Critical Materials Atlas
Method · from finding to decision

Break the chokepoint

Knowing that China refines what it doesn’t mine is only half an answer — the reader’s next question is so what do I do about it? This page turns each chokepoint into a decision. For every critical material it asks three things in order: what kind of moat holds the chokepoint (because the moat type decides what can work) — import-fed capability that no ore embargo can touch, a by-product lock with no ore stream to redirect, or a genuine endowment; who could realistically break it, ranked by product-space capability-adjacency with the leader removed; and who is actually building the alternative. The gap between could and is is the vulnerability — and the to-do list.

Why the moat type is the first question. A chokepoint is not a chokepoint is not a chokepoint. If a leader imports the ore and exports the refined metal (Japan’s titanium sponge, Indonesia’s nickel, China’s tungsten), the moat is the furnace — tariffs or export controls on ore are useless; only new refining capability elsewhere breaks it. If the leader extracts the metal as a by-product of a domestic host it already controls (China’s gallium from its own alumina, germanium from zinc), there is no ore stream to redirect at all — substitution means standing up new by-product recovery on someone else’s host metal. Only where a leader genuinely mines and refines its own resource does ore access become a real lever. Same 87% share, three completely different answers.
How “who could” is measured & caveats

Who could break it uses two signals, always labelled so they are never confused. The strong one (capability-adjacency) is the product-space density of each country to the refined product with the leader removed — latent capability to stand the stage up, not merely present output. It exists only for the 8 clean ore→refined HS pairs. For the rest we fall back to the current alternative-supplier share — a weaker proxy (who already produces, which is not who could scale). Who is building is announced public projects (Lynas, MP Materials, Iluka, Rio Tinto Rincón, Umicore…) plus USGS forward capacity to 2029; it is curated, not exhaustive, so a blank is a sourcing gap — shown blank, not read as “no one”.

Caveats. Refined-share leaders are export-based, so a giant that refines huge volumes but consumes them at home is understated — cobalt shows Finland, not China, for exactly this reason (China’s refined cobalt stays in China). Where the USGS Outlook measures refining concentration directly (gallium, magnesium, titanium…) we use its share instead, which repairs the shared-code dilution (gallium reads its true ~87%, not the 811292-diluted figure). The moat type comes from the trade feedstock signature + the HS-code provenance flags; the share from USGS where available else the capability layer. Built by build_breakout.py from capability.json, mine_refine.json, usgs_outlook.json, pipeline.json and scenario.json. See also the reallocation stress test (can the rest actually cover a cut, in tonnage — and does removal just shift the chokepoint?), the leverage map (how exposed is each importing country), Who actually refines, the product-space map, and shock scenarios.