"Germanium goes into the company’s infrared sensors,"

Time to break put the ZnSe.

I wowuld be highly surprised is the government doesn't have a clandestine stockpile of minerals for wartime. We're screwed if we don't.

This is actually a great time to do it. Plenty of warning and time to make other arrangements before the invasion in 2027.

The USA knew they had a dependence on China for rare metals for about 15 years, yet they didn’t do anything about it. What gives? The metals aren’t that rare, we just fell behind on refining technology or maybe the Chinese cheated a bit on environmental curbs, but that really doesn’t excuse the USA from basically doing nothing at all.