MP Materials

MP Materials is the company that owns the Mountain Pass Rare Earth Mine in the later part of Battlefield rare earths: How the U.S. lost to China. The episode says Mountain Pass was sold to MP Materials after Molycorp’s failed comeback, and that a Chinese state company bought a stake in MP Materials.

The company’s wiki role is to show how entangled rare-earth supply chains can remain even after a U.S. mine restarts. The source says MP Materials sent rare-earth ore to China for refining until 2025, meaning domestic mining still depended on foreign processing.

In 2025, the [[USDepartmentOfDefense|Department of Defense]] took a 15 percent stake in MP Materials, and the company was looking to refine everything in the United States. That makes MP Materials a central case for State-Backed Rare Earth Rebuilding and for the difference between owning a mine and having a complete rare-earth supply chain.

Connections

• Mountain Pass Rare Earth Mine - core asset.
• Molycorp and Project Phoenix - prior owner and failed reopening path.
• China and United States - processing dependence and policy context.
• US Department of Defense and State-Backed Rare Earth Rebuilding - government equity and strategic supply-chain branch.