America’s manufacturing Achilles’ heel: McKinsey’s warning on rare earths grows louder

Thetis dipped her infant son in the River Styx to make him immortal, holding him by the heel — the one place the water never touched. Achilles grew up to be the greatest warrior of his age, his armor impenetrable, his enemies routed. Nobody worried about the heel. Why would they? Everything else worked so well. America’s industrial story follows the same arc. Decades of semiconductor leadership, unmatched aerospace manufacturing, the most sophisticated defense supply chain in history — and, running beneath all of it, a single exposed tendon. Rare earths: the 17 chemically similar elements that make electric motors…