause in F-35 production due to a Chinese alloy in its magnets illustrates the acute national security risk. Shadlow and Maslin frame this not just as a logistical issue, but as a potential vulnerability that an adversary could exploit. The hosts assert that dependence on China for these components fundamentally undermines military readiness and deterrence.

The F-35 anecdote is a powerful, real-world data point. This section successfully translates technical dependency into strategic risk, echoing concerns from Pentagon reports.

REEx Critical Review

Maslin presents Vulcan Elements as a “first principles” manufacturer aiming to rebuild the rare earth magnet supply chain using U.S. and allied sources—mines, equipment, software, and recycled materials. The company is currently at pilot-scale, with ambitions to scale quickly to support aerospace, defense, and critical infrastructure, though not consumer appliances.

While Maslin’s passion and mission orientation are clear, details on current production capacity, cost parity, and scale-up timelines are vague. Claims of “close to Chinese prices” lack transparency. The statement that Vulcan has “decoupled” from China is aspirational—still reliant on allied partners doing the processing, not yet self-contained.

The discussion passed over key international developments, for example. Australia’s Lynas, Japan’s efforts with rare earth recycling, and the EU’s Critical Raw Materials Act are all but absent. While Maslin alludes to using “allied” supply chains, there’s no exploration of potential joint ventures, transatlantic strategies, or Western capital flows into rare earth projects.

Including allied industrial policy responses would contextualize the U.S. strategy and avoid the implication of U.S. exceptionalism. This undermines the narrative that only the U.S. is reacting to China’s dominance.

The podcast paints a simplified binary of good (U.S. innovators, like Vulcan) vs. bad (China’s “AI-enabled drones” vs. our “swords”). Maslin likens Vulcan’s challenge to Teddy Roosevelt charging San Juan Hill—implying that only patriotic grit and government support stand in the way of victory. The host and guests never challenge this narrative, and no critical questions are posed about market demand, sustainability, or economic efficiency of rebuilding this industry domestically.

Meserve offers little skepticism or hard questioning. The tone veers into promotional territory for Vulcan Elements rather than hard analysis.

The workforce issue—often a bottleneck in advanced manufacturing—is brushed off. Maslin claims complementary industries can be tapped, and Shadlow says people just need “to be connected” to jobs. But there’s no examination of long-term training pipelines, the technical complexity of magnet production, or the challenge of rebuilding a hollowed-out industrial base.

This is an oversimplification that lacks rigor regarding the nature of many of the problems with labor in the rare earth element supply chain.

The human capital deficit is one of the most serious barriers to reshoring advanced manufacturing and deserves deeper attention.

Finally, Shadlow concedes that the U.S. has failed to act for decades despite knowing the risks. The pair argue that tariffs, government procurement, and loan guarantees are finally being deployed but give little sense of which policy levers work best. The discussion is generic: more urgency, more scale, more commitment. No policy is critically evaluated.

There’s little discussion of environmental permitting, NEPA delays, or community opposition—real hurdles to U.S.-based rare earth projects. Nor do they explore the risk of over-subsidization or pork-barrel spending.

Broader Implications and Strategic Outlook

The podcast ends on an urgent, almost existential note: future generations will pay the price if the U.S. does not regain rare earth magnet self-sufficiency within a few years. Shadlow cites the “Made in China 2025” plan’s success as a benchmark and urges measuring U.S. performance over the next year. Maslin stresses execution over talk—urging both government and industry to “move fast and get it done.”

REEx suggests that the diagnosis—strategic dependence on China for critical components—is legitimate. However, the solution, focused narrowly on reshoring, lacks a full strategic menu. Tech-for-resilience swaps, R&D in rare earth alternatives, regional trade alliances, stockpiling, and supply diversification incentives are missing.

As reported by Raleigh News & Observer, (opens in a new tab) Maslin started Vulcan Elements with electrical engineer Piotr Kulik in 2023 while studying at Harvard Business School. According to Maslin, the company was drawn to Research Triangle Park for the area's talent pool, manufacturing-friendly climate, and proximity to suppliers and customers, including the military.

Conclusion

This NatSec Tech episode is a timely and patriotic call-to-action on rare earth magnet dependency, with John Maslin and Nadia Shadlow as credible, passionate advocates. They correctly identify the strategic chokehold China maintains through its control over processing and component manufacturing. However, the episode often slips into uncritical optimism and lacks analytical depth on allied coordination, labor force development, and policy trade-offs. The omission of hard data, competing strategies, and tough questions leaves the conversation more inspirational than prescriptive. Still, it’s a compelling narrative that usefully frames the rare earth crisis as not just economic but existential—for national security, industrial resilience, and America’s geopolitical future.

Have you seen the REEx Rare Earth Elements (REE) (light) ranking?  Stay tuned as REEx develops ranking indices for heavy REE, refining, recycling, and magnet production.