Supply Chain Sovereignty in Rare Materials
Why Minerals Are the New Geopolitical Battlegrounds Affecting Space Commerce
In June 2024, Boeing discovered a problem that would ripple across its entire aerospace supply chain: counterfeit titanium had entered production, traced through falsified documentation back to Chinese suppliers. The immediate response was a 60-to-90-week delay in production timelines as the company scrambled to verify material provenance and requalify suppliers. But Boeing’s crisis was merely a symptom of a larger vulnerability that few in the space industry had fully confronted. Three specialty materials—germanium, Titanium, and Gallium Arsenide have become invisible chokepoints in space commerce, concentrated in the hands of geopolitical rivals who have demonstrated a willingness to weaponize supply chains.
China controls 98% of global gallium production and 93.5% of germanium output, while Russia’s VSMPO-AVISMA remains the single largest aerospace titanium supplier despite Western sanctions. These materials are not optional inputs that can be swap…
