Rare earths help make the world cleaner, smarter, and more connected. But in Myanmar, their extraction leaves behind poisoned rivers, scarred hillsides, dispossessed communities, and rising health risks. Supply chains centered around China are pulling heavy rare earths from Myanmar’s conflict zones, revealing a larger shift: Extraction of strategic resources no longer necessarily depends on stable governments or consolidated state authority. In some places, supply chains can adapt to the fragmented political order that war produces.
The Kachin Independence Army, one of many groups fighting Myanmar’s central government, seized Pangwa, the hub of Kachin state’s rare-earth industry, in 2024. But instead of severing the supply chain, it simply put control of a critical point in new hands. Production has continued almost unimpeded.
Rare earths help make the world cleaner, smarter, and more connected. But in Myanmar, their extraction leaves behind poisoned rivers, scarred hillsides, dispossessed communities, and rising health risks. Supply chains centered around China are pulling heavy rare earths from Myanmar’s conflict zones, revealing a larger shift: Extraction of strategic resources no longer necessarily depends on stable governments or consolidated state authority. In some places, supply chains can adapt to the fragmented political order that war produces.
