“Nickel is an important allowing element to stainless steels.”
Exactly why we had “war nickels” that had not one milligram of nickel in them. Stainless steel was critical in WW2...and that was before we had turbines for planes, helicopters and tanks, not to mention batteries for various missiles. It is more critical now than ever, and likely the speculation pushing up its price has to do with an anticipated large military build-up. Hopefully Biden & Millie’s trannies can handle the heavy equipment.