As the United States works to rebuild its supply of missiles and munitions after deploying many of them in the war with Iran, its defense contractors will need a supply of rare-earth minerals and magnets that are essential to making those weapons…But China dominates global production of those minerals, and it has enacted tight controls over them in the past year to cut off any foreign companies linked to the military and to put political pressure on the Trump administration…China deployed its control over the mineral supply chain as a powerful source of leverage last year, clamping down on exports until the Trump administration agreed to reduce its punishing tariffs. Christopher Padilla, a former trade official in the George W. Bush administration, said that the U.S. decision to burn through many precision munitions in the Iran war had only increased that leverage…But simply rebuilding the U.S. arms supply could be a more immediate issue for the U.S.-China relations. Estimates from the Defense Department and Congress suggest that the United States deployed around half of its long-range stealth cruise missiles and roughly 10 times the number of Tomahawk cruise missiles it currently buys each year since the Iran war began in late February…The Tomahawk cruise missiles the United States has used extensively during the Iran war also need rare-earth minerals for their guidance systems, though they tend to use smaller quantities…They include materiel like samarium cobalt, which makes the magnets used to rotate fins on guided missiles more resistant to the heat generated by high-speed flight…The Pentagon’s $1.5 trillion budget request for fiscal year 2027 includes billions of dollars to find new sources for dozens of critical minerals used in weapon systems and the defense industrial base…For the Defense Department, divesting its supply chain of materials from China is considered essential for projects like the “Golden Dome,” a missile defense system meant to protect the United States from intercontinental ballistic missiles and hypersonic weapons…The United States has been working to find other sources of supply of rare-earth minerals and magnets, but those efforts can take years to develop. In the meantime, export controls that China introduced in December 2024 and ramped up in April 2025 are putting extreme pressure on supply chains…Mahnaz Khan, the vice president of policy for critical supply chains at Silverado Policy Accelerator, a Washington think tank, said the U.S. government was rapidly ramping up more secure mineral supply chains both domestically and with allies. “But in a prolonged conflict, America could face a growing collision between expanding defense needs and mineral supply chains still heavily concentrated in China,” she said.

A state-owned company that holds a monopoly on the purchase of hand-dug cobalt in Democratic Republic of Congo is seeking to form additional partnerships with industrial producers to control illegal mining on their sites, the head of the group said in an interview…So-called artisanal diggers who illegally enter mining sites have been a persistent risk for the country’s big copper and cobalt miners, including CMOC Group Ltd. and Glencore Plc. Hundreds of thousands of Congolese work in the industry, often under dangerous conditions, and the sheer number of diggers has made it difficult for the government and mining companies to protect their sites…To tackle the problem, Congo’s Entreprise Generale du Cobalt is seeking to designate small areas of land on miners’ concessions for development by cooperatives of independent diggers, in partnership with the companies holding the permits, Chief Executive Officer Eric Kalala said Wednesday…Formalizing the interplay between artisanal and industrial mining has been a struggle up to now, partly because miners have been reluctant to give up any of their valuable concessions, or open themselves up to legal liability. EGC is hoping to mitigate those concerns through new regulations released last year allowing it to enter into partnerships with mining companies to address the artisanal issue.

“SMR technology is an important part of the energy mix needed to create stable, affordable, and reliable power grids that meet the energy needs of economies and communities worldwide,” said Ian L. Edwards, President and Chief Executive Officer, AtkinsRéalis. “This partnership with FANCO marks an important step in delivering innovative and scalable nuclear technology precisely when the United States is embracing a new era of energy leadership. As the government modernizes pathways for commercial reactor deployment, we are poised to help shape a safer, more secure energy future for generations to come.”…Under the first task orders, AtkinsRéalis will prepare procedures and policies required to do design work, such as a quality program and engineering procedures. It will also undertake the conceptual design for the balance of plant and review the design of the nuclear steam supply system. EAGL-1 is the only U.S. nuclear reactor design cooled by lead-bismuth, a liquid metal alloy that has been used in successful nuclear systems abroad for decades. The unique properties of lead-bismuth enable a simpler, more compact reactor design with fewer components and reduced complexity…“The surge in US power demand is expected to intensify, largely by data centers and AI, as well as the need for greater grid resilience,” said Joe St. Julian, President, Nuclear, AtkinsRéalis. “We’ll need all sources of efficient baseload power to meet the country’s energy requirements, including large and small nuclear reactor technology, and we’ll draw on our deep expertise working on SMR technologies around the world to deliver best-in-class services in support of FANCO’s ambition to deploy a cost effective utility scale power across the US.”

Electric-vehicle maker Polestar told CNBC Thursday that “range anxiety” has been replaced by “pump anxiety,” amid worries around a Middle East crisis that has global energy prices soaring…“People are concerned, ‘how much do I pay at the gas station?’” Polestar CEO Michael Lohscheller told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Europe.”..The company is seeing increased demand for both used and new EVs as fuel prices have risen following the disruption at the Strait of Hormuz, a narrow waterway that normally carries around a fifth of the world’s oil supply…“In the past, people considered EVs for idealistic reasons, and now the decision is all about money,” Lohscheller said.

LONDON, Ontario--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Fortune Minerals Limited (TSX: FT) (OTCQB: FTMDF) (“Fortune” or “the Company”) (www.fortuneminerals.com) announces Wek’èezhìı Land and Water Board (“WLWB”) approval for the Type A Land Use Permit and Type B Water Licence needed to construct and operate the NICO Project Access Road (“NPAR”). The NPAR will connect Fortune’s planned NICO cobalt-gold-bismuth-copper mine and concentrator (“NICO Mine”) in the Northwest Territories (“NWT”) to the territorial highway system where it currently terminates at the community of Whati, 50 km south of the mine. The NPAR is needed for mine construction and operations and for trucking metal concentrates to Enterprise, NWT for transfer to rail and delivery to the Company’s planned hydrometallurgical facility in Alberta for processing (collectively, “the NICO Project”). Fortune and the Tłıchǫ Government are forming a joint venture to pursue funding opportunities to construct the NPAR, which could be extended to Gameti in the future to improve community access and delivery of services, reduce the cost of living, and promote economic opportunities in the central part of Tłıchǫ territory (see news release, dated April 29, 2026)…Fortune’s NICO Project is an advanced development asset comprised of a planned open pit and underground mine and concentrator in the NWT and dedicated hydrometallurgical facility in Alberta’s Industrial Heartland north of Edmonton, an existing petrochemical and critical minerals processing hub. Development of the NICO Project would provide a North American vertically integrated supply of battery-grade cobalt sulphate, bismuth ingots and oxide, and copper cement for the energy transition new technologies and defence with more than one million ounces of in-situ gold as a highly liquid and countercyclical co-product.