Technology

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

Published

3 weeks ago

June 24, 2025

admin

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

Nvidia says U.S. government will allow it to resume H20 AI chip sales to China

Published

4 hours ago

July 15, 2025

admin

Nvidia says U.S. government will allow it to resume H20 AI chip sales to China

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang attends a roundtable discussion at the Viva Technology conference dedicated to innovation and startups at Porte de Versailles exhibition center in Paris on June 11, 2025.

Sarah Meyssonnier | Reuters

Nvidia announced Tuesday that it hopes to resume sales of its H20 general processing units to clients in China, saying that the U.S. government had assured the company would be granted licenses.

Nvidia’s sales of the H20 chips, which had been designed specifically to keep them out of export controls on China, were halted in April.

“The U.S. government has assured NVIDIA that licenses will be granted, and NVIDIA hopes to start deliveries soon,” the company said in a statement.

This comes against the backdrop of a preliminary trade deal between Washington and Beijing last month that sought China to resume rare earth exports and the U.S. to relax tech export controls.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang in recent months has ramped up his lobbying against export controls, arguing that they inhibited American tech leadership. In May, Huang said chip restrictions had already cut Nvidia’s China market share nearly in half.

Huang also announced a new “fully compliant” GPU, NVIDIA RTX PRO, saying it was ideal for smart factories and logistics.

The potential change in U.S. stance follows a meeting between Huang and U.S. President Donald Trump last week.

In his meeting with Trump and U.S. policymakers, Huang had reaffirmed Nvidia’s support for the administration’s job creation and onshoring efforts, as well as the aim for America to lead in global AI, the company said.

Meanwhile, in Beijing, it was confirmed that Huang has met with government and industry officials to discuss the benefits of AI and ways for researchers to advance safe and secure AI for the benefit of all.

Technology

Cognition to buy AI startup Windsurf days after Google poached CEO in $2.4 billion licensing deal

Published

12 hours ago

July 14, 2025

admin

Cognition to buy AI startup Windsurf days after Google poached CEO in .4 billion licensing deal

In this photo illustration, a man seen holding a smartphone with the logo of US artificial intelligence company Cognition AI Inc. in front of website.

Timon Schneider | SOPA Images | Sipa USA | AP

Artificial intelligence startup Cognition announced it’s acquiring Windsurf, the AI coding company that lost its CEO and several other senior employees to Google just days earlier.

Cognition said on Monday that it will purchase Windsurf’s intellectual property, product, trademark, brand and talent, but didn’t disclose terms of the deal. It’s the latest development in an AI talent war, as companies like Meta, Google and OpenAI fiercely compete for top engineers and researchers.

OpenAI had been in talks to acquire Windsurf for about $3 billion in April, but the deal fell apart, and Google said on Friday that it hired Windsurf’s co-founder and CEO Varun Mohan. Google is paying $2.4 billion in licensing fees and for compensation, as CNBC previously reported.

“Every new employee of Cognition will be treated the same way as existing employees: with transparency, fairness, and deep respect for their abilities and value,” Cognition CEO Scott Wu wrote in a memo to employees on Monday. “After today, our efforts will be as a united and aligned team. There’s only one boat and we’re all in it together.”

Cognition didn’t immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment. Windsurf directed CNBC to Cognition.

Cognition is best known for its AI coding agent named Devin, which is designed to help engineers build software faster. As of March, the startup had raised hundreds of millions of dollars at a valuation of close to $4 billion, according to a report from Bloomberg.

Both companies are backed by Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund. Other investors in Windsurf include Greenoaks, Kleiner Perkins and General Catalyst.

“I’m overwhelmed with excitement and optimism, but most of all, gratitude,” Jeff Wang, the interim CEO of Windsurf, wrote in a post on X on Monday. “Trying times reveal character, and I couldn’t be prouder of how every single person at Windsurf showed up these last three days for each other and for our users.”

Wu said that the acquisition ensures all Windsurf employees are “treated with respect and well taken care of in this transaction.” All employees will participate financially in the deal, have vesting cliffs waived for their work to date and receive fully accelerated vesting for their, according to the memo.

“There’s never been a more exciting time to build,” Wu wrote.

WATCH: Google snatches Windsurf CEO after OpenAI deal dissolves

Technology

Musk’s xAI faces European scrutiny over Grok’s ‘horrific’ antisemitic posts

Published

12 hours ago

July 14, 2025

admin

Musk's xAI faces European scrutiny over Grok's 'horrific' antisemitic posts

The Grok logo is being displayed on a smartphone with Xai visible in the background in this photo illustration on April 1, 2024.

Jonathan Raa | Nurphoto | Getty Images

The European Union on Monday called in representatives from Elon Musk‘s xAI after the company’s social network X, and chatbot Grok, generated and spread anti-semitic hate speech, including praise for Adolf Hitler, last week.

A spokesperson for the European Commission told CNBC via e-mail that a technical meeting will take place on Tuesday.

xAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Sandro Gozi, a member of Italy’s parliament and member of the Renew Europe group, last week urged the Commission to hold a formal inquiry.

“The case raises serious concerns about compliance with the Digital Services Act (DSA) as well as the governance of generative AI in the Union’s digital space,” Gozi wrote.

X was already under a Commission probe for possible violations of the DSA.