Why the US Military Can't Escape Chinese Magnets

From January 1, 2027, American weapons can no longer contain magnets made in China. But China makes about nine of every ten of these magnets on Earth, and it has started turning down export licenses for American defense companies. In 2022 the Pentagon stopped accepting F-35s for more than five weeks over a Chinese alloy in one small magnet. In 2025, missile makers got through the year on old samarium found in a French factory. The magnet at the center of all this was invented in America. In 1982 John Croat, a scientist at General Motors Research Laboratories outside Detroit, discovered neodymium-iron-boron, the strongest permanent magnet the world had seen. At the same moment, Masato Sagawa found the same magnet in Japan. GM built a factory in Anderson, Indiana, to make it. Then in 1995, after the biggest loss in American corporate history, GM sold the business, Magnequench, for about $70 million to a group whose largest owners were two Chinese state-owned companies. Washington's foreign-investment committee let it go through. By 2003 the American factories were closed and the work had moved overseas, mostly to China. Today the Pentagon owns a stake in a Texas magnet maker, and GM is testing American-made magnets again. 0:00 Cold open 1:16 The magnet 3:33 Anderson 5:03 Seventy million 7:03 Twenty bucks a week 9:16 The chokehold 11:38 Back to Texas Should Washington have blocked the sale in 1995, or was it GM's business to sell? Tell us in the comments. Sources US Senate Armed Services, Airland Subcommittee hearing, April 3, 2003 (S. Hrg. 108-241, Pt. 4) GAO-10-617R, Rare Earth Materials in the Defense Supply Chain (2010) Congressional Record (Sen. Inhofe, 2005 and 2007); Senate Banking hearings (Sen. Bayh, 2005 and 2006) US Department of Commerce, Section 232 report on NdFeB magnets (2023) DFARS 252.225-7052; Executive Order 14415 (2026) USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries 2026, Rare Earths John Croat biography, Honda Prize (2023); IEEE Spectrum, "The Men Who Made the Magnet That Made the Modern World" (2022) US Patent 4,802,931 David Moberg, In These Times (2004); Ward's (1995); NBC News and ABC News (2008) Charles Freeman III, The Washington Quarterly (2009); The Heritage Foundation (2008) CSIS (2025, 2026); Council on Foreign Relations (2026) The New York Times (Dec 2025); Breaking Defense (2022) MP Materials SEC filings (2025, 2026); GM newsroom (Oct 2, 2026)