The rare earth race: Is your smartphone part of China’s greatest geopolitical weapon?

Rare earth minerals are invisible to the naked eye, but they power everything from your phone’s vibration to fighter jets in the sky. And behind this invisible supply chain sits one country: China. But is Beijing really weaponizing the dirt beneath its soil or simply turning it into economic muscle the world can’t ignore? To answer that, we spoke to Dr. Jost Wübbeke, managing partner at Sinolytics in Berlin. Wübbeke has spent years studying China’s rare earth strategy, even warning back in 2015 that Beijing’s approach was less about politics and more about economics, building innovation, creating reserves, and using scarcity as leverage. In this episode of Now You Know, Ananya Dutta asks, What happens when rare earths stop being a niche resource and start becoming the currency of 21st-century geopolitics?