America's War on Iran Depends on Chinese Hardware

Missiles, fighter jets, drones, aircraft carriers, submarines—they all depend on critical metals controlled by Beijing.

America Is Waging War on Iran With Chinese Hardware

A Tomahawk missile fired at Iran from an American destroyer—loaded with Chinese components.

If you want to understand why critical metals are so important to the modern world, just look at the war on Iran. From fighter jets to missiles to drones, virtually every type of weapon the US is wielding—and the defensive systems it is using to thwart Iranian counterattacks—depend on components made with rare earths, lithium, nickel and other critical metals.

That fact, however, points up a major strategic vulnerability. Those components, and the metals from which they’re made, are almost all produced in a single country—and it’s not the United States, nor even one of its allies. As a recent report by Govini, an American defense analytics company, sums up: “From raw minerals to advanced weapon systems—from rock to rocket … America’s military superiority increasingly depends on China.”

There are countless Chinese-produced metals and parts embedded throughout hundreds of American weapons systems, but probably the most concerning are rare earth magnets. These bits of hardware perform a head-spinning variety of jobs in a wide range of weapons.

Missiles, whether offensive types like Tomahawk cruise missiles or defensive ones like those used in Patriot and THAAD interception systems, typically depend on rare earth magnets to move the control fins that steer the projectile to its target. “These magnets must be extremely powerful, compact, and resistant to heat and vibration,” notes Rare Earth Exchanges, an American research outfit. That means magnets made with the rare earth neodymium for strength, alloyed with dysprosium and terbium to increase resistance to heat and stress. Most precision-guided missiles also require neodymium magnets, or in some cases magnets made with samarium, another rare earth, for components used in target tracking and data-link stabilization.

Predator drones, Joint Direct Attack Munition ‘smart’ bombs, radar systems and other weapons also rely on rare earth magnets. So do the war machines that launch those weapons. According to the Pentagon, missile-firing destroyers, submarines, fighter jets, and bombers all require hundreds or thousands of pounds of rare earths.

Then there are good old lithium ion batteries, which are as ubiquitous in the military as they are in your own gadget-supported life. Many war-fighting drones, as I’ve written before, are powered by the same kind of batteries made of lithium, cobalt and nickel that are used in cell phones, laptops and dustbusters. So are military lasers, radios, night vision goggles and satellites.

A whole constellation of other metals are used in all manner of military gear. “Critical minerals such as aluminium, titanium, magnesium, and scandium form the structural backbone of drones,” says SFA-Oxford, a British consulting outfit. “Communication, electronics, and precise navigation systems depend on specialised materials like beryllium, gallium, germanium, and indium, whose unique properties ensure reliability, accuracy, and operational effectiveness.” According to Govini, “more than 80,000 parts across 1,900 weapon systems incorporate antimony, gallium, germanium, tungsten, or tellurium.” The list includes destroyers, aircraft carriers and nuclear missiles.

As I’ve said before: “You can probably guess why all of this is a problem. Who manufactures over 70 percent of the world’s batteries? Who makes more than 90 percent of the world’s rare earth magnets? Who produces most of the world’s gallium, indium, and other critical metals? China, China, and China.”

That means America’s war fighting capacity could be seriously hobbled if China were to cut off those supplies. Beijing has already restricted overseas sales of some critical metals, and last year threatened to throttle rare earth magnet exports in response to President Trump’s proposed tariffs, forcing him to back down. That was all sparked by trade disputes. Imagine what could happen if the two countries actually went to war.

After years of sleepwalking ever deeper into this situation of material subordination, the Pentagon is now working to break free of its dependence on China. It is doling out billions of dollars to support American critical metal miners and would-be magnet and battery makers, including by buying direct ownership stakes in several of them. (I’m sure it’s a coincidence that one of Trump’s sons and one of his major donors are investors in two of those companies. Donald Trump Jr. and his brother Eric are also investors in a drone startup that is merging with…a golf course holding company?! Seems they’ve found a way to cash in on two of their dad’s hobbies at once: starting wars and playing golf.)

The Trump administration is also putting in place new rules forbidding military contractors from using Chinese parts and materials in the weapons and gear they manufacture. It’s hard to imagine how that can actually happen any time soon, though. For a start, the Defense Department doesn’t even know where all the parts in its supply chain come from. More than 200,000 companies produce weapons and other goods for the US military. A 2025 report from the General Accounting Office found that “the primary procurement database for the federal government … provides little visibility into where these goods are manufactured or whether materials and parts suppliers are domestic or foreign.”

The biggest obstacle, though, is the complexity, expense and sheer scale of building up a full-scale mine-to-military supply chain. Ore has to be mined. Then it has to be put though potentially hundreds of chemical processes to separate out the raw metals. Those raw metals then have to go to refineries to be processed into pure metals and alloys. Then that stuff has to be sent to factories to be made into things like magnets and batteries. China has most of the world’s capacity for virtually all of these steps, while the US has hardly any by comparison.

Catching up will take many years. Still, it’s not impossible. Ukraine, which faces the same problem, claims this year to have begun producing its first (mostly) “China-free” drones. Two of the companies making those drones may soon start selling them to the Pentagon.

There is a silver lining to all this. Former President Biden’s administration had earmarked billions of dollars to support domestic battery manufacturing, but Trump froze most of those funds as soon as took office, viewing batteries as part of the “green scam” that included electric vehicles and solar and wind power. Now, however, the administration has come to realize that batteries and critical metals aren’t only important for things liberals care about. And so, according to The New York Times, “The Energy Department has quietly allowed many Biden-era grants for battery makers to proceed. It also recently announced up to $500 million for battery materials and recycling projects.”

It’s long past time the US started building the infrastructure to manufacture its own batteries and magnets. They’re going to need plenty more, considering how many they’re blowing up in Iran.

---

Power Metal News

CBC’s Ideas show, known for its in-depth explorations of complex topics, is featuring me and the critical metals issue on March 18. Check it out even if you’re not Canadian! And if you happen to be in Brussels on May 7 and 8, I’d love to see you at the Circle 2026 conference on recycling and circularity, where I’ll be speaking.

---

More News Worth Knowing

🐬 Chemicals from junked TVs and computers are showing up in dolphins and porpoises?!

💀 Another 200 people killed in mine collapse in Democratic Republic of Congo. (The last one was in January.)

🚘 Ethiopia banned imports of gasoline cars, and now EVs are booming!

🔋 This Canadian startup is reusing old EV batteries to bring power to remote areas