Chips won the Cold War. Rare earths may win the next
In retrospect, the symbolism of the moment was foreboding.
On May 15, 2019, President Donald Trump signed an executive order banning US firms from doing business with Chinese telecommunications companies, including Huawei Technologies Co. Five days after that first broadside in a brewing trade-and-technology war, President Xi Jinping was photographed touring a factory producing rare-earth magnets. Such devices, his visit seemed to imply, could be a geopolitical weapon for China quite as potent as advanced semiconductors are for the US.
