In launching Solving For, we gave ourselves a simple structure: one pressing problem, unpacked in four moves.
First, define the problem — what’s broken and why it matters.
Second, zoom out to understand the forces that got us here.
Third, explore solutions that are credible, clear, and grounded in real-world examples.
Finally, a flexible finale we call the Open Thread.
Each piece arrives weekly, on Thursdays.
Today is that finale. While every series has a defined structure, the Open Thread is deliberately unstructured — a space to experiment, reflect, and look ahead. Sometimes it will be a conversation or interview. Other times, like today, it’s launching an audio version of a post. Always, it’s a place to try new things.
If you missed earlier installments of our first series — The 21st Century’s Oil: Solving for China’s Rare Earth Dominance — here they are:
Part I: The Invisible Backbone – What happens when one country — China — controls the key raw materials inside nearly every modern device?
Part II: The Middle Kingdom’s Monopoly – How China won the race for one of the 21st century’s most strategic resources — but at great cost.
Part III: The Race to Reinvent – In search of solutions to China’s rare earth dominance.
This week, three things: a new feature, a look back, and what’s next.
1. A New Feature: Audio
Starting with this post, Solving For will include audio. Solving For is a project in longer-form journalism, with stories running 1,800–2,200 words. That’s long enough to require a quiet sit-down. But many of us also like to listen while driving, cooking, going for a run.
From now on, you will be able to listen to each post. On the Solving For website — solvingfor.io — you’ll see a “Listen” button at the top to find narrated versions. We’ll learn and refine the production as we go, but the goal is simple: make Solving For more accessible and give another way to engage. This isn’t replacing the writing; it’s expanding it.
Click the play button at the top of this post to check out the narrated version of Part I, Rare Earths: The Invisible Backbone.
2. Taking Stock
Rare earth elements are the hidden scaffolding of our world. They power the magnets in smartphones, the motors in electric vehicles, the turbines in wind farms, and the guidance systems of fighter jets. Without them, much of the 21st-century economy wouldn’t function.
Yet the foundation is fragile. China controls more than 90% of rare earth processing and manufacturing. That dominance was built deliberately — through long-term investment, tolerance for environmental and human costs, and strategic use of market leverage.
By the time the world grasped how central rare earths had become, Beijing already controlled the choke points.
The implications are profound. Rare earths are not just an economic issue but a strategic one. China has shown a willingness to weaponize its control — cutting off exports to Japan in 2010, and this year in response to President Trump’s tariff hikes. The lesson is clear: supply chains are leverage.
So what now? The reporting surfaced four main strategies:
Industrial policy: Invest to rebuild domestic supply chains.
Alliances: Partner with countries like Australia, Canada, Brazil and Japan, among others, to diversify supply.
Recycling: Use new technologies to recover rare earths from discarded electronics and magnets.
Talent and innovation: Nurture the next generation of chemists, metallurgists, and entrepreneurs who will chart new paths forward.
Industrial policy can restart the engine. Alliances can widen the road. Recycling can reclaim what we’ve already mined. But it is talent and innovation that set the destination.
That’s the core takeaway: rare earths are not just about rocks in the ground. They’re about people — inventors, researchers, policymakers, and entrepreneurs shaping what comes next.
3. What’s Next: AI Safety — and Opportunity
I’m in New York City this week at the United Nations for the AI Safety Connect conference — a gathering of researchers, entrepreneurs, and policymakers grappling with the future of artificial intelligence.
Our next series, beginning next Thursday, will explore how AI can be both transformative but also safe and aligned with human values. If rare earths are the invisible backbone of the modern economy, AI is fast becoming its brain.
The promise is extraordinary: accelerating medical research, reinventing education, transforming productivity. But the risks are equally real: bias in algorithms, disinformation at scale, government mass surveillance, tragedies like the California teen who used ChatGPT to help take his own life. And looming ahead are questions of misaligned superintelligence, loss of human control, and runaway systems.
Geoffrey Hinton — the Nobel Prize-winner in physics often called the “Godfather of AI” — argues for much greater efforts in AI safety and warned in April: “People haven’t got it yet, people haven’t understood what’s coming.”
At the other end of the spectrum, Vice President JD Vance told the Artificial Intelligence Action Summit in Paris: “The AI future is not going to be won by hand-wringing about safety. It will be won by building.”
As with rare earths, we’ll move step by step: the problem, the forces, the solutions, and finally, an open thread. The aim is clear storytelling that helps us develop both understanding and perspective on how to move forward in smart ways.
Thank you for being here — for reading, listening, sharing, and shaping this venture from the very beginning. Solving For is still in its infancy, but already it’s being sharpened by your feedback and ideas.
