China’s chokehold on gallium is quietly rewriting the rules of the arms race, leaving the US scrambling to keep its military electronics—and its edge—switched on. While the US remains the world leader in overall defense spending and innovation, China’s grip on gallium highlights how supply chain bottlenecks can offset traditional advantages.
This month, the South China Morning Post (SCMP) reported that China has quietly imposed de facto sanctions on the US semiconductor industry by restricting exports of critical minerals such as gallium and germanium. This move has widened the technological gap in military radar systems.
The shift was underscored during a military parade in Tiananmen Square, where China unveiled advanced weapons powered by gallium nitride (GaN) semiconductors. According to a report by the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Physics, China’s dominance in GaN technology—used in phased array radar—has enabled rapid deployment of compact, high-performance systems across its armed forces.
While the US pioneered active electronically scanned array (AESA) radar, its naval fleet still relies heavily on older systems, with only recent upgrades to SPY-6 AESA on select destroyers. China’s strategic control over GaN production, bolstered by its near-monopoly on refined gallium and a mature industrial chain, has allowed it to integrate military and civilian applications, accelerating innovation and reducing costs.
The export controls, framed as national security measures, were reaffirmed in December 2024. Analysts say this silent sanction has reshaped the global arms race, with China now fielding radar networks capable of detecting stealth aircraft and ballistic missiles at a scale the US could not match.
Aidan Power-Riggs and others, in a July 2025 report for the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), note that China controls 98% of global gallium production, leveraging its dominance in aluminum refining and proprietary extraction technologies to weaponize supply chains amid escalating trade tensions.
They emphasize that China’s export restrictions, tightened since 2023, have evolved into a comprehensive embargo targeting the US, disrupting access to gallium, a critical component for defense systems.
With over 11,000 US military components dependent on gallium and 85% involving Chinese suppliers, they caution that a chokehold poses a strategic threat to US national security and allied defense readiness.
China’s control over gallium, germanium, and other rare-earth exports is unlikely to cripple the US military outright. Still, it could significantly affect US arms exports by increasing the already high cost of its military equipment and stretching production times. This would likely result in smaller arms purchases and longer delivery times in arming partners such as Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan, possibly undermining their military capabilities.
Still, the US has found ways to circumvent these export controls. Sara Godek, in a March 2025 Stimson article, observes that despite China’s official ban on gallium and germanium exports to the US, both materials continue to reach the latter’s shores via indirect trade routes.
She points to trade data showing that third countries—especially Belgium—serve as conduits, with Chinese exports of germanium to Belgium surging 224% in 2024, mirroring the decline in direct US exports and suggesting a rerouted supply.
She says gallium reexports are harder to trace, but increased imports from Germany and Canada—both of which rely on Chinese supply and recycling—reveal similar patterns. These backdoor flows, Godek argues, undermine China’s restrictions and sustain US consumption despite a 68–77% drop in direct imports.
Yet such workarounds are only stopgaps. Alvin Camba, writing in War on the Rocks in April 2025, notes that the US has reopened the Mountain Pass Rare Earth Mine, utilizing the Defense Production Act to fund select domestic projects and expanding the budgets of the Department of Defense (DoD) and the Department of Energy (DoE) to support mining and processing.
Camba adds that the US has also pursued “friendshoring” partnerships with allies such as Canada, Australia, Japan, and South Korea to diversify its supply chains. Despite those efforts, he points out that domestic refining remains limited, with new facilities taking 10–20 years to become operational, a challenge compounded by investor hesitancy, high capital costs, and environmental opposition.
Beyond these obstacles, Camba says China’s integrated supply chain and its ability to manipulate global mineral markets—for instance, by flooding them with supply to depress prices—further undermine US competitiveness. Camba also notes that reopened US mines still rely heavily on Chinese processing. Moreover, he adds that US allies face their own capacity constraints and geopolitical vulnerabilities, leaving stockpiling an expensive and insufficient fallback.
That leaves another, riskier path: investing in countries with significant rare-earth reserves. As Elly Rostoum notes in a June 2025 article for the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA), while the US has invested US$600 billion in rare-earth-related infrastructure abroad, it is unlikely to shoulder the enormous cost of fully de-risking from China—estimated between $590 billion and more than $2 trillion by 2040.
She also argues that pouring money into far-flung mines may not be the ideal solution from a security standpoint.
Rostoum highlights that US companies are bound by prohibitions against investing in authoritarian or democratically challenged countries, in contrast to China’s pragmatic approach, which often ignores corruption or human rights concerns.
Rostoum notes that China has shown a greater appetite for risky investment, paying out $391 billion in troubled loans since 2005. Although many of these loans may never be repaid, Rostoum adds, they enabled China to gain a foothold in new markets and develop the infrastructure and networks necessary to control future supply chains.
In addition, while the US and China compete for rare earth supplies, Rostoum points out that source countries in the Global South are nationalizing reserves, recognizing their strategic importance as bargaining chips to secure better diplomatic, economic or security deals with the two superpowers.
At the same time, China’s strategy carries its own vulnerabilities, from reliance on politically volatile suppliers to the long-term risks of unsustainable lending. Such risks include reputational damage, resentment in indebted states that are unable to repay, reduced resources for China’s domestic priorities, and borrowers turning to Western alternatives.
Additionally, the risk of mutually assured economic damage from China’s export controls on rare earth metals and the US’s restrictions on advanced AI chips may incentivize both sides to dial down tensions. Just as the US depends on China’s rare earth metals for cutting-edge semiconductors and military gear, China’s AI industry still relies on US chips to support its ambitions.
In a contest where minerals are as valuable as missiles, China’s grip on gallium underscores that the arms race is being fought not only on battlefields but also in supply chains. For both China and the US, victory may hinge less on firepower than on which side can keep its factories and militaries running.
