> Yes, there's no national stranglehold, but it's an area of risk that nobody really seems to be aware of - it wouldn't take much to completely disrupt the glob

> Yes, there's no national stranglehold, but it's an area of risk that nobody really seems to be aware of - it wouldn't take much to completely disrupt the global materials supply chain for the electronics industry. Sure, it could disrupt the electronics industry, but for how long? Haven't we just learned that even in the cases where we have few current producers of a rare earth, the market can fairly quickly adapt, and new producers appear. After all, that is exactly what the article in question is about. Interestingly, this is partly because the very fear of few producers being a fragile constellation drives the price up, and the higher price entices more companies to starting mining rare earths, because they can make more money from it. What can happen is that the fear of fragility in the supply chain of a certain rare earth, will cause speculators to buy futures contracts for the rare earth in question (because they think the rare earth in question will be worth more in the future, because of supply constriction). This drives up the price of the futures contract. Now other speculators can earn money by buying the rare earth in the spot market while simultaneously selling a futures contract. This arbitrage between the futures and spot market pushes up the price in the spot market and the price in the futures market down. And when the price increase reaches the spot market, existing producers will start producing more and new producers will appear, thus alleviating the original concern: that the supply chain was too fragile.