The alarm hasn’t yet reached the general public, but tension is beginning to build in the corridors of the aerospace industry, in microchip laboratories, and in government offices. For months, an element almost invisible to the world—yttrium—has become the silent center of a new global dispute. Supplies are thinning, prices are skyrocketing, deliveries are stalling. And while China and the United States have promised a truce over rare earth minerals, the wheels of advanced technology are beginning to slow.
Although a late-October meeting in South Korea between Chinese president Xi Jinping and his US counterpart Donald Trump raised hopes for a détente, the Chinese export restrictions introduced last April remain
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