Critical Mineral: United States Seeking Alternatives To Chinese Cobalt.

• Author: Carberry, Sean
• Position: CRITICAL MINERALS

The Periodic Table is packed with elements of critical importance to U.S. economic and national security. From lithium to iron to uranium, the nation needs a steady diet of minerals and metals, and few are as challenging to source as number 27: cobalt.

The bluish-gray metal's widest use today is in the cathodes of lithium-ion batteries, which proliferate in commercial and military devices. Cobalt also serves the Defense Department in temperature-resistant alloys for jet engines, in magnets--used for things like stealth technology and electronic warfare--and alloys used in munitions.

And like so many materials and commodities today, China controls the bulk of the global cobalt supply.

"What makes this a really significant challenge is China could use this the same way Russia can use oil, or in the same way that the world is impacted because of grain supply," said Brad Martin, director of RAND Corp.'s institute for supply chain security. China's ability to deny access to cobalt "creates a national security vulnerability," he added.

Studies by minerals analysts and the U.S. government say that 70 percent of mined cobalt comes from the Democratic Republic of Congo, a politically unstable country with a well-documented history of poor labor and environmental practices in its mining sector. Almost all the cobalt mined there--usually as a byproduct of nickel or copper mining--heads to China for refining and processing. Currently, China processes about 80 percent of the world's cobalt.

"The big issue is China and its influence over the DRC, and the fact that China understands better than the United States the need to have access to strategic materials," said Martin. "China has not only been finding sources, it's also been stockpiling, and that is just not something the United States has successfully done."

On the contrary, the United States has sold off large amounts of its critical materials stockpile like cobalt over the last few decades.

According to "Revitalizing the National Defense Stockpile for an Era of Great-Power Competition," a Heritage Foundation report released in January, the supply contained $22 billion worth--in today's dollars--of critical materials in 1989. R's now down to $888 million.

Still, the stockpile isn't designed to be a solution. Rather, it's a stopgap in case there is a conflict with China or some other shock that interrupts the supply chain.

However, Martin pointed out that China doesn't need to resort to military...