When Min left the hot, dusty plains of central Myanmar for its mountainous eastern border with China earlier this year, he had few options. A 2021 military coup had devastated the formal economy of the Southeast Asian country, and jobs were scarce. Min’s native Sagaing Region was at the epicenter of an armed uprising, making it a target of airstrikes and other retaliatory attacks. And the military introduced mandatory conscription in 2024, accelerating the exodus of young people from areas under its control. As many of his peers fled Myanmar, Min paid a broker 2,000 Chinese yuan ($290) to arrange jobs for him and his younger brother at a rare earth mining site in an autonomous region controlled by a powerful ethnic army. Assigned to build roads, Min and his brother each earned around 3,000 yuan ($430) a month. It was far more than they could earn in most industries, but the work came with risks. They were digging on steep slopes and Min’s brother had little experience operating heavy machinery. Weeks after arriving, Min’s brother died in a landslide. Min’s account of the incident could not be independently verified, but local media have documented at least five fatal landslides at rare earth mining sites in Myanmar in recent years, in one case burying more than a dozen workers. His family held religious rites without his brother’s body, which could not be transported. Min did not go home either. ‘Despite the risks, I continue working,’ he said. ‘There are not many other job options.’ (Editor’s note: Like other workers interviewed, Min has been given a pseudonym.) A rare earth mining site, seen here in January 2026, near the town of Hpare in territory controlled by the Kachin Independence Organization near the border with China. Machya Min is part of an expanding workforce enduring hazardous conditions and handling toxic chemicals to extract some of the world’s most coveted raw materials. Used in the manufacture of wind turbines and electric vehicles, the 17 elements known as rare earths are often framed as essential to fighting climate change. But they are also used in advanced weapons, elevating their geostrategic value. Many countries consider rare earths to be ‘critical minerals’ — vital to economic and security interests but vulnerable to supply chain disruption. As competition for control over supply chains intensifies, rare earth extraction has left a wake of destruction in source countries. Myanmar, the world’s largest supplier of a particularly sought-after subset known as heavy rare earths, is now enduring a disproportionate burden. Myanmar’s rare earth mining industry operates in secret, with no public records of active permits or companies involved. Worksites are heavily guarded, and only a handful of journalists have reported on the ground over the past decade. Still, news has trickled out — of poisoned rivers, forests devoid of wildlife, and farmland so toxic that growers cannot sell their crops. In May, a local human rights group reported that a Chinese rare earth mining company in Myanmar’s eastern Shan State was using prisoners and human trafficking victims for ‘slave labor.’ It found that both the Myanmar military and United Wa State Army, an ethnic army that maintains a ceasefire with the military, were complicit. A rare earth mining site, seen here in September 2025, in the Mong Pawk area of Shan State, Myanmar, in territory controlled by the United Wa State Army. Gawng Loe Mu The businesses carrying out this extraction face few consequences in Myanmar — in part because the industry operates in a legal grey area. Chinese companies extract rare earths in autonomous, militarized regions controlled by local ethnic armies, which protect mining operations while taking a cut of the profits. The mined material is then trucked across the border into China, where it is mixed and essentially laundered with rare earths from other sources and processed for use in global products. The conflict monitoring organization Armed Conflict Location & Event Data, or ACLED, has ranked Myanmar’s war as the second-most extreme on the planet, and also the world’s most fragmented, with more than 1,200 distinct armed groups. Corruption and weak rule of law have further contributed to an explosion of criminal activity of all kinds. According to the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime, Myanmar has the highest levels of organized crime of any country in the world. ‘External influence, such as global demand and China, play a major role in Myanmar’s rare earth extraction,’ said Thaw Htoo, a pseudonym for a political ecologist from Myanmar who conducts her research anonymously for safety reasons. ‘Armed groups and lawlessness allow this to happen while the international community turns a blind eye. … These actors are all involved in these harmful and irresponsible practices, and ideas like responsible sourcing or a just energy transition do not reflect the reality on the ground.’ As the world’s superpowers seek control over rare earth supply chains as a means to advance their national interests, from weapons to renewable energy, their demand is indirectly funding conflict actors in Myanmar during a time of war, incentivizing rapid extraction with minimal safeguards. Debris surrounds a damaged statue of Buddha in February 2024 following fighting between Myanmar’s military and the Kachin Independence Army in Nam Hpat Kar, Kutkai township in Myanmar’s northern Shan State. STR / AFP via Getty Images Rare earths are common in the Earth’s crust, but their low concentration, combined with the fact that they occur in complex clays and minerals, makes them costly and difficult to mine. Researchers have found that their extraction tends to occur at the margins of state and corporate power, with those profiting from extraction often using narratives of untapped wealth and critical strategic needs to justify their expansion. Rare earth exploration has reached Indigenous territories in the Amazon, the deep sea, and even the moon. As the United States seeks ways to reduce its dependence on China, it has made deals involving rare earths in geopolitical hotspots including Ukraine and contested regions of Pakistan, while working to extend its influence over rare earth-rich countries including Venezuela and Greenland. Within Myanmar, these patterns are repeated along its eastern border. ‘The question we need to ask about rare earths is why these same regions keep getting remade as extractive sacrifice zones,’ said Jasnea Sarma, an ethnographer and geographer at the University of Zurich.