Highlights

• The Institute for Progress proposes an 'Operation Warp Speed for Rare Earths' to address Chinese export controls and US supply chain vulnerabilities.
• Challenges in mining include permitting, environmental, and community consent issues that don't compress like vaccine trials.
• The brief identifies:
  • China's escalating leverage
  • Opaque US market plumbing
  • Emerging demand-side tools like MP Materials' price floors
• Overlooked issues include:
  • Benchmark dependence
  • Litigation realities
  • Governance risks of proposed Strategic Resilience Reserves
• Investors should view this as a policy wish list, not a build plan:
  • Expect more DC headlines and demand tools
  • Underwrite projects based on permits, power, reagents, and allied offtake
  • Avoid reliance on slogans or compressed timelines

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They also used a  phrase Rare Earth Exchanges (REEx) uses quite a bit,  so let’s be precise. The Institute for Progress/Employ America brief (opens in a new tab) pitches an “Operation Warp Speed for Rare Earths,” arguing that DC can conjure magnets and separation capacity with vaccine-era urgency. It’s a slick frame that has merit obviously. But mining, midstream chemistry, and magnet metallurgy aren’t mRNA—there’s geology, tailings, community consent, and debt cycles that don’t bend to press releases.

What They Get Right (and Useful)

The authors accurately flag Beijing’s widening, extraterritorial export controls on REE products, equipment, and know-how. That’s real leverage—and it’s escalating.  They also clock the US market plumbing problem: opaque bilateral deals, thin hedging, and price whiplash that stalls capex. Point taken—and overdue. Their summary of the MPMaterials–DoD deal (equity + price floor) captures how Washington is finally using demand-side tools to stabilize returns.  But REEx also shares mounting concern about messaging out of the White House.

Where the Argument Wobbles

“Warp Speed” worked because regulators compressed trials in a demand shock with guaranteed national uptake. Of course, it took a lot of government coordination to oversee the national trial site infrastructure.  Rare earths face permitting timelines, water rights, waste streams, and local politics. The brief dodges real siting math and social license costs behind a heroic label.

Price discovery, yes—but whose index? They blast China’s market infrastructure, then nod to US policy that still pegs downside protection to China-linked benchmarks—a dependency loop that undercuts the thesis. The nuance here is thin.

One model to rule them all. Calls for a quasi-Fed “Strategic Resilience Reserve” sound tidy, but governance, collateral rules, and the risk of politicization get little sunlight. If the SRR backstops at the wrong strike, it strands taxpayers and crowds out private offtake, not addressed.

Litigation reform is presented as procedural housekeeping; in practice, tailings, water, and tribal consultation are substantive risks. And we must remember the answer will not be national, but international—tight alliances. And this is unfolding with the Australia—USA deal as an example. But litigation over environment, community involvement, and the like is real in other nations that will be part of the ex-China rare earth supply chains.  Frankly, “narrow exemptions” gloss over why projects die: contested hydrology, not just NEPA clock-runs.

What’s Missing in the Supply-Chain Chessboard

Allied capacity is mentioned but underweighted. Lynas/Sojitz/JOGMEC is the template; Solvay, Shin-Etsu, and EU magnet buildouts matter for near-term resilience. “Warp Speed” should map concrete cross-ally offtake, not just US price floors.

Investor Read

This is a savvy synthesis—but also advocacy. Treat it as a policy wish list, not a build plan. The accurate parts: Chinese controls are expanding; US is experimenting with price floors and equity; market plumbing is brittle. The soft parts: permitting realities, benchmark dependence, SRR governance, and the over-promised clock speed of heavy industry. Note POTUS cannot keep reiterating that all is under control.  Net: expect more DC demand tools and headlines; underwrite projects on permits, power, reagents, and offtake—not slogans.

 Citation: IFP/Employ America, “How to Implement an Operation Warp Speed for Rare Earths,” Oct 21, 2025.

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