Two of the clear strategic playing fields for competitive advantage are the future of battery production and high-performance computational capabilities. In both cases, rare earth minerals – crucial to the production of everything from semiconductors to electric vehicle (EV) batteries – are the critical risk factor in the future of a green global economy and emerging technologies.
Geography and geopolitics matter when it comes to sourcing these materials, especially any future supply chain dependencies on other countries, including potential adversaries. Japan is getting its own strategic house in order – and is stepping up its efforts to access regional rare earth resources in a bid to challenge China on a variety of fronts.
OODA’s Chris Ward recently reported that in its “national military strategy Last December, Japan dramatically transformed its National Defense Strategy, committing to increasing defense investments to 2% of the GDP by 2027. Their recently published Defense Buildup Program sets mid-term (5-year) and long-term (10-year) goals, allocating $314B (in US dollars) – a 1.6X increase.
Like most nations, Japan would prefer to use its organic resources to fill these requirements. However, considering the long prohibition against military-specific investments, Japan realizes that quickly achieving these goals will be difficult without imported key technologies and rapid acquisition capabilities. To that end, they are standing up (later this year) a new organization, modeled after DARPA or Defense Innovation Unit, that can work with Industry to quickly bring together new defensive capabilities.