Rare Earth Elements and Technology Supply Chains

Rare earth elements (REEs) are a group of seventeen metallic elements — the fifteen lanthanides plus scandium and yttrium — that, despite their name, are not especially scarce in the earth's crust but are difficult and environmentally costly to separate from the ores in which they occur mixed together. They are essential to a wide range of modern technologies: neodymium and dysprosium are critical to the powerful permanent magnets used in electric vehicle motors and wind turbine generators, europium and terbium are used in phosphors for displays and lighting, and lanthanum is used in catalytic converters and camera lenses, while several REEs are indispensable to precision-guided munitions, radar systems, and other defense applications. China accounted for over 60 percent of global rare earth mining and, more decisively, roughly 85 to 90 percent of global processing and refining capacity through the early 2020s, according to U.S. Geological Survey and International Energy Agency data, giving Beijing a chokepoint over the "midstream" step that turns raw ore into usable materials even where mining occurs elsewhere.