During WW II, the US studied Germany’s economy to identify vulnerabilities to attack. We noted that Germany used a great many ball bearings in their engine and tank designs, and that ball bearings were already in tight supply for war production. Attacks on ball bearing supplies would have an immediate effect on war production. We therefore initiated heavy bombing raids agains the primary ball bearing production plant in Schweinfurt, Germany, which cost us over 60 bombers shot down in one day.

The Germans had also noted the shortage of ball bearings, and had already started building more ball bearing plants. They had also re-designed their engines to use fewer ball bearings. A third factor was that ball bearing plants use heavy machinery, which was resistant by our bombs, which blew the roofs off buildings without destroying the machinery. The net result was that German ball bearing production was only slightly affected by our raids and German war production continued to increase until the very end of the war.

The Chinese restriction on exports of rare earths to Japan may have had the effect of causing us to increase national production and change our designs to reduce our dependency on China. Your “canary in a gallium mine” may have been an excellent warning, in time for us to increase production and change designs — just as the Germans did with ball bearings.

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