The front page is about a chokepoint a navy can close. The same thing is happening in the supply chain, except the chokepoint is a licensing office. China makes about 99% of the world's low-grade gallium. After it tightened export controls, gallium outside China hit roughly $1,850 a kilo — up more than 200% in a year and a half — while the price inside China stayed low. [E1] Two prices for the same metal, split by who's allowed to buy it. That isn't scarcity. It's a war-risk premium.
Rare earths are the cleanest version. China refines about 91% of the magnet metals the world runs on, and makes 94% of the finished magnets. [E2] After it started requiring export licences in April 2025, prices for two key elements ran four to five times higher outside China, and some buyers paid triple. The material still exists. What got scarce is the licensed supply that can actually leave the country — the way a strait can be full of oil nobody's allowed to ship. A chip substrate called indium phosphide did the same: up about 250% to $5,000 a wafer, with two to three years to build supply anywhere else. [E3]
So here's the rule of thumb. The premium gets big when one supplier dominates, the cutoff is deliberate, and finding another source takes longer than the buyer can wait. Hit all three and the price stops looking like supply and demand and starts looking like insurance.
And then the case that could prove it wrong — because a rule that can't be wrong isn't a rule. Graphite has the whole setup: China dominates it, export controls exist, the US imports nearly all of it. And yet the market stayed oversupplied and prices fell. [E4] Concentration isn't enough on its own; the cutoff has to actually bite, against buyers who can't wait. So the question to ask of every "critical mineral" scare isn't how concentrated it is. It's how fast you can route around it. Hormuz is the metaphor. Graphite is the control group.