Reminder that a million state of the art US-based chips fabs can't make anything without all of the Chinese rare-earths the US imports. China + Russia are together responsible for about 85% of the world's silicon supply.
Silicon production is almost all for solar panels now where quality doesn't matter much (not nearly as it does for chips) and price rules. For chip-grade silicon, it's a lot easier and it can be made anywhere and price doesn't matter at all.
Rare earths production concentrated in China simply because they don't care about environment. If there's a trade war, regulations will be softened in the rich world too, plus with embargo to ensure competitiveness, production can go in the rich world as well, there are plenty of rare earths deposits in many countries.
