Congress and defense experts warned that reliance on China, including for critical mineral processing, is undermining defense companies’ ability to produce the weapons the Pentagon asks for at a hearing on Wednesday. The defense industrial base — firms that make weapons and equipment for the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) — have struggled to overcome deepening supply chain setbacks that grew more severe during the COVID-19 pandemic. At the same time, China is not only rapidly modernizing its own military but dominating critical supply chains the U.S. weapons industry depends on to meet the Pentagon’s demands, lawmakers and industry representatives said Wednesday. (RELATED: US Relies On One Country For Key Materials In Defense Production — But There’s A Problem) “ Today, t here is a mismatch between what our national strategies aim to achieve and how our defense industrial base is postured,” David Norquist, president of the National Defense Industrial … [Read more...] about ‘Unacceptable’: GOP Reps, Defense Experts Raise Red Flags Over Pentagon’s Reliance On China For Critical Minerals