A lot of people may be surprised that the biggest market mover for the past few months is not Nvidia, the darling of the race for AI supremacy. The honor goes to a once obscure Nevada-based mining company called MP Materials. While Nvidia stock rose from $136 to $174 year to date, MP Materials went from $16 to $60.

The reason for the meteoric rise is simple – MP Materials is the sole US producer of rare earth, minerals critical to modern high tech production from EV, drone, robotics, wind turbine, semiconductor, to military weaponry.

While its production is miniscule compared to Chinese rare earth miners and its refining capabilities are quite limited, MP Materials has just attracted $400 million investment from Pentagon, which is now its largest shareholder.

The unprecedented US government investment in a private mining company is in reaction to China's flexing its rare earth dominance in the face of the tariff and tech wars Trump and Biden have waged against Beijing.

US industries, especially the military industrial complex, are running scared that their reliance on Chinese rare earth to power high tech production and military applications are increasingly under stress in the intensifying geopolitical and geoeconomic contests between the two countries.

Ever since Trump launched the tech war against Huawei in his first term and Biden upped the stakes further by cutting off advanced semiconductors, Beijing has gradually tightened its stranglehold on rare earth in retaliation.