China Controls 90% of Rare Earths. This Startup Has a Fix | Maglut

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China controls more than 90% of the world's rare-earth processing capacity. If that supply disappeared, the effects could reach everything from iPhones and airplanes to advanced military systems.

Curtis Wu, co-founder and CEO of Maglut Heavy Industries, joins Stephen McBride to explain how the United States surrendered this critical industrial capability—and why rebuilding it requires more than copying China's environmentally destructive processing plants.

Maglut's ARC-1 system adapts chromatography, a purification technique refined by the biotechnology industry, to separate rare-earth elements. The company says its water-based approach could deliver a 10× smaller facility, 10× lower capital costs, and 20× lower energy consumption than conventional solvent extraction—all while producing individual rare-earth elements at 99.9% purity.

Curtis explains how ARC-1 works, why chromatography has only recently become economically viable, and whether American production can compete with China on cost. They also discuss the looming 2027 defense-supply deadline, America's shortage of chemical engineers, government support for advanced manufacturing, uranium enrichment, and the limits of AI inside physical laboratories.

Can America rebuild its rare-earth supply chain before China's dominance becomes an unavoidable choke point?

0:00 China's rare-earth choke point

1:04 What are rare earth elements?

2:07 Why processing is the real bottleneck

4:03 Maglut's alternative to solvent extraction

5:26 Disruption Investing

6:08 China's 90% processing dominance