The Decoupling Gambit

China controls nearly ninety percent of the world's rare earth processing capacity - the magnets, semiconductors, and specialty alloys that go into everything from an F-35's actuators to a submarine's sonar. In 2025 and 2026, Beijing showed exactly how far it's willing to use that leverage, blacklisting American rare earth firms and choking off military-end-user licenses in a calculated, reversible campaign that rattled prices and slowed production across the defense-industrial base.

The Decoupling Gambit traces how that dependency formed, which weapons systems and production lines break first, and what it means for two wars America is already arming - Ukraine and the Gulf - before asking the harder question: what happens if the next flashpoint is Taiwan, and the supply cutoff isn't gradual but instant?

Drawing on Pentagon industrial-base assessments, congressional testimony, and the real 2025-2026 export control sequence, this book lays out exactly what reshoring, allied diversification, and strategic stockpiling would require - and how much time America actually has left to build it.