Technology

How a war-torn Myanmar plays a critical role in China’s rare earth dominance

Published

4 months ago

June 24, 2025

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Illustration of the national flag of the People’s Republic of China and a mining site.

Craig Hastings | Moment | Getty Images

Beijing has been stepping up controls on rare earth exports, triggering global shortages and exposing industries’ dependence on Chinese supply chains.

However, over recent years, China itself has become reliant on rare earth supplies from an unexpected source: the relatively small and war-torn economy of Myanmar.

While China is the world’s top producer of rare earths, it still imports raw materials containing the coveted metals from abroad.

Myanmar accounted for about 57% of China’s total rare earth imports last year, Gracelin Baskaran, director of the Critical Minerals Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told CNBC.

According to Chinese Customs data, Myanmar’s rare earth exports to China significantly picked up in 2018 and reached a peak of nearly 42,000 metric tons by 2023.

Baskaran added that the imports from Myanmar are also particularly high in heavy rare earth element contents, which are generally less abundant in the earth’s crust, elevating their value and scarcity.

“Myanmar’s production has significantly strengthened China’s dominant position, effectively giving Beijing a de facto monopoly over the global heavy rare earths supply chain — and much of the leverage it wields today.”

The country has become a key source of two highly sought-after heavy rare earths, dysprosium and terbium, that play crucial roles in high-tech manufacturing, including in defense and military, aerospace and renewables sector.

“This dynamic has given rise to a supply chain in which extraction is concentrated in Myanmar, while downstream processing and value addition are predominantly carried out in China,” said Baskaran.

Why Myanmar?

Myanmar is home to deposits that tend to have higher heavy rare earth content, David Merriman, research director at Project Blue, told CNBC.

These “ionic adsorption clay” or IAC deposits are exploited through leaching methods that apply chemical reagents to the clay — and that comes with high environmental costs.

According to Merriman, the vast majority of the world’s IAC operations were in Southern China in the early to mid-2010s. But, as Beijing began implementing new environmental controls and standards in the rare earths industry, a lot of these projects began to close down.

“Myanmar, particularly the North of the country, was seen as a key region which had similar geology to many of the IAC deposit areas within China,” Merriman said.

“You started to see quite a rapid build out of new IAC type mines within Myanmar, essentially replacing the domestic Chinese production. There was a lot of Chinese business involvement in the development of these new IAC projects.”

The rare earths extracted by these IAC miners in Myanmar are then shipped to China mostly in the form of “rare earth oxides” for further processing and refining, Yue Wang, a senior consultant of rare earths at Wood Mackenzie, told CNBC.

In 2024, a report from Global Witness, a nonprofit focused on environmental and human rights abuses, said that China had effectively outsourced much of its rare earth extraction to Myanmar “at a terrible cost to the environment and local communities.”

China’s rare earth risks

China’s reliance on Myanmar for rare earths has also opened it up to supply chain risks, experts said.

According to Global Witness’s research, most of the heavy rare earths from Myanmar originate from the Northern Kachin State, which borders China. However, following Myanmar’s violent military coup in 2021, the military junta has struggled to maintain control of the territory amid opposition from the public and armed groups.

“Myanmar is a risky jurisdiction to rely on, given the ongoing Civil War. In 2024, the Kachin Independence Army (KIA), a group of armed rebels, seized sites responsible for half the world’s heavy rare earths production,” said CSIS’ Baskaran.

Since the seizure, there have been reports of supply disruptions causing spikes in the prices of some heavy rare earths. According a Reuters report, the KIA was seeking to use the resources as leverage against Beijing.

Chinese customs data shows, imports of rare earth oxides from Myanmar fell by over a third in the first five months of the year compared to the same period last year.

“If Myanmar were to cease all exports of rare earth feed stocks to China, China would struggle to meet its demand for heavy rare earths in the short term,” said Project Blue’s Merriman.

Not surprisingly, Beijing has been looking to diversify its sources of heavy rare earths.

According to Merriman, there are IAC deposits in nearby countries, including Malaysia and Laos, where some projects have been set up with Chinese involvement.

Still, he notes that environmental standards are expected to be higher in those countries, which will present challenges for rare earth miners.

China’s decision to cut back on its own extraction of heavy rare earth elements may serve as a warning to other countries about the costs of developing such projects. A report by Chinese media group Caixin in 2022 documented how former IAC operation sites in Southern China had left behind toxic water and contaminated soil, hurting local farmers’ livelihoods.

Technology

Doordash stock sinks 9% as company misses earnings, says it expects further spending

Published

4 hours ago

November 5, 2025

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Doordash stock sinks 9% as company misses earnings, says it expects further spending

A DoorDash bag on a bicycle in New York, US, on Tuesday, May 6, 2025.

Yuki Iwamura | Bloomberg | Getty Images

DoorDash reported third-quarter earnings that missed analyst expectations and said it expects to spend “several hundred million dollars” on new initiatives and development in 2026.

The stock sank 9% following the report.

Here’s how the company did compared to LSEG estimates:

Earnings: 55 cents per share vs 69 cents per share expected
Revenue: $3.45 billion vs $3.36 billion expected.

“We wish there was a way to grow a baby into an adult without investment, or to see the baby grow into an adult overnight, but we do not believe this is how life or business works,” the company wrote in its earnings release to explain the boosted spending.

DoorDash said it is developing a new global tech platform that progressed in 2025 but is expected to accelerate in 2026, noting the direct and opportunity costs in the near term. The company announced its Dot autonomous delivery robot in September.

The food delivery platform’s revenue increased 27% from a year earlier.

DoorDash posted net income of $244 million, or 55 cents per share, in Q3, up from $162 million, or 38 cents per share, a year ago.

Snap shares rocket 15% on strong forecast, $400 million Perplexity deal

Published

4 hours ago

November 5, 2025

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Snap shares rocket 15% on strong forecast, 0 million Perplexity deal

Snap shares climbed 15% on Wednesday after the company issued its third-quarter earnings, reporting revenue that beat analysts expectations and a $500 million stock repurchase program.

Here is how the company did compared with Wall Street’s expectations:

Earnings per share: Loss of 6 cents. That figure is not comparable to analysts’ estimates.
Revenue: $1.51 billion vs. $1.49 billion expected, according to LSEG
Global daily active users: 477 million vs. 476 million expected, according to StreetAccount
Global average revenue per user (ARPU): $3.16 vs. $3.13 expected, according to StreetAccount

Snap also announced that it is partnering with the startup Perplexity AI, which “will integrate its conversational search directly into Snapchat.” The feature is set to appear in Snapchat starting in early 2026, Snap said.

“Perplexity will pay Snap $400 million over one year, through a combination of cash and equity, as we achieve global rollout,” Snap said in the letter. “Revenue from the partnership is expected to begin contributing in 2026.”

The partnership represents “a first step in Snap’s effort to make Snapchat a platform where leading AI companies can connect with its global community in creative and trusted ways,” the two companies said in their announcement.

In the company’s earnings call, Snap CEO Evan Spiegel said Perplexity will have “default placement in our chat inbox” and the startup will “control the responses from their chatbot inside of Snapchat.”

Although Snap will not be selling “advertising against the Perplexity responses,” Spiegel said that the integration “will help Perplexity drive additional subscribers, which I think is something that will be valuable to their business.”

“We have a really unique opportunity ahead to help distribute AI agents through our chat interface,” Spiegel said.

While Snapchat users will still be able to engage with the company’s My AI chatbot, the integrated Perplexity AI service will provide them with “real-time answers from credible sources and explore new topics within the app,” the companies said.

Regarding Snap’s expensive foray into developing augmented reality glasses, Spiegel said the company plans to create a separate subsidiary around the Specs AR glasses to speed up development with partners.

Snap said fourth-quarter sales will come in between $1.68 billion and $1.71 billion. That figure’s midpoint of $1.695 billion is slightly ahead of Wall Street expectations of $1.69 billion.

For the third quarter, Snap said sales grew 10% year over year while it logged a net loss of $104 million. During the same quarter last year, Snap recorded a net loss of $153 million.

The Snapchat parent said that third-quarter adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, or EBITDA, came in at $182 million, ahead of the $125 million that StreetAccount was projecting.

The company also said that its adjusted EBITDA for the fourth quarter will be between $280 million and $310 million, which tops StreetAccount’s projections of $255.4 million.

Snap shares were down 32% for the year, as of Wednesday’s close, compared to the Nasdaq’s 22% gain.

Although the company’s shares soared as high as 25% in after-hours trading on Wednesday, they began their descent after Snap finance chief Derek Andersen detailed some of the company’s sales-related challenges on the earnings call.

“The North America LCS segment remains the primary headwind to our overall revenue growth,” said Andersen, adding that the company is seeing more growth and demand for Snap’s ad products from small-to-medium sized businesses in other regions.

In a letter to investors, Snap said that government regulations like Australia’s social media minimum age bill and related policy developments “are likely to have negative impacts on user engagement metrics that we cannot currently predict.”

“While we remain committed to our goal of serving 1 billion global monthly active users, we expect overall DAU may decline in Q4 given these internal and external factors, and as noted above we expect particularly negative impacts in certain jurisdictions,” Snap said in the letter.

The Australian senate passed the bill in November 2024, and when the law comes into effect next month, companies like Facebook and Instagram parent Meta, TikTok and Snap will be penalized if they fail to adequately prevent children under 16 from possessing accounts on their respective platforms.

Snap also said in the investor letter that the “upcoming rollout of platform-level age verification” from companies like Apple and Google could also negatively impact user metrics in the future.

Utah and California have signed online-child safety bills that put the onus on app store makers to verify user ages. Utah’s law is set to fully take effect in May 2026.

“We are also preparing for the upcoming rollout of platform-level age verification, which will use new signals provided by Apple — and soon Google — to help us better determine the age of our users and remove those we learn are under 13,” Snap said in the letter.

Snap’s warning to investors underscores how new laws, policies and regulations around the globe are beginning to impact tech firms.

In the letter, Snap also said that some of its efforts to improve monetization, such as its Snapchat+ subscription service, could result in “adverse impact on engagement metrics as these experiences are rolled out globally.”

Pinterest shares tanked on Tuesday after the company reported third-quarter results that missed on earnings per share and provided weaker-than-expected guidance. The company’s finance chief Julia Donnelly told analysts that Pinterest expects “broader trends and market uncertainty continuing with the addition of a new tariff in Q4 impacting the home furnishing category.”

Big tech companies like Meta, Alphabet and Amazon reported their latest quarterly earnings last week in which they posted solid digital advertising sales and hefty spending on AI-related computing infrastructure.

The Facebook-parent saw third-quarter sales boom 26% year-over-year to $51.24 billion, while revenue in Amazon’s online ad unit soared 24% year-over-year to $17.7 billion.

Alphabet said that its total advertising revenue for the third quarter rose 13% year-over-year to $74.18 billion, while YouTube’s online ad sales climbed 15% to $10.26 billion.

Reddit said last Thursday that third-quarter sales surged 68% year-over-year to $585 million. The company’s global daily active uniques increased 19% year-over-year to 116 million, surpassing estimates of 114 million.

WATCH: It would be irresponsible of Zuckerberg to not spend on his network of properties, says Jim Cramer.

Technology

New bipartisan bill would require companies to report AI job losses

Published

6 hours ago

November 5, 2025

admin

New bipartisan bill would require companies to report AI job losses

A pedestrian walks past Amazon Ireland corporate offices in Dublin, as Amazon.com, Inc., said on Tuesday it plans to cut its global corporate workforce by as many as 14,000 roles and seize the opportunity provided by artificial intelligence (AI), in Dublin, Ireland, Oct. 28, 2025.

Damien Eagers | Reuters

A new bipartisan bill seeks to provide a “clear picture” of how artificial intelligence is affecting the American workforce.

Sens. Mark Warner, D-Va., and Josh Hawley, R-Mo., on Wednesday announced the AI-Related Job Impacts Clarity Act. It would require publicly traded companies, certain private companies and federal agencies to submit quarterly reports to the Department of Labor detailing any job losses, new hires, reduced hiring or other significant changes to their workforce as a result of AI.

The data would then be compiled by the Department of Labor into a publicly available report.

“This bipartisan legislation will finally give us a clear picture of AI’s impact on the workforce,” Warner said in a statement. “Armed with this information, we can make sure AI drives opportunity instead of leaving workers behind.”

The proposed legislation comes as politicians, labor advocates and some executives have sounded the alarm in recent years about the potential for widespread job loss due to AI.

In May, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei said that the AI tools that his company and others are building could eliminate half of all entry-level white-collar jobs and cause unemployment to spike up to 20% in the next one to five years. Anthropic makes the chatbot Claude.

Layoffs have been announced recently at companies across the tech, retail, auto and shipping industries, with executives citing myriad reasons, from AI and tariffs to shifting business priorities and broader cost-cutting efforts. Job cuts announced at Amazon, UPS and Target last month totaled more than 60,000 roles.

Some experts have questioned whether AI is fully to blame for the layoffs, noting that companies could be using the technology as cover for concerns about the economy, business missteps or cost cutting initiatives.

WATCH: Is AI behind recent job cuts? Here’s what to know