Having released its first-ever National Defense Industrial Strategy (NDIS), Defense Department representatives are adamant that in light of the urgency of the situation, things are different.

The NDIS, they said at the official on-the-record press briefing, “is more than just an aspirational document. It outlines a strategic vision for what we need to meet our war fighters’ needs,” and will be followed up with a “detailed classified implementation plan with near-term, measurable actions and metrics to gauge progress.”

Four long-term strategic priorities serve as “guiding beacons for industrial action and resource prioritization in support of development of this modernized defense industrial ecosystem.” According to DoD’s fact sheet on the NDIS

To strengthen supply chains, the strategy, as summarized by John A. Tirpak for Air and Space Forces Magazine, calls for:

All of these measures represent corrective actions without which the U.S. and its allies might not be able to “adapt to new and emerging threat environments” at a time when the defense industrial base risks facing program-delaying material shortfalls.

At a time when geopolitical tensions continue to soar and rhetoric in the Tech War between China and the United States continues to sharpen, the prospect of a strategy backed up by specific action is a promising development, but of course, the proof is in the pudding.

ARPN will keep tabs on the implementation of the NDIS in the coming months, with a special emphasis of the announced increased leveraging of so far “underutilized” authority under the Defense Production Act, which Assistant Secretary of Defense for Industrial Base Policy Dr. Laura D. Taylor-Kale says would give industry “more consistent demand signals” to “confidently anticipate and prepare for Pentagon needs.”

The full press briefing transcript for the NDIS release can be accessed here, while the full text of the strategy and NDIS Fact Sheet sheet can be downloaded here.

The post Pentagon: First Ever National Defense Strategy More than an “Aspirational” Document – Setting Stage for Concrete Steps appeared first on American Resources Policy Network.

As Assistant Secretary of Defense Dr. Laura D. Taylor-Kale told the media during the official press briefing on Nov. 11, 2024:

“this is the first time that we’ve really put pen to paper to map out a strategy and a vision to create a modernized, resilient, innovative defense industrial ecosystem.”

Citing specific threats to U.S. national security – adversaries building up their military power to “levels not seen since World War II”, China’s increasingly aggressive use of “gray zone tactics across all elements of national power,” Russian aggression and Israel’s “existential fight against Hamas” – Dr. Taylor-Kale says the NDIS “seeks to answer the question, ‘How do we prioritize and optimize defense needs in a competitive environment undergirded by geopolitical, economic and technological challenges?’”

According to Acting Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Halimah Najieb-Locke, “the NDIS is grounded in the National Defense Strategy, with a special emphasis on integrated deterrence and building that resilient ecosystem” and reflects “the Biden-Harris administration’s focus on securing and reinvigorating our defense supply chains by incorporating the presidential direction and guidance from Executive Order 14017 on America’s Supply Chains.”

The Strategy outlines four priorities which ARPN will detail further in a separate post:

1. Resilient supply chains 
2. Workforce readiness 
3. Flexible acquisition 
4. Economic deterrence 

Of particular interest to followers of ARPN is Dr. Taylor-Kale’s highlighting of the importance to streamline and make more efficient use of investment tools available to the U.S. government under the Defense Production Act and the Industrial Base Analysis Sustainment Program to strengthen U.S. domestic critical mineral supply chains, tools which Dr. Taylor-Kale admits have been “underutilized” to date.

Says Dr. Taylor-Kale:

“(…) as we have our visibility and mapping efforts ongoing, we’re able to work with the services and marshal the entire defense budget where possible, where we have programs of record to say, how are we overcoming this? How are we using acquisition strategies that actually targetareas of concern that industry has? And how are we things such as multiyear procurements, advance procurements, purchase commitments?

There are a number of tools and flexible acquisition strategies that we can employ to really drive investment into this area in a way that before now has been disparate, and so you can’t feel the impact. So we’re answering the industry’s call for consistent demand signal by organizing ourselves and targeting our efforts.

She adds:

“As much as we have used and really expanded investments using the Defense Production Act over the last few years, we’ve really only used a quarter of the authorities, really looking at the authorities.

So our goal with the implementation plan, particularly the public-facing one, will really outline some of the key areas that are important and that we, within A&S, within Industrial Base Policy, have control over, looking at, for instance, critical minerals and strategic materials, where we’ve already done a number of key investments. Since the beginning of the administration, we’ve done almost $1 billion just in critical minerals and strategic materials.

And we will obviously, just as the DASD noted, will continue working in these areas because of its importance for supply chain resilience and some of the chokepoints (…).”

A detailed implementation plan will be developed in the coming weeks, with hopes of publishing an unclassified version in February and a more detailed classified version sometime in March.

The full press briefing transcript can be accessed here, while the full text of the strategy and NDIS Fact Sheet sheet can be downloaded here.

The post Hot-Off-The-Press Defense Industrial Strategy (NDIS) Brings Defense Production Act Back into Focus for Critical Mineral Supply Chain Security appeared first on American Resources Policy Network.

The U.S. Department of Defense has announced that it is investigating a recently-unearthed disinformation campaign against Australian company Lynas Rare Earths, which is contracted to construct a REE separation facility in Texas.

Cybersecurity firm Mandiant first reported the efforts of Dragonbridge, a network of “thousands of inauthentic accounts across numerous social media platforms, websites, and forums that have promoted various narratives in support of the political interests of the People’s Republic of China (PRC)” targeting the Australian Miner with content aimed at discrediting the company’s environmental record and instigating local protests of the company’s planned processing facility by posing as local residents on social media.

While, according to Mandiant, the campaign to date hasn’t been particularly sophisticated, the company has warned that its analysts expect the network to refine its technique as broadens its effort. In June, Dragonbridge began targeting additional REE mining companies, notably Canadian Appia Rare Earths & Uranium Corp., which is exploring a project in Saskatchewan, Canada, and American REE supplier USA Rare Earth, LLC., with a REE mining project in Texas and a planned processing and magnet manufacturing facility in Oklahoma, with similar disinformation and negative messaging campaigns.

As Metal Tech News’s Shane Lasley writes in a new piece for the publication, “[g]iven the economic and geopolitical clout rare earths provide the People’s Republic of China, it is no surprise that the government would sponsor a social media attack on projects that threaten this leverage.”

Followers of ARPN are well-aware of China’s long-standing near-total supply chain monopoly on Rare Earths and know that Beijing is no stranger to weaponizing these tech metals.  The fact that it now appears to engage in cyber warfare aimed at private companies leveraging a “unique attack vector” by weaponizing the NIMBY sentiment should place industry stakeholders and policymakers on high alert, because as John Hultquist, vice president of Mandiant Threat Intelligence, told Defense One:

“One of the things that’s distinct about Chinese activity, compared to some of their peers, is that they’re always highly economically focused. There’s a whole new group of targets that probably don’t have strong experience dealing with this problem. As that process gets underway, more industries will find themselves the same sort of strategic situation that rare earth metals are now.”

In the words of Metal Tech News’s Lasley, “the China rare earths dragon awakens.” The question is, are we ready?

The post The Newest Frontier in the Global Resource Wars: Virtual Weaponized NIMBYism appeared first on American Resources Policy Network.

While it is certainly encouraging that these developments are not only underway but are also increasingly making headlines and garnering the attention of the American people, it is important to ensure that legislative efforts to strengthen our nation’s critical mineral supply chains are not only enacted, but actually implemented, and that timelines set forth in enacted legislation are in fact met.

Unfortunately, new laws are not always effectively implemented.  Case in point:  that’s the charge made in recent correspondence by U.S. Senators Joe Manchin (D-WV), Chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, and Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), a senior member of the committee, in a series of joint letters to key members of the Biden Administration.

In letters to U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm, U.S. Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland, and U.S. Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines, Sens. Manchin and Murkowski lamented the delayed implementation of a set of provisions included in the Energy Act of 2020 and the bipartisan infrastructure package passed last year, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.

Citing several lapsed deadlines set forth in both legislative packages and highlighting U.S. vulnerabilities “due to the lack of domestic production and processing of critical minerals, including rare earth elements,” the Senators called on the Administration to prioritize

the “substantial new authorities and federal assistance to boost domestic mineral supplies” mandated via the Energy Act of 2020, and the bipartisan infrastructure package, and to “ensure crucial deadlines are met.”

They concluded:

“While we appreciate the President’s focus on this issue, including the recent invocation of the Defense Production Act, a whole-of-government approach is required to meet this challenge. Timely implementation of the provisions of the Energy Act are crucial to ensuring that America’s critical mineral supply chains are strong, responsibly produced, and ethically sourced.” 

Meanwhile, momentum appears to be building to strengthen the U.S. strategic minerals stockpile. The Department of Defense has submitted a legislative proposal to request authorization of $253.5 million to procure critical minerals in the FY 2023 defense authorization bill, while the House Armed Services Committee is reportedly seeking to bolster the United States’ supplies of specifically Rare Earths as part of the National Defense in the same bill.

As the geopolitical stakes continue to get higher in light of Russia’s ongoing war on Ukraine and China’s Xi Jinping doubling-down on its zero-Covid policy earlier this month which may lead to more lockdowns with serious economic disruption and trade consequences, here’s hoping that U.S. stakeholders are ready to not only talk the talk, but also walk the walk.

Click here to read the Senators’ letter to U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin.

Click here to read the Senators’ letter to U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm.

Click here to read the Senators’ letter to U.S. Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland.

Click here to read the Senators’ letter to U.S. Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines.

The post Sens. Manchin and Murkowski Call on Administration to Prioritize Initiatives to Maintain and Strengthen U.S. Leadership and Rebuild Productive Capacity in Key Sectors and Value Chains appeared first on American Resources Policy Network.

While some important steps have been taken since then, much remains to be done to alleviate our mineral resource vulnerabilities, and — with policy makers embroiled in partisan politics — perhaps another wake-up call is in order.

It comes to us via the the National Defense Industrial Association (NDIA), which has piloted a new annual “Vital Signs” report project to, as the authors write, “fill a gap” left by the October 2018 report.

NDIA explains: 

“Despite its high-resolution snapshot of the defense industrial base’s present challenges, the report does not provide the public and the defense policy community either an unclassified summary measurement of the health and readiness of the defense industrial base or a simple way of tracking such a measurement over time.”

To do so, NDIA has sought to standardize and integrate “different elements of both the defense sector and the business environment that shapes its performance.”

Overall, Vital Signs 2020 assigns a “passing C grade but with a worrying downward trend” to the U.S. defense industrial base, reflecting “a business environment characterized by highly contrasting areas of concern and confidence. Deteriorating conditions for industrial security and for the availability and cost of skilled labor and materials emerge from our analysis as areas of clear concern.” 

With regards to mineral resource supply chains, the report’s methodology arguably appears to place less of an emphasis on underlying geopolitical risk factors as well as resource dependencies and associated potential supply disruptions than the 2018 government report, and focuses more on resource cost.

However, overall, in particular with regards to the military’s “surge capacity,” the report points out that “[p]resently 27.3 percent of critical defense supplier industries (3 of 11) would likely experience shortages in the event of a surge in demand for combat-essential defense programs equivalent to the Carter-Reagan buildup of the late-1970s through the mid-1980s.”

And, as ARPN followers well know, the materials underpinning 21st Century high-tech military applications don’t just appear out of thin air, and securing mineral resource supply chains both on the upstream and downstream levels should be prioritized.

An overall mediocre “C” grade — merely passing “with a worrying downward trend” — for the United States’ defense industrial base is cause for concern, and policy makers would be well advised to take another comprehensive look at our defense industrial base and all underlying inputs.

To read the full report, click here.

And for a refresher on the 2018 Defense Industrial Base Review click here and here.

Image source: creative commons license (CC BY-NC 2.0), flickr photo by GPA Photo Archive.

The post Merely Passing “C” Grade in New Study Spells Trouble for Military Readiness appeared first on American Resources Policy Network.

According to Lifton, the fact that the NDAA has furthered the FY 2019 mandate from requiring that the U.S. military only buy non-Chinese REE permanent magnets to now requiring that DOD develop and implement a strategy “to discover or develop and integrate each of the necessary industrial components into a total domestic American rare earth supply chain for any and all rare earth enabled products utilized by the U.S. [Department] of Defense” represents the “greatest opportunity to revive a non-Chinese rare earth industry, since the movement to China of that industry in the last years of the twentieth century.”

The opportunity is twofold. 

A push to diversify the U.S. rare earths supply chain also provides a chance to address one of its inherent ironies —the fact that “the materials needed for green energy, such as in wind turbines, are currently being acquired by destroying the Chinese countryside.”

We all know the green revolution is coming.  In the words of J.A. Green & Company president and ARPN expert panel member Jeff Green, going green “will force us to address the externalities of foreign extractive industries in order to build an economy that sustains opportunity for life and growth for the maximum number of people.”

With that in mind, in 2020, the U.S. government “should show leadership and make a deliberate choice to encourage more responsible rare earth sourcing,” says Green.

As we have previously pointed out, industries are responding, harnessing advances in technology which make it possible increasingly to restore a balance between mining and environmental protection. 

In 2020 we may in fact see the “culmination of nearly 10 years of effort to move the U.S. government from endless studies and research projects to actually investing in the production of rare earth materials needed to support the Department of Defense,” as Green has phrased it.   In this context, the U.S. Government can tap into “technologies and mine sites in the United States and other environmentally responsible countries that are worth investigating and developing if they will reduce the damage associated with current methods of rare earth production.” 

Doing so, says Green, could “not only reduce environmental damage but also reduce Chinese leverage on U.S. national security.”

The post 2020 – A Twofold Watershed Year for Rare Earths? appeared first on American Resources Policy Network.

One of the first issue experts to offer commentary in a national publication was Jeff Green, president of Washington, D.C.-based government relations firm J.A. Green & Company, and member of the ARPN panel of experts.

Writing for Defense News, Green argues that the report – which outlines nearly 300 supply chain vulnerabilities and sounds the alarm on China represents a significant and growing risk to the supply of materials deemed strategic and critical to U.S. national security – provides “a significant step forward for the U.S. military.”

His rationale for this assessment is that the report “goes further than the Department of Defense has traditionally wanted to venture.”

Says Green:

“The report clearly identifies five macro factors that have weakened the defense industrial base, including the ‘Industrial Policies of Competitor Nations.’ Though U.S. manufacturing has declined for a variety of reasons, the report notes that China, in particular, has used illegal means to dominate critical global markets. These means include espionage, evasion of export controls, market access restrictions, subsidies, and dumping, among others.”

He adds:

“Fortunately, the report goes beyond problem identification to provide a Blueprint for Action. Though many of these are locked away in a classified annex to the report, the White House has provided some clues as to how it wishes to proceed.”

Green offers some commentary on some of the report’s suggested fixes, which, among others, include the creation of a “national industrial policy to support national security efforts,” an area in which he says the “Department of Defense has been deficient for decades.” Other suggestions include the encouraged “use of direct funding to target and support critical sectors of the supply chain,” as well as educational efforts and outreach to global allies.

The bottom line, according to Green, is:

“The Department of Defense and the White House have started an important conversation by doing the research to bring these problems to the foreground, and it will be up to Congress next year to provide the resources and legislation necessary to cure them.”

The post ARPN Expert Panel Member: Defense Industrial Base Report “A Significant Step Forward for the U.S. Military” appeared first on American Resources Policy Network.

The Epoch Times’s Matthew Robertson takes a closer look at the Pentagon’s request to Congress “for over a billion dollars. To buy rocks” – at a time when budget cuts should be the order of the day in Washington.

He notes that while in previous years, the Department of Defense merely noted China’s near-total monopoly on global REE supply and production, in this year’s report to the House Armed Services Committee, the agency strikes a more urgent tone and looks to stockpiling as a means to “hedge” the supply risk associated with being at the mercy of China.

In his piece, Robertson frequently cites American Resources principal Daniel McGroarty, who invokes Adam Smith’s reflection on dependence on foreign resources that “it might not always be prudent to depend upon our neighbors for the supply.” The materials Smith referred to were certainly different at the time – sailcloth and gunpowder – but their strategic relevance at the time is comparable to the relevance of REEs today.

Outlining the various scenarios drawn up by the DoD report, Robertson closes by explaining how the “sometimes haphazard and fragmented nature of how rare earths are obtained from China” complicate the assessment:

“Complicating the assessment is the sometimes haphazard and fragmented nature of how rare earths are obtained from China: in the south of the country, tens of thousands of metric tonnes of rare earths are thought to be wrung from the ground, and refined and exported, by a chaotic chain of fly-by-night mining operators — none of those figures go into the official books. Estimates for that illicit activity range from 10,000 to 40,000 metric tonnes per year.”

At the height of its production, Molycorp, a U.S.-based miner of rare earth elements that was hit hard by China’s rock-bottom prices, says it planned to produce 20,000 metric tonnes of product in 2012. This means the underground Chinese supply component could be as much as double the entire U.S. supply, which goes some way to illustrating the opaque and potentially volatile nature of Chinese supply.
“Think about how nervous that would make a Pentagon planner,” McGroarty says.

Quite a bit, seems to be the answer – and, for good reason, considering the fact that the United States once again ranks worst when it comes to mining permitting delays (an indicator of the time it takes to bring a new mine online) in a renowned annual ranking released by mining advisory firm Behre Dolbear.

The post The Epoch Times on why the Pentagon wants “to buy rocks” appeared first on American Resources Policy Network.

This “about-face,” as Lasley calls it, comes less than a year after researchers at the Pentagon downplayed the United States’ dependence particularly on Rare Earths – a widely-criticized assessment that was labeled “naïve” and “ill-informed” by experts at the time.

The new report, which only a handful external experts have been privy to review, finds “shortfalls – insufficient supply to meet demand – for approximately a third of these [the 72 metals and minerals studied in the report] materials,” and goes on to recommend the earmarking of US $1.24 billion to build a strategic stockpile for a number of materials meeting shortfall criteria.

As Lasley points out, experts are “heartened” by DoD’s course-reversal, but “the Strategic Materials Advisory Council – a Washington, DC-based nonprofit group comprised of former U.S. government leaders and strategic materials experts – does not believe buying rare earths from China to place in a U.S. stockpile goes far enough.”

To read the whole article, in which Lasley does a fantastic job of tracing the steps of the Pentagon’s course reversal and embedding it into the overall context of U.S. mineral resource policy, click here.

The post North of 60 Mining News piece traces DoD “About-Face” on REEs appeared first on American Resources Policy Network.

In his latest piece for Real Clear World, American Resources principal Dan McGroarty reviews the Department of Defense’s just-released National Defense Stockpile Report to Congress against the backdrop of our mineral dependencies. According to McGroarty, the report reflects a re-thinking on the part of the Pentagon, where, less than a year ago, researchers downplayed the United States’ dependence particularly on Rare Earths – a widely-criticized assessment that was labeled “naïve” and “ill-informed” by experts at the time.

Says McGroarty:

(…) after two decades of this post-Cold War experience, a new realization is dawning: Shifts in global metal production have produced a situation in which the U.S. is extraordinarily dependent on foreign-sourced metals and minerals. For the Pentagon, increasingly dependent on the metal-intensive weapons systems of a modern military, this foreign dependence is a dangerous exposure — a weakness that can be exploited in time of conflict.

The new report finds “shortfalls – insufficient supply to meet demand – for approximately a third of these [the 72 metals and minerals studied in the report] materials,” and goes on to recommend nine metals for stockpiling in the near term.

Invoking the challenges associated with China controlling much of the global output of many critical minerals and metals, McGroarty points out that contrary to other mining nations like Australia, the United States’ rigid permitting process would prevent mining operation for any of the 23 key resources identified by the Pentagon in the new report from completing the permitting process – a scary scenario from a national defense perspective.

Concludes McGroarty:

“The question now, in a Washington where the government is funded from month-to-month, and strategic thinkers are savants who see an hour into the next news cycle, is whether the U.S. Government can muster a sustained policy to reverse our metals dependency — before the shortfalls posited in the Pentagon’s hypothetical scenarios become all too real.”

The post New DoD stockpile report finds mineral shortfalls appeared first on American Resources Policy Network.