This is old news.....to recap, you can get rare earth magnets from 2 places....china and california...the enviro-wacko's in california had the mine there closed for ENVIRONMENTAL reasons. we can re-open it at any time to get what we need. Maybe we need to buy all china has, so they don't have any.
China bought proprietary tech over the last decade to machine and manufacture these items. This as much as anything put us in a bind. Two and maybe three administrations were asleep while this happened.
In theory. In practice look at how ridiculously difficult it has been to get a slight expansion of the existing oil pumping operations to include the 2000 acres in the adjacent little corner of the ANWR in Alaska. Clinton renamed it from, what Alaska National Petroleum Reserve... to Alaska National Wildlife Reserve...and Presto! For all practical purposes, the communists in the Sierra Club have a veto over National Security.
Maybe we need to buy all china has, so they don't have any.
I wonder if that isn't the defacto strategy in not doing ANWR and the other major oil deposits we know about...such as the Shale Oil deposits in the Western Rockies.
That's what the morons or traitors who put us in these positions hope we continue to think.