Mining, separation, refining, magnets: where each stage of the rare earth chain concentrates, what China controls, and what the EU can realistically do.
Every few months, rare earths make the front page, usually because Beijing has tightened something, and the coverage almost always makes the same mistake: it treats "rare earths" as one thing China digs out of the ground. The real story is a supply chain with four distinct stages, and the choke hold is not where most people think it is. It is not in the mines.
I wrote GEOPOLITECH, the third volume of my trilogy, around a simple thesis: in this century, power lives in chokepoints, the narrow stages of a supply chain where one actor can say no. Rare earths are the cleanest illustration of that thesis available. So instead of another news recap, here is the map: what each stage does, where it concentrates, what actually happened with the 2025-2026 export controls, and what it means for the electronics and cars you buy.