April 14, 2010. Washington, D.C.

The U.S. Government Accountability Office filed Report GAO-10-617R with the Senate and House Armed Services Committees. Title: Rare Earth Materials in the Defense Supply Chain. Forty-one pages. The conclusion came down to one sentence:

"Based on industry estimates, rebuilding a U.S. rare earth supply chain may take up to 15 years and is dependent on several factors, including securing capital investments in processing infrastructure, developing new technologies, and acquiring patents, which are currently held by international competitors."

The report was filed five months before China embargoed shipments to Japan over the Senkaku Islands. It was filed eighteen years after China had bought GM's Magnequench division and started moving the world's NdFeB manufacturing to Tianjin. It was filed in a year when the U.S. had zero domestic rare earth oxide producers, zero domestic separation, and one mine — Mountain Pass in California — that had been shut down for eight years. Of the major patents required to produce NdFeB magnets at commercial scale, U.S. firms held effectively none.

Today is sixteen years and seven weeks after that report was filed.

This week, U.S. rare earth companies and the federal government committed roughly $3 billion in new infrastructure in four working days:

Monday: USA Rare Earth announces a €175 million expansion at Lacq, France, building toward the first integrated rare earth refining hub in Europe. Tuesday: USA Rare Earth announces a $1.2 billion magnet plant in South Carolina — its third committed site in five months. Tuesday: the Department of Energy commits $134 million to two rare-earth-from-waste projects in Louisiana and Oklahoma. Wednesday: USA Rare Earth finalizes definitive agreements with the Department of Commerce for $1.6 billion in CHIPS Act funding — $277 million in federal grants plus $1.3 billion in milestone-based senior secured loans.

That is roughly two-thirds of what the entire U.S. critical minerals stockpile contained as of February 2026 — committed in 96 hours.

The U.S. still makes 0.3% of the world's NdFeB magnets. The Pentagon's ban on Chinese-origin defense magnets takes effect in 209 days. The GAO's 15-year window has expired, and the buildout the agency predicted in 2010 is now compressed into the months between now and January. When the agency wrote "up to 15 years," it was offering an upper bound, not a deadline. Sixteen years later, the upper bound has become the floor.

The next four years matter more than the last sixteen did.

Since the 1990s, Iluka Resources (ASX: ILU) has stockpiled monazite — a rare earth-bearing mineral byproduct — at its Narngulu mineral separation plant in Western Australia. Most mineral sands producers dumped the stuff. Iluka piled it up and called it a "strategic resource." Thirty years later, that pile is approximately one million tonnes of high-grade monazite, and the Australian government has lent Iluka A$1.65 billion through the Critical Minerals Facility to build a fully integrated rare earths refinery on top of it. The Eneabba facility, with Fluor as EPCM partner, is targeted for 2027 commissioning. Initial output: 5,500 metric tons per year of neodymium-praseodymium oxide plus 750 metric tons per year of dysprosium and terbium oxides. The refinery is designed to accept third-party feedstock — Australia's first sovereign processing hub for the entire region.

REalloys (NASDAQ: ALOY) signed a letter of intent on Thursday with Patriot Exploration covering priority access to up to 30% of Patriot's domestic rare earth output. Patriot controls a deposit it describes as roughly two billion metric tons of above-ground material. The LOI is REalloys' seventh feedstock or partnership agreement in roughly sixteen weeks — a 15-year offtake with Critical Metals on May 21, a coal-hosted rare earths MOU with Ramaco Resources on May 28, and inclusion in the Russell 3000 effective June 29, among others. The pattern is unmistakable: REalloys is racing to lock in feedstock optionality ahead of the January 2027 Pentagon ban, building from its Euclid, Ohio metallization plant outward into Greenland, Canada, Brazil, and Kazakhstan.

Energy Fuels (NYSE: UUUU) reported Q1 2026 results in May under new CEO Ross R. Bhappu, flagging the first U.S. primary production of high-purity terbium oxide in decades — separated at the company's White Mesa Mill in Utah from ore mined in Florida and Georgia. White Mesa is the only operating conventional uranium mill in the United States, which gives Energy Fuels a structural advantage: it can process monazite — the rare earth-bearing mineral that contains radioactive uranium and thorium — without triggering the regulatory hurdles that have stalled other Western processing projects. The company is advancing heavy rare earth piloting and targeting commercial NdPr production later in 2026, with about $1 billion in working capital and the A$447 million ASM combination targeting Q3 close.

Lipi Sternheim, CEO of REalloys, in Bloomberg Businessweek
May 22, 2026

NEODYMIUM

Neodymium is the N in NdFeB — the strongest permanent magnet known, first synthesized by General Motors in 1982. A 60-gram NdFeB magnet can lift roughly 1,300 times its own weight. Today neodymium sits inside every Tesla traction motor, every Boeing 787 actuator, every commercial wind turbine over 1 MW, and every F-35 control surface. China refines roughly 88% of global neodymium. The mining value is about $5 billion a year; the magnets it produces underpin a market expected to exceed $30 billion by 2030. Of all rare earths, Nd is the one Western governments have spent the most building capacity around — and the one where they still trail furthest behind.

After 12 years as CEO, Amanda Lacaze leaves Lynas Rare Earths (ASX: LYC) at the end of June. Under her, Lynas became the world's only commercial producer of separated heavy rare earths outside China — terbium and dysprosium from the Malaysian plant since 2025, samarium from March 2026. Lynas's market cap is up roughly 30x in a decade. Q3 FY26 results posted record A$265 million revenue, up 115% year on year. A successor has not yet been named. The new CEO inherits the "Towards 2030" growth strategy and a $1.65 billion construction program across Mt Weld, Kalgoorlie, and Seadrift, Texas.

— Lynas Rare Earths

American Rare Earths (ASX: ARR) launched its 2026 drilling campaign in mid-May at Halleck Creek in Wyoming — what the company describes as the largest known U.S. rare earth deposit on a total rare earth oxide basis, with 2.63 billion tonnes of resource and 8.65 million tonnes of contained TREO. The 19-hole, 3,050-meter HQ core program is scheduled to wrap by mid-July and feeds a definitive feasibility study expected this year. CEO Mark Wall has positioned the project as a multi-generational US source of magnet metals, with first production targeted later this decade on Wyoming state land.

— American Rare Earths

A Reuters review found that at least 18 critical minerals and rare earth mining companies — mostly Canadian and Australian, plus several US startups — completed or are pursuing U.S. dual listings in 2026, compared with three in 2025. Total values range from about $25 million to $7.5 billion. The pitch in nearly every prospectus has shifted: instead of commodity cycles, the dominant framing is now defense applications — munitions, armor-piercing materials, weapons system components. The Pentagon's procurement program has become a more important capital-raising factor than the broader market cycle.

— Reuters

On May 28, USAR's Chief Global Policy Officer Gregory Bowman was appointed to the Department of War's Science, Technology, and Innovation Board, which advises Secretary of War Hegseth on innovation strategy and supply chain resilience. Bowman previously served as Acting Director of the Bureau of Industry and Security at the Commerce Department. The appointment is the latest sign of the bidirectional flow of senior rare earth and defense-policy talent between the Pentagon and US rare earth companies — REalloys named former Pentagon Chief of Staff Joe Kasper to its advisory board on April 1.

— USA Rare Earth