America depends too much on China for essential minerals. We need to dig our future

For decades, Americans have thought about national security primarily in terms of military strength — the aircraft we build, the ships we deploy and the men and women who defend our country.

Today, national security means much more, including having access to the critical materials required to not only build our military systems, but also power our data centers, manufacture advanced technologies and support the industries that underpin the American economy.

And on that front, the United States has allowed itself to become dangerously dependent on foreign nations — most notably the People’s Republic of China.

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We have seen the consequences of this kind of dependence before.

Miners work at a drilling site in Ambler Metal's Arctic deposit area on Sept. 6, 2022, in Ambler Mining District, Alaska. The company is conducting drilling explorations for a number of minerals/elements including copper, zinc and lead. (Photo by Bonnie Jo Mount/The Washington Post via Getty Images)

During the COVID-19 pandemic, disruptions in overseas supply chains left American hospitals scrambling for masks, gloves and other basic medical equipment produced in China, which controlled their distribution. It was a stark reminder that when a country outsources production of essential goods, it also outsources a measure of its security.

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The COVID crisis also exposed America’s larger strategic vulnerability regarding critical minerals.

Graphite is a prime example.

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Most Americans rarely think about graphite beyond being something like lead in a pencil. Yet it is an essential material in rechargeable batteries used in electric vehicles, energy storage systems and countless electronic devices. It also has applications across defense technologies, drones, advanced manufacturing and the rapidly expanding infrastructure required to support artificial intelligence and data centers.

China has spent decades building dominant positions across critical mineral supply chains, from mining and processing to advanced materials manufacturing. More recently, Beijing has demonstrated that it is willing to restrict exports of strategically important materials as geopolitical and economic leverage. America should take that message seriously.

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No great nation should allow a strategic competitor to control the materials required to power its economy and defend itself. But despite graphite’s importance, the United States remains dependent on foreign sources, including China, for its supply.

What makes this situation particularly frustrating is that America does not lack natural resources, notably in the great state of Alaska.

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Alaska alone contains 57 of the 60 minerals identified as critical to America’s economic and national security. And on Alaska’s Seward Peninsula sits Graphite Creek, which could become the foundation of a fully integrated domestic graphite supply chain.

Graphite Creek represents the kind of strategic American resource that should fundamentally change the conversation about U.S. dependence on foreign sources. The U.S. Geological Survey has recognized it as the largest known graphite deposit in the United States and among the largest in the world, making it a national security asset.

But extracting the resource is only part of the solution.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, disruptions in overseas supply chains left American hospitals scrambling for masks, gloves and other basic medical equipment produced in China, which controlled their distribution.

America cannot simply replace foreign mines while remaining dependent on foreign processing, where again China dominates. A truly secure supply chain must extend from the resource in the ground through processing and into the advanced materials required by American manufacturers.

The objective is straightforward: American resources, processed and manufactured in America, for American industry and national security.

The challenge is not what America has beneath its feet. The challenge is our ability — and willingness — to responsibly develop it.

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For decades, lengthy permitting processes, regulatory uncertainty and insufficient investment in domestic processing have made it extraordinarily difficult to bring major American mining and manufacturing projects into production.

As a result, instead of producing these materials domestically under American environmental, labor and safety standards, the United States has increasingly imported them from countries where those standards may be considerably lower.

That is neither sound environmental policy nor sound national security policy.

Drag-line excavator mines rare earth materials on Ukrainian soil on February 25, 2025, in the Zhytomyr region of Ukraine. (Photo by Kostiantyn Liberov/Libkos/Getty Images)

America has the resources, engineering expertise, workforce and private capital necessary to dramatically reduce its dependence on foreign critical minerals.

What is needed now is the resolve to do it.

That means responsibly developing American resources. It means building processing and advanced materials manufacturing capacity here at home. It means creating predictable and efficient permitting processes without abandoning rigorous environmental standards.

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Washington has increasingly recognized the importance of critical minerals, and that recognition is encouraging. But recognition must now translate into action.

America cannot spend another decade studying its dependence while other countries continue strengthening their control over the world’s critical mineral supply chains.

We know the vulnerability exists. We know where many of the resources are. We have the technology to develop them responsibly.

No great nation should allow a strategic competitor to control the materials required to power its economy and defend itself. But despite graphite’s importance, the United States remains dependent on foreign sources, including China, for its supply.

Now we need to build.

The United States became the world’s leading economic and military power in large part because generations before us established the world’s greatest domestic industrial base. They understood that America’s ability to produce the materials, technologies and infrastructure it needed was inseparable from America’s strength.

That principle is just as important today.

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The United States should never have to ask whether another country will sell us the materials we need to defend ourselves, power our economy or lead the next generation of technological innovation.

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Now is the time to invest in critical supply chains, beginning with creating the nation’s largest graphite mine — one of the largest in the world — located in Alaska, to help secure America’s future.

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