For most of human history, no one paid all that much attention to the 17 rare earth elements.

An obscure suite of elements that sit in their own corner of the periodic table, they were mostly renowned among chemists and geologists for being tricky and fiddly – incredibly hard to refine, but with chemical facets that made them, well… interesting.

Not so much for a single thing they did by themselves, but for what they did in conjunction with other elements.

Added to alloys, rare earths can make them stronger, more ductile, more heat-resistant, and so on. Think of them as a sort of metallic condiment: a seasoning you add to other substances to make them stronger, harder, better.

The best example is probably neodymium. On its own, there’s nothing especially spectacular about this rare earth element. But add it to iron and boron, and you end up with the strongest magnets in the world. Neodymium iron boron magnets are everywhere.

If you have a pair of headphones or earbuds, the speakers inside them (“drivers” is the technical term) are driven by these rare earth magnets.

If you have a pair of Apple AirPods, those magnets aren’t just in the speakers; they’re what’s responsible for the satisfying “click” when the case snaps shut.

Rare earth magnets are in your car: in the little motors that raise and lower the windows, inside the functioning of the airbag and the seat adjustment mechanism.

And not just the little things. Most electric vehicles use rare-earth magnets in their motors, enabling them to accelerate more efficiently than the old all-copper ones.

More sensitively, from the perspective of Western governments, in the military, there are tonnes of rare earths to be found in submarines, in fighter jets, in tanks and frigates. Much of this is in the form of magnets, but some is in the form of specialised alloys.

So, for instance, there is no making a modern jet engine without yttrium and zirconium, which, together, help those metallic fan blades withstand the extraordinary temperatures inside the engine. Without rare earths, the blades would simply melt.

Yet the amount of this stuff we mine from the ground each year is surprisingly small.

According to Rob West of Thunder Said Energy, the total size of the rare earth market is roughly the same as the North American avocado market. But, says West, those numbers underplay its profound importance.

“Buyers would likely pay over 10-100x more for small but essential quantities of rare earths, if supplies were ever disrupted,” he says.

“You cannot make long-distance fibre cables without erbium. You cannot make a gas turbine or jet engine without yttrium.”

China’s dominance

In short, these things matter. And that brings us to the politics.

Right now, about 70% of the world’s rare earth elements are mined in China.

Roughly 90% of the finished products (in other words, those magnets) are made in China. China is dominant in this field in an extraordinary way.

This is not, it’s worth saying, for geological reasons.

Contrary to what the name suggests, rare earth elements aren’t all that rare. Pull a chunk of soil out of the ground and there will be trace amounts of most of them in there.

True: finding concentrated ores is a bit harder, but even here, it’s not as if they are all in China.

There are plenty of rich rare earth ores in Brazil, India, Australia, and even the US (indeed, the Mountain Pass mine in California is where rare earth mining really began in earnest).

Low cost of Chinese rare earths

The main explanation for Chinese dominance is that China has simply become very good at extracting lots of rare earths at relatively low cost.

According to figures from Benchmark Mineral Intelligence, the prevailing cost of Chinese rare earths is at least three times lower than the cost of similar minerals refined in Europe (to the extent that such things are available).

At this point, perhaps you’re wondering how China has managed to do it – to dominate global production at such low prices.

Part of the explanation, says West, probably comes down to “transfer pricing” – in other words, China being China, refiners and producers are probably able to buy raw materials at below market prices.

Another part of the explanation is that refining rare earth ores is phenomenally energy and carbon-intensive.

Most European and American firms have pulled out of the sector because it is hideously dirty.

Such qualms are less of an issue in China, especially since most of their mines, including the biggest of all, Bayan Obo in Inner Mongolia, are hundreds if not thousands of miles from the nearest city.

Energy costs are less of a constraint in a country whose grid is still built mostly on a foundation of cheap thermal coal.

Add it all up, and you end up with the situation we have today: where the vast majority of the world’s rare earths, that go into all our devices, come from dirty mines in China, produced at such a low cost that device manufacturers are happy to put them anywhere.

Anyway, that brings us to the politics.

Global trade war flaring up again

In recent months and years, China has periodically introduced controls on rare earth exports.

Last week, it announced the most serious rule change yet, essentially insisting that anyone using Chinese rare earths would have to apply for a licence from them.

It has been seen, in Washington at least, as a declaration of economic war, and, in response, Donald Trump has announced a fresh set of tariffs on China.

In short, the global trade war seems to be flaring up all over again.

Where this ends up is anyone’s guess. Tim Worstall, a former scandium expert who has been in and out of the rare earths sector for decades, suspects China might have overplayed its hand.

“The end result here is that there can be two outcomes,” he says.

“A: The entire world’s usage of rare earths is mapped out in detail, end uses, end users, quantities, and times for the Chinese state and depends upon their bureaucracy to administer.

“B: The plentiful rare earths of elsewhere are dug up, and the supply chain is rebuilt outside China.

“My insistence is that B is going to be the outcome, and it’ll be done, intervention or no.”

Read more from Sky News:
At least 42 dead in bus crash in South Africa
Dozens injured after train crash in Slovenia

In practice, the new rules may simply represent an element in China’s trade negotiations with the US.

So it’s hard to know whether they, or for that matter America’s 100% extra tariffs, will ever really bite.

Either way, it’s yet more evidence of the rocky road the global economy remains on.

Tens of thousands of Vodafone users are reporting problems with their internet

The outages began on Monday afternoon, according to the monitoring website DownDetector, which reported more than 130,000 issues with Vodafone connections.

A spokeswoman for the company said: “We are aware of a major issue on our network currently affecting broadband, 4G and 5G services.

“We appreciate our customers’ patience while we work to resolve this as soon as possible.”

The company has more than 18 million UK customers, with nearly 700,000 of those using Vodafone’s home broadband connection.

Vodafone users vented their frustration on social media.

“It’s like Vodafone has just been wiped off the earth. Not a single thing works,” said one X user.

The Vodafone app also appeared to be down for users, with the company’s website briefly going down too.

The ‘network status checker’ on the website was also down, and when Sky News tried to test the customer helpline, it did not ring.

“There’s Vodafone down and then there’s Vodafone wiped off the face of the f***ing planet,” posted another X user.

Read more from Sky News:
Gaza deal latest: Drones reveal devastation
Madagascar president says coup under way

Jake Moore, global cybersecurity advisor at ESET, said the outage shows how reliant we are on modern infrastructure like mobile networks.

“Outages will always naturally raise early suspicions of a potential cyber incident, though current evidence points more towards an internal network failure than a confirmed attack,” said Mr Moore.

“The sudden outage, combined with the inability to access customer service lines, mirrors classic symptoms of a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack, where attackers overwhelm the network so the site or systems collapse.

“However, malicious or not, this once again highlights our heavy reliance on digital infrastructure, especially in an age where we increasingly depend on mobile networks for everything,” he said.

“Ultimately, resilience is essential, whether the cause is a direct cyberattack, a supply chain issue or a critical internal error.”

Lloyds Banking Group has set aside a further £800m to cover estimated costs associated with the car finance mis-selling scandal.

The bank said the sum took its total provision to £1.95bn.

It had been assessing the impact since the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) revealed last week it was consulting on a compensation scheme, with up to 14.2 million car finance agreements potentially eligible for payouts.

The regulator had previously found that many lenders failed to disclose commission paid to brokers, which could have led to customers paying more than they should have between April 2007 and November 2024.

Money latest: How much a private investigator costs

Eligible customers could receive an average of £700 each under the proposals.

Lloyds said on Monday that it would be contributing to the consultation to argue a number of points.

It said: “The Group remains committed to ensuring customers receive appropriate redress where they suffered loss, however the Group does not believe that the proposed redress methodology outlined in the consultation document reflects the actual loss to the customer. Nor does it meet the objective of ensuring that consumers are compensated proportionately and reasonably where harm has been demonstrated.

“In addition, the approach to unfairness in the redress scheme does not align with the legal clarity provided by the recent Supreme Court judgment in Johnson, in which unfairness was assessed on a fact specific basis and against a non-exhaustive list of multiple factors. The Group will make representations to the FCA accordingly.”

Shares in Lloyds, which fell last week when the bank warned of a potential “material” increase in its provisions, gained more than 0.5% on Monday.

The estimated compensation figure came in below the sum some financial analysts had predicted.

The shares remain more 50% up in the year to date.

Another listed lender exposed to car loan mis-selling is also expected to raise the amount it has set aside.

Close Brothers, which has a £165m provision currently, saw its shares tumble 7% when it admitted an increase was likely once its analysis of the compensation consultation documents was completed.

Car finance makes up approximately a quarter of its total loan book.