China controls 98% of the world’s production of gallium, a soft, silvery metal used to make semiconductors, LED screens, and solar panels — and a key ingredient in next-generation weapons. Last July, after the United States restricted sales of advanced microchips to the People’s Republic, Beijing responded by slapping export controls on gallium and other minerals used in tech.
While China’s gallium exports plummeted, prices did not immediately surge. Manufacturers across the U.S., Europe and Japan initially brushed off concerns over future supplies, in part because relatively small volumes of gallium are needed for most industrial uses. By last month, however, the cost per kilo of gallium stored in a Dutch depot was going for nearly twice the rate of the stuff warehoused in China, according to data from the market-research firm Fastmarkets.
Beijing appears to be specifically trying to prevent U.S. military suppliers from securing the gallium Washington would need for weapons to defend Taiwan from Chinese invasion — like the American-made Patriot missile launchers whose targeting systems rely on semiconductors made with gallium.
The U.S. hasn’t produced its own gallium in years. That could soon change.
On Thursday, the Salt Lake City-based mining company U.S. Critical Materials Corp. plans to announce the discovery of a large high-grade deposit buried in a remote corner of the Bitterroot National Forest in southwestern Montana, HuffPost has learned.
Gallium is not particularly rare. But China drove much of the world’s other producers out of business over the past decade, as Beijing subsidized its domestic aluminum smelters to churn out gallium as a byproduct. Extracting gallium from underground deposits can be tricky and polluting, too, since the metal is typically dispersed with lots of other minerals, some of which are toxic.
But U.S. Critical Materials said it’s working with the Idaho National Laboratory on a novel method to siphon gallium out of…
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