On February 4, 2026, the National Security Commission on Emerging Biotechnology (NSCEB) announced the release of a fact sheet on biotechnology solutions for critical minerals. NSCEB notes that the United States is overly reliant on China for critical minerals. According to NSCEB, biotechnology “creates new paths to reduce our reliance on China by unlocking new sources of critical minerals right here in the United States.” NSCEB states that the recently-announced Project Vault and other efforts to address vulnerabilities in U.S. critical minerals supply chains should leverage emerging biotechnology as a key enabling technology to extract or recycle these materials. NSCEB provides the following highlights from the fact sheet:
- Substantial quantities of critical minerals sit untouched inside the United States mixed in with mining waste and currently considered unusable by conventional extraction methods;
- Biotechnology companies are tailoring biology to target and extract critical minerals from complex mixtures, such as mining waste and disused electronics; and
- At scale, this new method of sourcing could help meet domestic demand for critical minerals while mitigating the economic and national security risk of our overreliance on China.
An expert group convened last week concluded that to meet critical minerals challenges in the United States, “innovation is key, and improving our ability to engineer biology will improve our ability to access new sources of critical minerals.” NSCEB notes that biology is already routinely used in separation, and additional engineering could make these solutions more efficient and effective.
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