Rare Earths, Nuclear Arms, Energy: The 2026 Unraveling

Opening

This piece was written on January 28, 2026.

Dear reader, two months have passed since 2026 began. And in those two months, one of the safeguards holding up the global order quietly came undone. On February 5, New START—the last remaining nuclear arms control treaty between the United States and Russia—expired. Most news outlets treated it as a one-line bulletin, but it actually means something much bigger: for the first time in 54 years, the world’s nuclear powers are operating without any legal constraints at all.

And this treaty’s expiration isn’t an isolated event. Three structural shifts are unfolding simultaneously right now: China’s monopoly over rare earth supply chains, the vacuum in nuclear arms control, and the migration of energy dominance. Today I want to talk about why these three axes are all coming to a head in 2026 at once—and how to read this situation through data instead of emotion.

The First Lock: Rare Earths—Mining Them Isn’t the Hard Part

These days, one of the words showing up most often in international news is “rare earths.” Despite the name, rare earth elements¹​ are actually fairly widespread across the globe. The problem isn’t ‘mining’ them — it’s ‘refining’ them.

According to 2024 data from the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), China accounts for roughly 69% of global rare earth mining and about 90% of refining. Countries like Australia, the United States, and Myanmar do participate in the mining stage, but when it comes to turning raw ore into materials actually usable in industry, China’s share is overwhelming. In the manufacturing of high-performance permanent magnets²​ in particular, China’s share reaches 94%.

Why did it turn out this way? The key is environmental cost. Rare earth refining consumes huge quantities of water and acid, and produces radioactive byproducts. In democracies with strict environmental regulations, building social consensus around this is extremely difficult. China, by contrast, spent decades absorbing that environmental cost to build out its refining infrastructure—and as a result, it secured technological and economic dominance along with it.

So has the U.S. just been sitting on its hands? No. In July 2025, the U.S. Department of Defense invested $400 million in MP Materials, a rare earth company based in California’s Mojave Desert, securing a 15% stake. The Pentagon became the largest shareholder in a private mining company. It also signed a contract to purchase the entirety of the company’s rare earth magnet output for the next 10 years. This isn’t just an industrial investment—it’s effectively a national security strategy to lock down a supply chain.

But there’s a number here that demands a clear-eyed look. According to an S&P Global report, the average time it takes in the U.S. to go from discovering a new mine to actual production is 29 years—the second-longest in the world after Zambia. That’s because environmental review, permitting, and litigation risk all stack up. It means that even if a new mine were discovered right now, full-scale production wouldn’t be possible until the 2050s.

That’s why the U.S. can’t escape its dependence on China in the short term. It’s also why the Trump administration, even while imposing 40-50% tariffs on Brazilian agricultural and fishery products, still sat down at the negotiating table with Brazil to secure rare earths. Pressuring a country with tariffs while simultaneously needing to court it through resource diplomacy—that contradiction is the reality the U.S. finds itself in right now.