Washington Can Waive the Law. It Can't Waive the Geology.

The Defense Production Act is the administration's most aggressive legal lever, and it is now at full stretch. Invoked for critical minerals, it waives congressional approval for projects over $50 million and sets aside the one-year delivery timeframes that normally govern federal procurement ^[1]. On paper, that is the entire permitting problem resolved in a single signature. On the ground, nothing has moved faster, because a law can waive a hearing but not a mine. One layer up, the same pattern holds. The federal toolkit clears federal law cleanly. The EPA has exempted "islanded" power plants — those feeding a single data center rather than the grid — from the Clean Air Act's acid-rain program ^[2]. Federal regulators have ordered grid operators to accelerate connections for AI data centers at the Energy Secretary's request, citing competition with China ^[3]. The Energy Department has gone further, designating four federal sites for data centers on land Washington controls directly, so the buildout can skip local permitting altogether. Each is a real barrier removed. None is the barrier that matters. The next layer down is where the grip loosens. The Energy Department's own gigawatt-scale campus at Paducah, Kentucky — a $100-billion-plus project on federal land — still requires approval from the Kentucky Public Service Commission, and neither of the two announced federal gigawatt projects has reached a final signed agreement ^[4]. Governors in both parties have attached binding conditions of their own ^[5]. Maryland's Wes Moore put the state's position plainly.

This will give developers greater flexibility in where and how quickly they can build new facilities while helping to protect the environment and reducing burdens on communities’ electric grid. — United States Environmental Protection Agency

Where the state layer is negotiable, the physical layer is not. The Pentagon is soliciting proposals to mine tungsten in Nevada, while NASA has blocked drilling at the largest known domestic tungsten deposit in the same state to protect satellite tracking — two federal agencies at cross-purposes on the same mineral ^[6][7]. The export ban on tungsten and battery scrap, imposed under the same Defense Production Act and effective this week, runs into a simpler fact: the United States lacks the domestic refining capacity to absorb the material it is now keeping home ^[7]. USA Rare Earth, the flagship of the domestic rare-earth push, will not produce until late 2028 ^[8]. A mine runs on geological time, and no executive order accelerates geology. The geopolitical layer turns the tool against itself. China has restricted rare-earth exports using the same "dual-use national security" logic the United States uses to restrict chips ^[9]. Beijing's commerce ministry made the symmetry explicit.

implementing export controls on items with clear dual-use military and civilian attributes is a common international practice. — Ministry of Commerce

China condemned American semiconductor controls as a "national security" pretext ^[10], then applied the identical frame to the minerals Washington needs for the very buildout those chips are meant to power. Each side now justifies its restrictions by pointing at the other's. The European Union faced the same mineral constraint and chose a different answer. Rather than build an independent chain by decree, Brussels negotiated a 12-month suspension of China's rare-earth export controls through diplomatic channels, with a fast-track permit system and a formal export-licensing framework ^[11]. It has bought time, because it treats the bottleneck as what it is: a commodity problem, not a legal one.