The World’s Next Manhattan Project

Every phone call, flight, and battery charge depends on materials most people never see.

When a single announcement from Beijing can halt the flow of rare earths, lithium, or nickel, the issue stops being geopolitical.

It becomes personal. It decides whether you can drive, work, or keep the lights on.

On Monday, October 20th, President Trump and Australian Prime Minister Albanese signed the U.S.–Australia Critical Minerals Framework.

The name sounds bureaucratic, but the mission is survival.

In Louisiana, engineers are building the first American rare-earth separation plant in decades.

In the red dust of Australia, drills bite into rock to reach the scandium and lithium that will feed it.

Two nations are racing to rebuild the material foundations of the free world before the window closes.

For half a century, the West traded factories for finance and dirt for data. Now every turbine and EV battery stands as proof of that mistake.

China refines over 85% of rare earths, 70% of lithium, and 90% of tungsten.

The average Western mine takes twenty-nine years from discovery to production.

Demand is surging.

A single gigawatt of solar power needs 5,200 tons of aluminum.

Each F-35 fighter jet carries nearly half a ton of magnets.

Australia brings the rock and the will. America brings the capital and technology. Together, they are building a Manhattan Project made of dirt, designed to prevent the next global crisis before it starts.

The Alliance That Could Rewrite Power

The partnership began with a problem.

In Louisiana, an empty warehouse waited for material no Western nation could refine. Across the Pacific, Australian miners sat on ore that couldn’t be processed fast enough.

The solution was obvious: stop working alone and start building together.

The framework unlocked joint financing, defense-grade research, and offtake agreements between miners, refiners, and manufacturers.

Australia supplies more than half the world’s lithium and the second-largest share of rare-earth ore.

The United States, through its Defense Production Act, can move capital and policy with wartime speed.

Money and ambition are already crossing the ocean.

Lockheed Martin agreed to buy a quarter of the scandium output from Sunrise Energy Metals. Global production of the metal could fit inside a swimming pool, yet it strengthens aircraft wings and next-generation alloys.

The U.S. Export-Import Bank financing is underwriting refineries in Western Australia and processing plants in Texas and Louisiana.

The invisible cables of a new supply chain are pulling tight.

For decades, markets and diplomacy were supposed to guarantee access to resources.

That belief collapsed when China imposed, though later paused, crushing restrictions on these critical minerals, prompting President Trump and other world leaders to take action.

Trade agreements now read like defense treaties. Permitting offices act like command posts. The free world is coordinating production again.

This time, the raw material is everything modern civilization needs to function.

The Day the World Realized It Was Trapped

Every alliance has a spark. This one began with a realization: both countries had built their prosperity on someone else’s refinery.

For decades, it seemed harmless. Supply was steady. Prices were low. Then a single export pause from Beijing froze production lines from Texas to Tokyo. It wasn’t an embargo. It was a warning.

Dependency reveals itself through panic. When factories stop and billion-dollar companies start calling embassies instead of suppliers, the illusion of global reliability dies.

The United States learned this in 2020 when masks ran out. Australia learned it in 2022 when a diplomatic dispute slowed coal exports. And just a few weeks ago, China dropped the proverbial bomb.

And now the world understands: Control what you need, or someone else will control you.

China currently holds a near-monopoly on critical metals and minerals.

Even when ore is mined elsewhere, it’s often shipped east for finishing before it can be used.

The West owns the rock but not the recipe.

That imbalance binds the United States and Australia. When China controls the inputs for clean energy, advanced weapons, and semiconductors, dependency becomes exposure.

It’s not about matching China’s firepower. It’s about staying operational when everything else breaks.

A generation ago, dependency was efficient. Today it’s dangerous.

The nations that treat independence as insurance will be the ones still standing when the next shock arrives.

The Blueprint for a New Industrial Age

The plan is ambitious. The last time the West moved this fast, it was building the machinery of war.

Projects that once crawled through bureaucracy are moving with speed.

In Western Australia, construction crews pour foundations for new lithium and rare-earth refineries backed by American capital.

In Louisiana, cranes rise over a site that will handle 2,000 tons of rare-earth oxides annually, scaling to 5,000 tons by 2026. It will process material from allied mines using new chemistry developed at home.

Supply chains are becoming infrastructure. Stockpiles are growing. Permits are accelerating. Research networks link universities, defense agencies, and private firms.

More than $4 billion in joint projects has been announced this year.

40% of global lithium now comes from allied nations, up from 25% seven years ago. A single refinery can cut the region’s dependence on Chinese processing by double digits.

Together, these projects form the skeleton of a new industrial order.

The engineers running them chase throughput, not glory. They understand that industrial security is national security.

Their work is quiet, methodical, and essential.

The Metals Quietly Powering the Future

Every era has its signature materials.

Bronze built empires. Steel built nations. Silicon built computer networks.

The next era is being forged from elements most people have never heard aloud: scandium, neodymium, dysprosium, hafnium, and nickel. They sound obscure until you realize they power everything.

Scandium strengthens aluminum for aircraft and fuel cells. Neodymium and dysprosium drive electric motors and missiles. Nickel anchors batteries that will move half a billion vehicles within a decade. Each metal carries an outsized weight in civilization’s machinery. Without them, progress stops.

At the Sunrise project in Australia, drills reach the world’s largest scandium deposit.

Lockheed’s offtake deal isn’t about profit. It’s insurance.

The supply chain for advanced alloys and hypersonic components can’t depend on a rival’s goodwill.

In Louisiana, a new separation complex is taking shape. It will refine rare earths on an industrial scale using a domestically designed process.

When it hits full capacity, it will turn ore from allied mines into magnets without Chinese input.

This work isn’t glamorous. No ribbon-cuttings. No molten metal montages.

The war for control of the future is being fought in laboratories and foundries.

To see how the battle is going, look at where the lights stay on after a blackout, which jets still take off when supply chains fracture, and which companies keep shipping when export licenses tighten.

These are the new front lines. They run through factories, labs, and the mines beneath them.

The Resistance to Rebuilding

Progress always sounds cleaner than it looks. Rebuilding an industrial base means friction.

The same nations demanding new supply chains are colliding with the politics, paperwork, and price of doing it.

Permitting is the first choke point.

In the United States, a mine can spend decades in hearings before the first shovel hits dirt. Projects that meet environmental standards still drown in reviews written for another era.

Australia moves faster but faces its own gridlock, where councils and activists fight new pits as demand multiplies.

Then comes energy. Refineries and smelters consume more power than some towns. The same grids meant to electrify homes now compete with the plants that make electrification possible.

In Western Australia, power costs have risen by 30% in four years. In Europe, factories chase off-peak hours to survive. Energy security and materials security have merged into one problem with two price tags.

But the most complex challenge is psychology.

The public wants clean energy without mines, low prices without factories, sovereignty without sacrifice.

Nations that hesitate will ultimately be forced to choose between dependency and discomfort. Those who act will have to live with the contradiction of mining for a greener world.

Mining investment must double by 2030 to meet climate goals.

That means new infrastructure, faster approvals, and a mindset that treats industry as defense.

The Manhattan Project worked because speed wasn’t seen as recklessness, and compromise wasn’t mistaken for defeat. The same discipline will decide whether this project survives its ambition.

The Return of Real Power

The payoff isn’t a headline. It’s a shift in gravity.

For the first time in decades, wealth is tilting back toward those who make things. The West is learning that value begins with material, not speculation.

In the United States, industrial construction spending has doubled since 2020, led by semiconductor fabs, battery plants, and data centers built on copper and rare earths.

In Australia, mining employment has surged, and exploration investment is up 40% in two years.

These aren’t numbers for reports. They’re evidence of a system rebuilding itself from the ground up.

Factories hum again in the Midwest. Smelters glow in the Pilbara. The quiet conviction spreading through boardrooms is simple: sovereignty has a price, and it’s worth paying.

Each refinery or processing plant is a declaration.

In Queensland, a complex is coming online to supply lithium hydroxide for EVs.

In Texas, a facility is expanding to recycle critical minerals from scrap electronics.

These projects mark the shift from dependency to durability.

The payoff is both psychological and economic.

For years, the West believed it could prosper without producing. That belief is dying. A society that cannot build will eventually beg or fight for what it needs.

The alliance between America and Australia is an antidote. It proves rebuilding is still possible when urgency meets will.

The re-industrialization of the free world is no longer a theory.

For the first time in a generation, the West is producing again. Production has always been the purest form of power.

The Race That Decides Everything

While markets argue about rates and elections, the real race is happening underground. It’s measured in tons of ore, gigawatts of power, and the speed at which nations turn rock into resilience.

The countries that master this conversion will control the century.

In China, provinces operate as ecosystems of mining, refining, and manufacturing. In the West, that model is returning piece by piece. A refinery here, a smelter revived there.

The work looks scattered until you step back and see the pattern: a civilization rebuilding the muscle it forgot it had.

Power in the last century belonged to those who controlled oil. Power in this one will belong to those who command the minerals that drive energy, transport, and technology.

A server farm without copper is a warehouse. A jet without rare earths is scrap. A grid without lithium is a sculpture.

The future will belong to those who remember that technology still depends on matter.

The alliance between America and Australia is the first blueprint of that future.

The work isn’t finished, but it’s moving fast, and momentum is a kind of fuel. The deeper they dig, the closer they get to a truth every generation relearns: progress begins underground.

That’s why we built a basket of companies inside Moonshot Minute Premium, positioned to ride this transformation. Several have already more than doubled since first appearing on our radar.

You can find the entire list of tickers in the Premium section below. 

They’re the builders, refiners, and enablers of the new industrial cycle. Some already supply the materials reshaping global trade. Others are just emerging from obscurity.

Together, they form the backbone of a strategy designed to profit from a world relearning how to build.

This is the next great wealth wave, and we’re standing in front of it.

Double D

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