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War on the Rocks ·Future-gazing

The U.S. Navy’s Subsea Rare Earth Vulnerability

by Ryan Musto

Published 2026-06-25 08:00:14+00:00

How do you build a stealth submarine when a rival controls the metals that keep it quiet?

0:00 / 16:36 · Narrator Charon

Context

The Columbia-class submarine is built to be the ghost-quiet future of American naval power. But as Ryan Musto points out in this piece from 25 June 2026, the magnets that make the boat move and stay silent rely almost entirely on rare earth metals refined in China. The essay skips past the usual alarm bells about supply chains to ask a harder, more practical question. If Beijing can simply crash mineral prices the moment an American competitor tries to open a processing plant, how exactly does the Pentagon convince private investors to build one anyway?

Show notes

A breakdown of the U.S. Navy’s reliance on Chinese-refined rare earth metals to build and operate its next-generation nuclear submarines. Details how Beijing manipulates market prices to bankrupt Western processing facilities before they can reach commercial scale. Outlines a proposed financial structure of loan guarantees and multi-year procurement contracts designed to attract private capital and rebuild a domestic supply chain.

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