cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/7703

Bullets:

China’s export bans on rare earth metals and magnets are crippling Western arms makers.

But while the Pentagon is racing to find new supplies and jump-start the decades-long process of replacing China in their supply chains, their biggest contractors have been sending most of their profits and cash to Wall Street investors.

Order backlogs today are hundreds of billions of dollars, for each of the major weapons makers. The Pentagon, along with NATO and other friendly countries, are waiting years for systems already ordered and paid for.

Rather than re-invest necessary capital to build out manufacturing capacity, train and retrain top technicians, and fund new suppliers, companies spent tens of billions of dollars buying back their own shares, to push stock prices higher.

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