Godfree Roberts

MOLSON HART—I have been in the manufacturing industry for 15 years. I’ve manufactured in the USA and in China. I worked in a factory in China. I speak and read Chinese. I’ve purchased millions of dollars worth of goods from the US and China, but also Vietnam, Indonesia, Taiwan, and Cambodia. I’ve also visited many factories in Mexico and consider myself a student of how countries rise and fall.
In other words, unlike many who have voiced an opinion on this topic, I know what I am talking about. And that’s why I felt compelled to write this article. I had to do it. I’m a first generation American and I love my country and it pains me to see it hurtling at high speed towards an economic brick wall. This article is an attempt to hit the brakes.

GODFREE ROBERTS—The global industrial system is currently navigating a profound structural bifurcation, a phenomenon best described as the “Return of Matter.” For the past three decades, Western economies have operated under the tacit Neoclassical assumption that control over intellectual property, financial instruments, and software code constitutes the apex of value creation. In this worldview, the physical processes of industrialism, the dirty, energy-intensive work of mining, refining, smelting, and alloying, were viewed as commoditised, low-margin utilities that could be outsourced to low-cost jurisdictions without strategic peril.  

The post-Cold War era was defined by the assumption of “infinite materiality”: the deeply held economic belief that, with sufficient capital and open trade routes, any physical resource could be procured in the necessary quantities, at any time, from a friction-free global market.

GODFREE ROBERTS: No weapon in China’s arsenal—the J-35A fighter, the DF-41 ICBM, the Type 055 destroyer, or the Jiutan drone-swarm mothership—comes close to the leverage Beijing wields through its export restrictions on military applications of rare earth elements, REEs. While hypersonic missiles and carrier groups grab headlines, the quiet chokehold on REEs is vastly more consequential: it doesn’t just threaten to blunt American military superiority; it threatens to make much of it impossible to build, maintain, or replace at scale. Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, General Dynamics and their supply chains are effectively cut off from direct Chinese sources, which supply 90%+ of global processed REEs and magnets, and the impact is existential: every F-35 requires 920 pounds of REEs; a Virginia-class submarine need 9,000 pounds–four tons.

GODFREE ROBERTS—Guam, Okinawa, and Japan hold most U.S. strike aircraft—yet all lie inside China’s 1,500-mile missile envelope–to be unleashed by the PLA Rocket Force, which can fire 5,000+ ballistic and cruise missiles in the opening hours. As Ely Ratner testified to Congress in 2021: “U.S. bases in the Western Pacific are within range of thousands of precision Chinese strikes—complicating any rapid response.” If the US responded to the loss of all its forward operating bases with a missile salvo, what could it target? Certainly not the Chinese Mainland.

GODFREE ROBERTS—Of course, the idea of nuclear-armed great powers warring is ridiculous, since ruin of at least one or both is assured. But near certain self-destruction has often fails to deter war-making when honor or ambition are involved. Churchill bankrupted Britain and destroyed the Empire rather than abandon his Prime Ministerial ambitions.

In 1933, the Japanese General Staff reported to the Cabinet that, short of Divine intervention, America would devastate Japan in a war. But, rather than become an American vassal (US control of Japan’s energy imports), the proud Japanese declared war.