On 9 October 2025, China's Ministry of Commerce published its second critical minerals export control package of the year. The package extended licensing requirements to five additional rare earth elements (holmium, erbium, thulium, europium, and ytterbium), brought refining and magnet-manufacturing equipment within scope, and codified an extraterritorial dimension that applies Chinese regulatory authority to foreign-made products incorporating Chinese material or processing

Guns without foundations As European leaders commit to historic levels of defence spending, a structural problem is being systematically underweighted in public debate: the basic materials from which modern weapons are made are, to a remarkable degree, sourced from the very states that European rearmament is designed to deter or hedge against. The immediate catalyst for renewed focus is the conflict environment. Russia's ongoing war in Ukraine has driven sustained demand for