China Clamps Down Even Harder on Rare Earths

[John Clark]

Explore this gift article from The New York Times. You can read it for free without a subscription.

China Clamps Down Even Harder on Rare Earths

The move is Beijing’s latest attempt to tighten control over global production of the metals, which are essential to the manufacture of computer chips.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/09/business/china-rare-earth-exports.html?unlocked_article_code=1.sE8.78T_.CVJsIZWbghVL&smid=em-share

[John Clark]

On Thu, Oct 9, 2025 at 8:44 PM <sp...@rainier66.com> wrote:

> The rare earth elements are used in high-performance computer chips, drone motors, wind turbine generators, etc. OK, what if… even one wind turbine motor is taken out of service and its rare earth elements extracted for use in making computer chips?  Those things are huge.  It looks like a single turbine generator could supply RE metals for a million high-performance chips.

You're right.  The active ingredients in mainstream chips are silicon, oxygen, nitrogen, phosphorus, boron, copper, tungsten, and cobalt, and none of them are rare earths. They are used in the manufacture of the chips, such as cerium and yttrium in the optical coatings of ASML's $400 million photolithography machine,  but only in trace amounts. 

But if you want to make small but powerful and extremely efficient electric motors or generators then you're going to need a lot of rare earths for their permanent magnets. 

John K Clark