Intelligence analyses covering defense across geopolitics, cybersecurity, finance, and technology domains.
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Defense spending and China's export controls pushed tungsten prices 557% higher since 2025. Vietnam is the scalable alternative on paper — processing infrastructure gaps make it a fragile one in practice.
Tungsten Supply Concentration Creates Strategic Leverage [SOURCED: Mining.com, April 2026; Masan Group, March 2026]
China controls 61% of rare earth mining and 91% of refining — and is now using that dominance as strategic leverage. A 557% tungsten price spike since 2025 is hitting military procurement with no fast substitutes.
The global tungsten market has entered 2026 in extreme volatility, driven by China's implementation of export controls on tungsten products following US trade disputes .