Thousands of Hollywood and TV westerns employ variations of the No Water Unless You Do as I Say plot.

The plot essentials sketched: Bad Guy controls the pristine river supplying Peaceful Valley's Good Guy Folk with water. Bad Guy dams pristine river, then lays down his dirty deal: "You Peaceful Valley Chumps! Sell me your land at my near-nothing price lest you, your family, your cows? Y'all gonna die of thirst!"

OK. I'm not reviewing an Eastwood movie ("Pale Rider") or a "Have Gun — Will Travel" episode. I'm describing the plot line guiding a grave threat to the free world's 21st-century economic and politically free existence — a threat that is implicit in Communist China's rare earth minerals scheme.

The scheme is brutally expressed in what is often called China's ".1%" rule. Introduced in October 2025, according to the London School of Economics (LSE) blog, the regulations required manufacturers to obtain "Chinese government approval to export any product containing more than 0.1 per cent rare earths by weight and to declare their intended use ..." The regulations were "a powerful tracing tool and, potentially, a lever for future export restrictions."

However, the LSE bloggers noted Chinese export restrictions on critical materials had "increased more than fivefold between 2009 and 2023."

The .1% rule was only formally expressed after Beijing encountered Trump administration political and economic pushback, with Trump tariffs the most obvious shove.

Don't let Washington-Beijing political media gimmickry obscure the history-shaping point: Rare earths matter to any 21st-century nation that wants to survive economically and militarily. A 2024 U.S. Department of Defense report reported "magnets produced from rare earth elements are used in systems such as Tomahawk missiles, a variety of radar systems, Predator unmanned aerial vehicles, and the Joint Direct Attack Munition series of smart bombs. The F-35, for instance, requires more than 900 pounds of rare earth elements."

As the LSE blog and scores of other expert sources note, almost all 21st-century high-technology products (communications equipment, computers, electric motors, elite defense weapons and delivery systems) all contain at least 1% to 2% rare earth elements by weight.

The LSE blog estimated that China's export law would give it control of up to $270 billion in U.S. manufactured products. It's unclear if the F-35 would meet Chinese restrictions, but it can't fly without components made with rare earth minerals.

But meddling with U.S. military production isn't the entire game. China wants to force virtually every nation to rely on Chinese manufactured products — to the communist dictatorship's economic benefit.

Unfortunately, the U.S. is once again playing a serious game of catch-up, economically and militarily.

China has definitely become the overwhelmingly dominant political actor in the mining, refining and distribution of rare earth minerals essential to modern digital and electronic tech.

How did it happen? Washington let it. In 2025, The Epoch Times noted that, until 1991, the U.S. "was a leading producer of rare earth minerals ..." However, environmentalist objections led to the closure of major mines.

Did China air or provoke the environmentalist activism? Good question.

With domestic political friction stymying U.S. rare earth extraction and refining, China — following a long-term strategy — stepped in.

I've called this Red China's deep strategy of disintegrative warfare waged against the U.S. and other free-world nations. Beijing does not want to risk a shooting war with the U.S. ("kinetic war" in Pentagonese). Goodness, the U.S. is China's biggest market. So it fights a war of slow economic and military degradation.

How does America fight back? Develop new rare earth resources. Japan is doing that, including deep ocean bed mining. The U.S. must reopen mines. It was quickly rebuilding refining capacity — fast-track rebuilding.

But what about right now? Is there a readily available domestic source?

In late December 2025, I wrote a column that mentioned U.S. nano-technologists are developing methods to extract rare earths from discarded electronics. Graveyards of old electronic and digital equipment do exist.

Fantasy? Maybe. For 21st-century America, necessity is the mother of rare earth mineral extraction.

To find out more about Austin Bay and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com.

Photo credit: Roméo A. at Unsplash