The public conversation about critical raw materials is dominated by mines. New projects make headlines, permitting disputes attract political attention, and strategic ambitions are routinely expressed in terms of where new extraction will happen. This is understandable. Mining is visible, tangible, and politically consequential in a way that the rest of the value chain rarely is. It is also a distraction from the binding constraint. For most critical raw materials, the most

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