Analysis frames current semiconductor restrictions as the dawn of a new cold war, emphasizing escalating export controls on advanced AI chips.
The growing tension between the United States and China ultimately boils down to a battle over resources. In my youth, pop culture presented two potential endings to the Cold War: a Soviet–Cuban invasion forcing a guerrilla resistance à la *Red Dawn*, starring a young Patrick Swayze; or surviving an atomic winter following full-scale nuclear exchange, as depicted in *The Day After*. The only alternative hope was Rocky defeating Drago in a proxy boxing match (“In here, there were two guys killing each other, but I guess it’s better than 20 million”). Instead, in November 1989, I watched the Cold War conclude on an antenna-equipped television as the Berlin Wall fell. Suddenly, only one superpower remained.
Thirty-seven years later, the U.S. has transformed that seemingly lopsided victory into a pyrrhic one. In the intervening decades, America has been hollowed out by the greed, grift, and graft of craven politicians, heartless corporations, and an expanding class of would-be tyrant tycoons. To cap it off, voters have twice elected a vile, racist, megalomaniacal huckster who, during the *Red Dawn* and *Rocky IV* era, was merely a local New York City joke. Much like a funhouse mirror, the instantaneous implosion of the Soviet Union has been mirrored by the slow-motion collapse of the United States.
Now, China has moved to challenge the wobbling, ineffectual—yet still exceptionally dangerous—last remaining superpower. According to Bloomberg News reporting, Asia’s economic behemoth recently circumvented Donald Trump’s tariffs on solar panels, diverting more than $100 million monthly through a hastily constructed 20,000-mile trade route spanning Kenya and a small Indonesian island off Singapore’s coast. This represents just another in a series of minor setbacks endured by the Trump administration. Today, John Feffer draws upon another staple of childhood cinema—Godzilla—to analyze the current state of U.S.–China relations and forecast the consequences if these two powers clash directly.
When monsters confront one another, they immediately deploy their asymmetrical advantages. Consider Godzilla: born from U.S. Pacific atomic testing, the dinosaur-like leviathan possesses explosive, radioactive breath capable of obliterating everything in its path. His archenemy Rodan, a pterodactyl-like avian creature, counters with supersonic flight—a tactical advantage for evading atomic blasts. Since the 1960s, these giant monsters have battled across numerous Japanese films, leaving widespread devastation in their wake.
Originally conceived as manifestations of Cold War nuclear anxieties, these archetypal creatures now serve as stand-ins for today’s principal geopolitical antagonists. Like their cinematic counterparts, China and the United States possess distinct, complementary superpowers. China dominates the global supply of critical minerals, particularly rare earth elements. The United States maintains a technological lead in the most advanced semiconductors required for artificial intelligence applications. Put bluntly: China has the rocks, and America has the chips.
Armed with these advantages, the two nations have clashed through trade negotiations, tense military standoffs, and high-level diplomatic engagements. They are locked in a protracted tug-of-war not to preserve global stability, but to advance their own national aggrandizement and transnational corporate interests. As they haggle, the world drifts toward chaos.
During President Donald Trump’s mid-May meeting with Chinese leader Xi Jinping in Beijing, exchanges proved unexpectedly cordial. The two countries had been engaged in a cyclical tariff war since the outset of Trump’s second term, a conflict threatening to spiral beyond control. Simultaneously, Chinese officials expressed deep concern over the impact of the U.S.–Israeli war against Iran on international stability, citing surging oil prices and their cascading effects on the global economy.
At the Beijing summit, both leaders aligned on a shared objective of “constructive strategic stability.” To establish this superpower condominium—a G2 framework—Trump agreed to postpone arms deliveries to Taiwan and authorized the export of sophisticated (though not cutting-edge) Nvidia computer chips to China. In return, China committed to increasing annual purchases from the United States, including 200 Boeing aircraft and $17 billion in agricultural goods through 2028.
Despite the media spectacle orchestrated by press offices on both sides, the summit yielded few concrete bilateral agreements. Trump failed to secure long-term access to China’s critical minerals—specifically the rare earth elements vital to U.S. high-tech manufacturing and advanced military systems—and accompanying technology executives secured no major concessions for expanded market access. Meanwhile, China did not succeed in altering U.S. security policy across the Asia–Pacific region. Although the architects of a new G2 might be expected to renegotiate global governance frameworks, revising the rules of the road was conspicuously absent from the Beijing agenda.
Nevertheless, the two superpowers successfully de-escalated from a trajectory of direct confrontation. More significantly, Trump appears to have abandoned his earlier objective of fully decoupling the U.S. economy from China’s, a goal that had merged with broader containment strategies to form a bipartisan consensus. For now, at least, the world’s dominant powers are refraining from leveling the landscapes around them. Given their immense destructive capacity, that restraint alone constitutes a notable achievement. The struggle, however, persists elsewhere—in the global mineral sector.
Rare earth elements (REE) are not geologically scarce, but extracting these seventeen metals from their host ores remains highly complex. The United States once led global extraction and processing, operating a major facility in California near the Nevada border when demand was limited to products like black-and-white televisions. However, severe environmental degradation from mining operations, coupled with rising labor costs, gradually compelled American firms to outsource production to China.
By the time REEs became indispensable for manufacturing high-strength magnets powering everything from wireless iPhone chargers to F-35 fighter jets, China controlled upward of 60 percent of global extraction and 90 percent of processing capacity. It holds more patents for advanced processing techniques than any other nation. Through its Belt and Road Initiative—a worldwide network of interconnected infrastructure projects—China has also secured overseas mining rights beyond its domestic borders.
In Tanzania, for example, Australian firm Peak Rare Earths identified what may be the planet’s largest untapped REE reserve in 2010. This discovery offered the exact solution the United States and its allies sought: a viable extraction and processing pipeline independent of China. Yet last year, Chinese company Shenghe Resources acquired the Australian firm and its Tanzanian deposit rights for slightly more than $100 million. China continues to consolidate its market position by importing ore from Myanmar, developing new deposits in Brazil, and evaluating Malaysia and Indonesia for future processing facilities.
To guarantee supply chains for both the Pentagon and U.S. industry, the Trump administration has intensified domestic REE development. Mountain Pass, the California mine previously idled due to environmental litigation and foreign competition, resumed operations in 2012 but struggled to compete against China’s market-saturating pricing strategy. Last year, the Pentagon purchased a majority stake in MP Materials, the mine’s operator, which now accounts for over 10 percent of global REE output.
Trump has also directed substantial funding into USA Rare Earths, which is advancing the Round Top mine in Texas—a project designed to eventually match Mountain Pass’s production capacity. Even with an accelerated development schedule, however, the new mine won’t st