What this covers, how it's done, and what it refuses to do. Written down so you can judge it before you spend time on me.
August 2026
The seventeen rare earth elements and the critical minerals beside them, tungsten, gallium, germanium, antimony, graphite, and the industries that cannot function without them.
Three layers, and most coverage only does the first:
That third layer is the one nobody covers and the reason this exists.
Primary sources where I can get them. Clause text rather than a law firm's summary of it. SEC filings rather than a press release about the filing. Conversations with operators rather than a market research report modeling the operators.
Secondary sources labeled as such. A lot of what's published here still rests on trade press and web research. Where that's true I say so, and I say how confident I am. Market-sizing reports from paid publishers are treated as roughly indicative and named as such, because most of them are modeled rather than counted.
Nothing gets repeated into fact. A figure I couldn't verify stays labeled unverified no matter how many times it appears. Repetition is how bad numbers launder themselves.
Every page ends with where it's thin. Not a disclaimer. A specific statement of what the data doesn't support. If you only read one section of anything here, read that one. It'll tell you more about the quality of the work than the findings will.
Falsifiers appear next to the argument, not in a footnote. The case for scarcity in these materials sits on the same page as the substitution research that would end it.
I publish what I got wrong. Two of my top three rankings came off the list once I checked them, and the write-up leads with that rather than putting it at the end. A screen with no rejections isn't a screen.
Reference pages are maintained, not archived. The maps carry a date and get updated. When something on them changes, the change is noted rather than quietly edited.
Not investment advice, and not a newsletter with a schedule to keep. I publish when there's something worth saying.
Not compliance or legal advice. Where a question needs a government contracts attorney. And several do, I'll say so rather than guess.
Not independent of my interests, and I'd rather state that plainly than pretend. I hold positions in some companies named across this site, and I'm looking to buy a business in the services layer. Both of those shape what I find interesting. You should read accordingly.
You're probably reading this because I asked for twenty minutes.
Here's the deal I'd offer. I'm trying to close specific gaps in what's publicly known. They're listed here, so you can see exactly what I'm after before we talk. In exchange I'll share what I've mapped on your segment, which is usually the first time someone has seen their own supply chain drawn out.
Nothing you tell me gets published with your name on it unless you say it's fine. If you'd rather the whole conversation stay off the record, say so at the start and it will.
And the disclosure that matters: alongside the research, I'm looking to buy and operate a business in this space. That's on the front page of this site and I'd rather you hear it from me at the beginning than discover it later. If that makes a conversation awkward, I understand, and I'd still rather tell you.
If you know this industry from the inside, I'd like to talk. Operators, retired operators, distributors, engineers, people who've sold a business in this space. Especially if you think something published here is wrong.