In the spring of 1943, a Portuguese leader ran two separate dinners for two sets of buyers — one from Berlin, one from London and Washington — and sold the same strategic metal to both, from the same mines. That metal was tungsten, and the story of who controls it has now reversed: eighty years later, one country holds most of the mining and even more of the refining, and the same argument is happening again in boardrooms rather than wartime cabinets. It matters well beyond history class, because the metal that hardened wartime shell cores is also the metal inside every advanced AI chip you use today. This lesson asks a question every purchasing director now faces: when you spot a chokepoint, do you buy control of it, or trust that the market will fix it?
The same topic is scaled across three levels below — the 1943 tungsten story, its reversal today, and the two-sided debate over what to do about it. Pick the one that fits you — or, if you teach, read all three and choose per group.
Read the companion article → The Wolfram Reversal — accessible version · advanced version
Every task in this lesson runs on the BEBB Method — The Agency Loop, a five-step framework for using AI in language learning without letting it replace your own thinking. It is my own configuration of established best practices in human-AI collaboration, built in direct response to Gerlich (2025) on cognitive offloading, and informed by the “AI Sandwich” tradition (Ippolito, 2023) and “AI as Critic” scaffolding (Mollick, 2024).
Agency = your own capacity to decide, think, and act. In this method, you keep your agency at every step — you, not the AI, remain the one deciding what happens to your thinking. The Agency Loop (dt. etwa: Handlungsfähigkeit im Umgang mit KI — du bleibst die Entscheider·in).
Think first — form your own view before you touch any tool.
Use AI for facts — let the tool gather information, not opinions.
Draft yourself — write it in your own words, from your own head.
Challenge with AI — ask the tool to attack your position and find its weakest point.
Combine — fold the best of the challenge back into a stronger version that is still yours.
B1 = Tasks 1 + 3 (two cycles): think first, then challenge and finalise with AI.
B2 = Tasks 1 + 3, with Task 2 optional if there is time.
C1 = Tasks 1 + 2 + 3 (the full loop, including building the stronger case and stress-testing it).
This lesson was tested with several groups in Germany over the course of one week, at all three levels — a single continuous C1 reading on the 1943 tungsten reversal, and simpler rebuilt B1 and B2 readings, across mixed-industry corporate groups and 1:1 clients. It ran well as a 60-minute session at B1/B2 and a full 90-minute session at C1.
A few things to protect:
Stay neutral. This week gives you two genuinely defensible camps — control the material (stockpile, re-shore, sign long-term contracts) versus trust markets and ingenuity (don’t panic; every chokepoint breeds the invention that destroys it) — and the reading gives both their strongest case. Do not let the room settle early for “well, obviously you should stockpile” or “the market always sorts itself out.”
Protect the “what surprised you” moment. Most groups are surprised twice: first that Europe once held the leverage China holds today, and second that the real chokepoint is refining, not mining. When someone says “wait, so re-shoring the mine doesn’t even fix it?” — slow down. That is the lesson working.
Mixed-level guidance. Procurement, supply-chain or engineering participants may already own terms like offtake or midstream; others will not. Surface the gap at Task 1 and lean on the “define any technical term in eight words or fewer” mechanic in the research prompt.
Micro-research is the engine. The warm-up brings the real numbers — the 79% mining share, the price move, the 2027 sourcing rule — into the room. Do not skip it to save time; without it the debate becomes opinion-only.
Discussion is the heart. The lesson’s real value is the room genuinely disagreeing about whether to buy control or trust the market. Protect that time even if the reading runs long.
Warm-up — micro-research + presentations · 11 min
Vocabulary · 6 min
Task 1 — Anchor Your Own Position · 8 min
Reading · 8 min
Comprehension · 7 min
Task 3 — Challenge With AI (B2: Task 2 first if time) · 10 min
Discussion · 10 min
Warm-up — micro-research + presentations · 15 min
Vocabulary · 8 min
Task 1 — Anchor Your Instinct · 8 min
Reading · 10 min
Task 2 — Build the Stronger Case · 14 min
Comprehension · 7 min
Task 3 — Stress-Test Your Position · 8 min
Discussion & Reflection · 11 min
Homework setup · 2 min
45-minute fallback: keep the warm-up micro-research (shortened to items 1–3 only), the vocabulary exercise, Task 1 and the reading, then run one focused round of Task 3 (challenge your position with AI, then revise). Drop Task 2 and cut the discussion to two questions. The lesson still completes one full Agency Loop this way — think first, gather facts, draft, challenge, combine — which is the minimum that makes it worth doing.
Before you search, take 30–60 seconds and write down what you already know or believe about materials that a country or a company cannot easily replace. Just keywords. This is your starting point — your own thinking comes first. Agency means your own power to decide, think, and act; you keep it at every step, and the AI never decides for you.
Umbrella question: How does your item help answer the big question — who really controls a material everyone needs?
For your item, find:
What is it? (one or two simple sentences)
One key fact, number, or example.
Why does it matter?
Your item list (take one — items 1–3 first; 4–6 if there is time):
What is tungsten, and why is it hard to replace?
The 1943 “Wolfram Crisis” — who was Salazar, and what did he do?
Who controls most of the world’s tungsten today? (Say the year with your number.)
What is refining, and why is it hard to do in Europe?
What is the West trying to do about tungsten today? (new mines, new rules)
In 2010, China stopped selling a material to Japan. What happened next?
Paste this into your AI tool with your item filled in:
LEVEL: B1
I'm preparing for a Business English lesson about a metal called tungsten,
who controls it, and what a company should do about a material it depends on.
My research item is: [MY ITEM]
In clear, simple B1-level English (maximum 100 words), give me:
1. What it is — one or two short sentences.
2. One key fact, number, or example.
3. Why it matters to the question "who really controls this material?"
Keep it short enough to say to my group in about two minutes. Define any
difficult word in eight words or fewer.Match each word or phrase (1–8) to its definition (A–H). Guess first, then check the key.
a chokepoint
preclusive buying
the midstream
to re-shore
to stockpile
leverage
a shortage
to weaponise a dependency
A. a narrow point that almost everything must pass through, controlled by only a few people
B. buying something you do not need, purely to stop a rival from getting it
C. the middle stage where a raw material is turned into something usable
D. to bring production back to your own country after it moved abroad
E. to build up and hold a reserve of something in case it becomes scarce
F. the power to set the terms of a deal because the other side has no easy alternative
G. not having enough of something
H. to use another country’s or company’s need for you as a form of pressure
Prepare alone (2 min). Before you read anything: if your company depended completely on one supplier for something important, what would you want it to do — build up a reserve, or trust that a solution would appear? Write 4–6 keywords only. No AI yet — this comes from your own head.
Share (3 min). Tell a partner your answer in about a minute. Use at least two vocabulary words from the list above.
(1) In 1943, a leader called Salazar ran two dinners in Portugal, a country officially at peace. One room hosted guests from Germany; the other, guests from Britain and the USA. Both groups wanted tungsten — a hard metal, also called wolfram — from the same mines. Salazar sold to both sides, making money from both rather than choosing one.
(2) Tungsten has the highest melting point of any metal. Armies needed it for tools and weapons. Once Germany lost its usual supply, Portugal was the only door left open. This made Portugal a chokepoint — the one place everyone had to go through.
(3) Britain and the USA started buying tungsten at very high prices — not because they needed it, but to stop Germany getting it. This is called preclusive buying: buying something purely so your enemy cannot have it. The price rose almost twenty times in a year. Portugal grew rich.
(4) Historians still argue whether this worked. Germany’s own minister said it hurt badly. Others say Germany never truly ran out — it just used less.
(5) Now look at today. China mines about 79% of the world’s tungsten (2025). But mining is not the real story. The midstream — turning ore into usable powder — is even more Chinese: 70–85% of it. Europe still has plenty of the metal in the ground. What it lost were the factories that process it.
(6) China has started limiting exports. Companies now sign long contracts and stockpile tungsten in case supply stops. The West is trying to re-shore — bring mining and refining home — but this takes years, since a reopened mine still needs China to refine the ore.
(7) Two groups disagree about what to do. One says: control the material — stockpile it, re-shore it, pay more. The other says: trust the market — high prices bring new solutions, as they did before with rubber and rare earths.
(8) One more thing: tungsten sits inside every advanced computer chip made today, including the ones that power AI. That is why a story from 1943 still matters on a purchasing desk in 2026.
Answer from the reading. Note the paragraph.
Why did Salazar sell tungsten to both Germany and the Allies? (¶1)
What does “preclusive buying” mean? (¶3)
Do historians agree about whether the wartime shortage actually hurt Germany? (¶4)
Which is more concentrated in China today — mining tungsten, or refining it? (¶5)
Why does the reading say a mine alone does not solve the problem? (¶6)
Write (alone, 4 min). Answer this question in 3–5 sentences, from your own head, no AI: should a company that depends on one hard-to-replace material stockpile it and pay more, or trust that the market will fix the problem? Give one reason.
Challenge (3 min). Paste your answer into an AI tool with this prompt: “In simple English, what is the strongest argument against what I just wrote?”
Revise (3 min). Read the answer. Then rewrite your 3–5 sentences into a stronger version — but keep your own view unless the AI really changes your mind.
Have you ever depended completely on one supplier or one country for something important? What happened?
Do you think it is better to pay more now for safety, or wait and hope the market solves the problem?
Can you think of another product where one country controls almost everything?
Would you trust a company that suddenly limits what it sells to you?
What is one thing your own company could not quickly replace if it disappeared?
Before you search, take 30–60 seconds and write down what you already know or believe about materials that a country or company cannot easily replace, and who ends up controlling them. Just keywords. This is your starting point — your own thinking comes first. Agency means your own capacity to decide, think, and act; you keep it at every step, and the AI never decides for you.
Umbrella question: How does your item help answer the debate — when a country or company spots a critical dependency, should it buy control, or trust the market?
For your item, bring back:
What is it? (one or two precise sentences)
One key fact, figure, or example that shows its scale.
Why does it matter to the debate?
Your item list (take one — items 1–3 first; 4–6 only if there is time):
What is tungsten, and what are its main industrial uses?
The 1943 “Wolfram Crisis” — who was Salazar, and what does “preclusive buying” mean?
Who controls tungsten today — the mining, or the refining? (Attach the year to any percentage you find.)
What is “the midstream,” and why is it harder to rebuild in Europe than a mine?
The DFARS “2027 rule” and the Sangdong mine — what is the West trying to do about tungsten?
China’s 2010 rare-earth embargo on Japan — what happened next, and what might it predict for tungsten?
Paste this into your AI tool with your item filled in:
LEVEL: B2
I'm preparing for a Business English lesson about tungsten — the 1943 wartime
trade and its reversal today — and what a company should do about a critical
dependency it cannot quickly replace.
My research item is: [MY ITEM]
In clear B2-level English (maximum 150 words), give me:
1. What it is — one or two precise sentences.
2. One key fact, figure, or example that shows its scale or significance.
3. Why it matters to the "buy control, or trust the market?" debate.
Keep it tight enough to present to my group in about two minutes. Define any
difficult term in eight words or fewer.Match each word or phrase (1–10) to its definition (A–J). Guess first, then check the key.
a chokepoint
preclusive buying
the midstream
to re-shore
leverage
to stockpile
a structural shortage
to weaponise a dependency
substitution
a self-correcting market
A. a narrow point in a supply chain that a small number of actors can control, and through which everything must pass
B. buying something you do not need, at almost any price, purely to stop a rival from getting it
C. the middle stage between extracting a raw material and making a finished product — refining, processing, turning ore into usable powder
D. to bring production or processing back to your own country after it was moved abroad
E. the advantage that lets one party set the terms of a deal because the other side has no easy alternative
F. to build up and hold a reserve of a material against future scarcity
G. a shortage caused by the way an industry is built, which will not disappear when the economic cycle turns
H. to deliberately use another country’s or company’s reliance on you as an instrument of pressure
I. replacing one material with another that does a similar job
J. the idea that high prices themselves cure shortages, because they call forth new supply without anyone intervening
Prepare alone (3 min). Before you read any argument: if your company depended on one hard-to-replace input, how would you want it to respond — build a reserve and pay more, or trust that a solution would appear? Write 5–7 keywords only. Use three vocabulary items from the list. Work from your own head first — no AI.
Exchange (5 min). Tell a partner your position in about 90 seconds: what you would do → what you would refuse to do → where your line sits. Your partner listens for the three vocabulary items and for where the real tension is.
(1) In the spring of 1943, in a country technically at peace, António de Oliveira Salazar was running two dining rooms — one for buyers from the Third Reich, one for buyers sent by London and Washington. Both wanted the same thing: wolfram, the ore of tungsten, dug from the same hills in northern Portugal. Both got it. Salazar’s neutrality served one purpose: he charged rent to both sides in the war.
(2) Tungsten has the highest melting point of any metal, and combined with carbon it becomes hard enough to cut steel at speed. Armies needed it for machine tools and armour-piercing shells. Once Germany lost access to its usual ore, Portugal became the only door left open. Europe, in 1943, was the chokepoint — and Salazar sat on top of it.
(3) Britain, and later the United States, responded with one of history’s strangest procurement campaigns: preclusive buying. Allied agents bought wolfram at almost any price — not because they needed it, but purely so Germany could not have it. The price rose nearly twentyfold in a year. Portugal’s economy boomed.
(4) Whether the strategy actually worked is still disputed. Germany’s own armaments minister said a shortage forced him to divert resources elsewhere; later historians disagree, arguing Germany simply rationed the metal and never ran critically short. The leverage the Allies believed they held may have been oversold.
(5) Run the story forward eighty years and the picture inverts. In 2025, China mined roughly 79% of the world’s tungsten — but the mine share is not the most important number. The midstream, where ore becomes usable powder, is even more concentrated: China processes 70–85% of it. Europe still holds around half of global reserves; what it lost was not the geology, but the willingness to refine.
(6) That is what makes this a structural shortage rather than a temporary one: it will not correct itself when the cycle turns, because the missing piece is industrial capacity, not demand.
(7) Beijing has begun to weaponise the dependency. Export licensing arrived in 2025; exports were soon restricted to a small list of approved companies, and prices moved roughly ninefold within a year. In one telling episode, a mere rumour about supply repriced the entire chip industry before anyone had confirmed it was true.
(8) The West is trying to re-shore what it abandoned — reopening mines in Portugal, South Korea and Spain, and signing long-term contracts to stockpile. But re-shoring a mine solves little if the ore still must travel to China to be refined; the real chokepoint is the refinery, not the hole in the ground.
(9) A serious opposing case exists: every chokepoint, this camp argues, breeds the invention that destroys it. Synthetic rubber replaced natural rubber within a few years, and China’s 2010 rare-earth embargo on Japan backfired within five. Substitution and a self-correcting market, not panic-buying, are the right response.
(10) The honest reply: substitution is slow, and for tungsten, incomplete. Tungsten sits inside every advanced AI chip in use today — why a wartime decision now lands on a purchasing director’s desk.
Optional — recommended if time permits.
Choose one of the two camps and write 5–7 sentences arguing for it, from your own head, no AI:
Control the material — stockpile it, re-shore it, sign long-term contracts, even at a premium.
Trust the market — diversify lightly, don’t overpay, wait for substitution or new supply to appear.
Push your case as hard as you honestly can, even if it is not the side you first chose. You will use this draft in Task 3.
Answer from the reading. Note the paragraph.
What evidence does the text give that Salazar’s neutrality was a business arrangement rather than a political choice? (¶1, ¶3)
What were the Allies actually buying through preclusive buying, since they did not need the tungsten themselves? (¶3)
Why does the text argue that re-shoring a mine “solves little”? (¶5, ¶8)
What does the reading suggest about whether the 1943 campaign truly worked? (¶4)
What does the rumour that repriced the chip industry suggest about how markets treat strategic materials? (¶7)
Draft (alone, 4 min). Take your Task 2 argument — or, if you skipped Task 2, write 5–7 sentences now on whether a company facing a critical dependency should buy control or trust the market. From your own head, no AI.
Challenge (3 min). Paste it into an AI tool: “In clear, simple English, what is the single strongest argument against my position?”
Revise (3 min). Read the answer, then rewrite your argument into a stronger 5–7 sentences that answers the objection — without giving up your view unless you are genuinely persuaded. Present your revised version to the group.
In 1943 Europe held the tungsten chokepoint; today China does. What actually determines who “holds the strings” over a critical material?
If you ran purchasing for a manufacturer, would you pay several times more for non-Chinese tungsten, or wait for the price to solve the shortage?
The text argues chokepoints eventually trigger the inventions that destroy them. Do you believe that pattern will repeat with tungsten, or is this case different?
Should governments spend public money reopening mines and refineries, or is that better left to private markets?
A rumour, not a confirmed fact, moved the price of an entire industry. What does that tell you about how seriously leaders should treat unverified information?
Think of a dependency in your own company or industry. Would you rather control it directly, or trust that a solution will appear if the price rises enough?
Take one minute. Without any AI tool, and without searching, write down 2–3 things you already know or believe about critical raw materials and who controls them. Keywords or short phrases are enough. This is your starting point — your own thinking comes first. Agency = your own capacity to decide, think, and act; you keep it at every step, and the AI never decides for you.
Umbrella question: Who really holds the strings over a critical material — and how do we know?
Your trainer will assign you one item from the list below. Research it, then give the group a 90-second mini-talk on it.
Research items (1–3 are core; 4–6 are stretch):
What is tungsten, and what are its main uses? (Find one physical fact, and why it is hard to replace.)
The 1943 “Wolfram Crisis” — who was Salazar, and what does “preclusive buying” mean?
Who controls tungsten today — and is it the mining or the refining that China dominates? (Attach the year to any percentage you find.)
What is “the midstream” (APT refining), and why is it harder to rebuild in Europe than a mine?
The DFARS “2027 rule” and Almonty’s Sangdong mine — what is the West trying to do about tungsten?
China’s 2010 rare-earth embargo on Japan — what happened next, and what might it predict for tungsten?
For every item, bring back the same three things:
What it is — in one or two sentences.
One key fact — with a number or a date attached (or, if your item is a concept rather than a thing, one concrete example).
Why it matters to the story — one sentence on how it connects to who controls tungsten.
Paste this into your AI tool with your item filled in:
LEVEL: C1
You are helping me prepare a 90-second mini-talk for my C1 business
English group. Our lesson topic is: who controls tungsten — the 1943
wartime tungsten trade and its reversal today.
My item is: [MY ITEM]
Give me, in this order and nothing else:
1. WHAT IT IS — 2 sentences, plain English, no jargon.
2. ONE KEY FACT — one anchor statistic with the year attached, or,
if my item is a concept rather than a thing, one concrete example.
3. WHY IT MATTERS TO THE STORY — 2 sentences on how this connects to
who controls tungsten, then and now.
4. SIX USEFUL C1 PHRASES I can use when I present this — hedging,
causal and contrast markers — each with a short German contextual
translation in brackets.
5. MY OPENING LINE — one sentence I could say first to frame the talk.
Total under 200 words. Define any technical term in 8 words or less.
If a figure is contested, say so and give the range rather than one
confident number.Then present: 90 seconds, no notes read aloud.
Match each term (1–12) with its definition (A–L). Guess first, then check the key.
a chokepoint
preclusive buying
the midstream
to re-shore
substitution
a structural shortage (vs a cyclical one)
to weaponise a dependency
leverage
an offtake agreement
to stockpile
to reprice
a self-correcting market
A. to bring production or processing back to your own country or region after it was moved abroad
B. a narrow point in a supply route or process that a small number of actors can control, and through which everything must pass
C. the middle stage between extracting a raw material and making a finished product — refining, processing, turning ore into usable powder
D. buying something you do not need, at almost any price, purely to stop a rival from getting it
E. a shortage caused by the way the industry itself is built, which will not disappear when the economic cycle turns
F. a long-term contract in which a buyer commits to purchase a producer’s future output before it is produced
G. to build up and hold a reserve of a material against future scarcity
H. replacing one material with another that does a similar job
I. the advantage that lets one party set the terms of a deal because the other side has no easy alternative
J. to deliberately use another country’s or company’s reliance on you as an instrument of pressure
K. for prices across a whole sector to move sharply and suddenly as investors revalue what they own
L. the idea that high prices themselves cure shortages, because they call forth new supply and new alternatives without anyone intervening
Before you read a single line, put your own position on the table.
Prepare (4 min, alone, no AI). Answer, in three sentences: who really holds the power over a critical raw material — the country that owns the mine, or the country that owns the factory that refines it? And when a critical material becomes scarce, does history repeat itself, or does someone always invent a way around it?
Deliver (3 min). Say your three sentences to a partner. No hedging in the first sentence.
Reflect (1 min). Underline the one word in your own answer that you are least sure about. Keep the paper. You will come back to it in Task 3.
Read the text once. Vocabulary items from the exercise above appear in bold on first use.
(1) In the spring of 1943, in a country officially at peace, António de Oliveira Salazar was running two dining rooms. In one, he entertained the purchasing agents of the Third Reich. In the other, the buyers sent by London and Washington. Both delegations wanted the same thing, dug out of the same granite hills of northern Portugal: wolfram, the black ore of tungsten. Both got it. The mines kept two sets of paperwork, the invoices went out to both capitals, and the Portuguese state took its cut from every tonne that left the country. Salazar was not choosing a side in the Second World War. He was charging both of them rent.
(2) Tungsten is a refractory metal — it has the highest melting point of any metal on earth, and when bonded with carbon it becomes hard enough to cut other steels at speed. That gave it two wartime uses that nothing else could perform: the carbide tips of machine tools, without which a war economy cannot mass-produce anything, and the dense cores of armour-piercing shells. The Allied naval blockade had cut Germany off from Chinese ore, which left the Reich dependent on the Iberian Peninsula. Europe, in 1943, was the chokepoint — and Salazar sat on top of it.
(3) Britain’s response, joined later by the United States, was one of the strangest procurement campaigns in economic history. It was called preclusive buying. Allied agents walked into the open markets of Lisbon and Madrid and bought wolfram at any price — not because the Allies needed it, but purely so that Germany could not have it. The effect on the price was spectacular. Wolfram went from roughly $1,144 per tonne in 1940 to nearly $20,000 per tonne by the end of 1941, a move so violent that Salazar brought the trade under state control in February 1942 and fixed an official price of $6,000. Portuguese output climbed from around 2,400 tonnes in 1938 to some 6,500 tonnes by 1942. In the hills, a “wolfram fever” drew in tens of thousands of people digging for black rock.
(4) The money was extraordinary and the money was dirty. Germany paid in part with looted gold — at least 123.8 tonnes of it reached Portugal — and the Bank of Portugal’s reserves rose from 65 tonnes in 1939 to 306 tonnes in 1945. Portuguese GDP grew by something like a fifth to a third across the war years, largely on the back of a metal most Portuguese had never heard of. Salazar’s neutrality was not a moral position. It was a business model. It ended only in June 1944, when, under heavy Allied pressure and having already handed Britain air bases in the Azores, he embargoed wolfram exports to both sides on the eve of D-Day.
(5) And here the story acquires its most useful complication: nobody agrees whether any of it worked. Albert Speer, Hitler’s armaments minister, testified after the war that a tungsten shortage had forced him to divert fissile material away from the nuclear programme and into conventional shell cores — the squeeze, in other words, bit hard. Revisionist economic historians disagree. Caruana and Rockoff (2003), and an English Historical Review analysis in 2022, argue that Germany never actually ran critically short: it rationed the metal from 1943, cutting monthly consumption from roughly 170 tonnes to about 100, sat on stocks of around 1,200 tonnes, and simply prioritised machine tools over ammunition. On this reading, the Allies spent a fortune to inconvenience Germany at the margin. The chokepoint was real. Its leverage may have been oversold. Keep that thought.
(6) Now run the film forward eighty years, and watch the mirror invert. In 2025, China mined roughly 79% of the world’s tungsten — about 67,000 tonnes out of some 85,000 (USGS, 2026). Figures differ by year and by source: 82.7% in 2022, 83% in 2024. The direction is not in dispute. But the mine share is the least interesting number in the story. The sharper point is the midstream — the unglamorous refining stage where ore becomes ammonium paratungstate, then powder, then carbide. China refines somewhere between 70% and 85% of it. As one analyst put it: the ore is 80% Chinese, the APT is 80% Chinese, the carbide powder is 80% Chinese, and every stage is more Chinese than the one before it.
(7) Europe did not lose the geology. It still sits on something like 52% of global reserves. What it lost was the willingness to dig and, above all, to refine — a dirty, low-margin, permit-heavy business that Europe was happy to see leave, and that China was happy to take. That is what makes this a structural shortage rather than a cyclical one: it will not resolve itself when the economic cycle turns, because the missing thing is not demand but industrial capacity that no longer exists.
(8) Beijing has begun to weaponise the dependency. In February 2025, tungsten was placed under export licensing on national-security grounds — permits case by case. By late 2025, APT exports were restricted to a whitelist of fifteen companies. Chinese APT exports fell by nearly 70%; in some months they were zero. The benchmark Rotterdam price ran from about $340 per mtu at the start of 2025 to somewhere around $3,000–3,185 in 2026, an eight- or nine-fold move depending on which baseline you choose. And then a detail that ought to trouble anyone who makes decisions under time pressure: last year, a rumour about tungsten supply repriced the entire chip industry before anyone had established whether it was true.
(9) The West is now scrambling to rebuild what it deliberately abandoned. American defence procurement rules bar Chinese tungsten from the supply chain, and from 1 January 2027 the ban reaches all the way back to the mine. Old workings are coming back: Panasqueira in Portugal — the legendary wartime producer, still turning — Sangdong in South Korea, back in production in 2026 after more than thirty years, Barruecopardo in Spain. The EU’s Critical Raw Materials Act lists tungsten as strategic and sets 2030 targets: at least 10% mined in Europe, at least 40% processed there, no more than 65% from any single country. Germany has stood up a KfW raw-materials fund. Companies are signing offtake agreements years ahead of production and quietly beginning to stockpile.
(10) But re-shoring is slow — eight to ten years for a Western mine, and Devon’s Hemerdon project is a monument to the fact that permits plus resource plus capital does not equal production. And the deeper problem is the one most policy announcements skate over: re-shore the mine and you have solved almost nothing if the concentrate still has to sail to China to be refined. The chokepoint is the refinery, not the hole in the ground.
(11) Against all of which stands a serious opposing case, and it is not a foolish one. Every chokepoint, this camp argues, breeds the invention that destroys it. When Japan cut off Southeast Asian rubber in 1942, synthetic rubber arrived within a few years — one historian rates it a larger contribution to Allied victory than the Manhattan Project. Chilean nitrates lost their monopoly to Haber-Bosch. And when China embargoed rare earths to Japan in 2010, the embargo backfired: Japan diversified, substituted, won a WTO case, and prices collapsed inside five years. The cure for high prices, on this view, is high prices — a self-correcting market — and the correct response to a squeeze is diversified contracts and modest stock, not panic-buying at the top and not subsidy programmes that amount to rent-seeking, or “expensive theatre.”
(12) The honest counter-to-the-counter: substitution is slow and, for tungsten specifically, incomplete — there is no synthetic rubber waiting in a laboratory for the hardest metal we have. And the 2010 rare-earth “correction” worked partly because China then flooded the market and bankrupted the Western entrants who had answered the price signal. Markets corrected. They corrected by killing the competitors.
(13) So: two camps, one shared set of facts, and a decision that lands on a purchasing director’s desk this quarter. Pay eight times the price for non-Chinese metal — or bet that the price itself will fix the problem.
(14) One last thing, in case you think this is a story about a war your grandparents fought. Tungsten is inside every advanced chip: the tungsten hexafluoride gas that deposits the microscopic contacts and the word lines in 3D-NAND memory and in the HBM stacks of AI servers. That is why a whisper about a metal nobody outside metallurgy can pronounce can move the most valuable industry on earth in an afternoon. Salazar’s two dining rooms and the 2026 export whitelist are the same story in different clothes. History does not repeat. It rhymes. And the executive who knows the tune is not surprised by the next verse.
Prepare (6 min). First, in two sentences, explain the reversal — what changed between 1943 and 2026, and why control flipped from West to East. Then choose one of the two camps and build its strongest case:
Control the material — chokepoints are structural; own the mine and the midstream; stockpile, sign offtake, re-shore even at a premium.
Ingenuity wins — every chokepoint breeds the invention that kills it; diversify, don’t hoard, don’t subsidise theatre.
Your case must contain one named voice (Salazar, Speer, Caruana & Rockoff, an analyst) and one dated number from the text.
You may use AI for facts only — dates, tonnages, percentages you want to verify. Not for your argument.
Deliver (6 min). 90 seconds to the group. Open with your strongest sentence, not your background.
Reflect (2 min). Which of the opposing camp’s points did you find hardest to dismiss? Say it out loud in one sentence.
The text calls Salazar’s neutrality “a business model.” What evidence does it give for preferring that description to a moral or political one? (¶1, ¶4)
Preclusive buying meant paying enormous sums for a metal the Allies did not need. What, precisely, were they buying? (¶3)
Why does the author insist that re-shoring a mine “solves almost nothing”? What is the real chokepoint, and why? (¶6, ¶10)
On the question of whether the 1943 campaign actually worked, what stance does the text itself take? Does it settle the dispute — and why do you think it handles it the way it does? (¶5)
A rumour repriced the entire chip industry before anyone had checked it. What does the author want you to infer from that episode? (¶8, ¶14)
Challenge (4 min). Take the case you built in Task 2. Paste it into an AI tool with this instruction: “Here is my position. Argue the opposite case to me as forcefully as you can. Give me the three strongest objections a serious opponent would raise.” Read the objections. Do not accept them automatically.
Revise (3 min). Rewrite your position in four sentences. It must now answer at least one of the objections.
Reflect (1 min). Name one thing you kept despite the AI’s objection, and say why you kept it. That sentence is the point of the whole exercise.
In 1943 Europe controlled the tungsten chokepoint; today China does. What actually gives a country “the strings” over a critical material — owning the mine, or owning the factory that refines it?
If you ran purchasing for a German toolmaker, would you pay eight times the price today for non-Chinese tungsten, or bet that the high price will fix the shortage by itself?
History keeps showing that a chokepoint triggers the very invention that destroys it — synthetic rubber, Haber-Bosch, the post-2010 rare-earth diversification. Is China’s grip on tungsten different this time, or will the same thing happen again?
Should the EU spend billions reopening tungsten mines and refineries in Europe — or is that expensive theatre the market would solve on its own?
A rumour about tungsten supply repriced the whole chip industry before anyone checked whether it was true. What does that tell you about how markets handle strategic materials — and how should a leader react to that kind of news?
Europe still holds roughly half the world’s reserves. It lost not the geology but the will to mine and refine. Is that a failure of policy, of cost discipline, or of environmental politics — and would you reverse the decision today?
In ten years, will the phrase “critical raw material” look like the defining strategic category of the 2020s — or like a panic we look back on the way we look back on the 2011 rare-earth bubble?
What to do: identify one input, supplier, tool or system your organisation depends on and could not quickly replace. Name it. Then argue what — if anything — your company should do about it, using the two camps from this lesson: buy control (stockpile, dual-source, long-term contract, bring it in-house) or trust the market (diversify lightly, don’t overpay, wait for the alternative to appear). Write your own position first, unaided. Then paste it into an AI tool with the instruction “argue the opposite case to me.” Revise. Finally, add one sentence naming what you kept despite the AI’s objection, and why.
Deliverable: 200–300 word written paragraph. Time needed: about 20 minutes. When we meet again: send it via WhatsApp before our next session. We open the next class with the first five minutes given to two or three of you presenting your company’s tungsten.
1-A, 2-B, 3-C, 4-D, 5-E, 6-F, 7-G, 8-H
1-A, 2-B, 3-C, 4-D, 5-E, 6-F, 7-G, 8-H, 9-I, 10-J
1 — B · 2 — D · 3 — C · 4 — A · 5 — H · 6 — E · 7 — J · 8 — I · 9 — F · 10 — G · 11 — K · 12 — L
He was making money from both sides rather than choosing one — the same mines supplied both Germany and the Allies, and Portugal profited from every tonne. (¶1)
Buying something purely so a rival cannot have it — the Allies did not need the tungsten themselves, they bought it to keep it out of Germany’s hands. (¶3)
No — Germany’s own minister said the shortage hurt badly, but later historians argue Germany never truly ran out. (¶4)
Refining (the midstream) is more concentrated in China than mining is. (¶5)
Because the ore still has to travel to China to be refined, so owning the mine alone does not remove the dependency. (¶6)
Salazar kept two sets of paperwork, took a state cut on every tonne, accepted looted gold, and only stopped once continuing became costlier than stopping — behaviour consistent with profit, not political conviction. (¶1, ¶3)
They were buying denial — keeping the ore out of German hands, not acquiring metal they needed themselves. (¶3)
Because the binding constraint is refining, not extraction — ore from a reopened mine still has to be shipped to China to become usable. (¶5, ¶8)
The text leaves it disputed: Germany’s minister said the shortage bit hard, while later historians argue Germany rationed and never ran critically short. (¶4)
That markets price strategic materials on narrative and fear as much as on verified fact, and do it faster than anyone can check the story. (¶7)
He sold to both belligerents simultaneously from the same mines, kept two sets of paperwork, took a state cut on every tonne, accepted looted gold, and only stopped in June 1944 when Allied pressure made continuing more expensive than stopping. Neutrality here produced revenue, not restraint.
They were buying denial. The metal itself was surplus to Allied requirements; the purchase existed solely to keep the ore out of German hands — which is why the price could rise almost twenty-fold without the buying stopping.
Because the binding constraint is refining, not extraction. China holds roughly 70–85% of the midstream — APT, powder, carbide. Ore from a reopened European mine would still have to be shipped to China to become usable, so mine capacity alone does not remove the dependency.
It refuses to settle it. It gives Speer’s testimony that the shortage forced a diversion from the nuclear programme, and the revisionist case (Caruana & Rockoff; EHR, 2022) that Germany rationed, held ~1,200 t of stocks and never ran critically short. The author leaves the dispute open deliberately — the same uncertainty attaches to whether today’s re-shoring will work.
That markets price strategic materials on narrative and fear as much as on physical fact, and that they do it faster than anyone can verify the story. The leader who knows the historical pattern reads such a headline calmly; the one who does not buys at the top.
No model answers are provided for the discussion questions or the TBLT tasks — the point is your own argument.
I write one editorial article and one paired lesson every week, teaching the same topic across corporate groups in Germany before publishing it here. This one came out of a week on tungsten, chokepoints, and the case for buying control versus trusting the market — read the companion article, The Wolfram Reversal (accessible version here), for the fuller argument. If you teach, take this into your own classroom and tell me what happened; if you are learning, pick your level and argue it out.
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