The Mountain Pass mine in California was once the world’s dominant source of rare earth elements, fueling U.S. defense and consumer electronics—including color TVs—through Molycorp. But in the 1960s–70s, Molycorp inadvertently helped China build its rare earth capacity by sharing technical knowledge, underestimating Beijing’s long-term industrial vision. China then leveraged state investment, lax environmental enforcement, and vertical integration to capture ~90% of global processing by the 2000s. A 2010 export ban on Japan exposed global vulnerability, briefly reviving Molycorp—only for China to flood markets and crash prices, triggering Molycorp’s bankruptcy. Today, the U.S. is mounting a coordinated, government-backed revival: the Pentagon has taken a stake in Mountain Pass to enable domestic refining, billions in funding are flowing, and international price-floor talks are underway. Yet experts stress full recovery will take 5–10 years—and success hinges on avoiding past errors of scale, speed, and overreliance on single actors.