DOE invests $16M in critical minerals workforce to counter China's supply chain dominance

The US Department of Energy is allocating $16 million to develop a domestic critical minerals talent pipeline, directly targeting China's near-total control of global supply chains. This marks a modest but concrete step in US efforts to reduce strategic dependence on Beijing for materials essential to tech and defense manufacturing. The initiative's impact will depend on whether it scales beyond workforce development to actual mining and processing capacity.