| ISSUE 030 · MATERIALS, CAPACITY, CONVERSION | |
| Thermal sights, missile seekers and periscope windows are ordered by the platform and tracked by the program. The glass inside them shares a supply chain with camera lenses, medical endoscopes and semiconductor lithography optics. Melt capacity for defense-grade optical glass goes uncounted in the procurement chain. | |
| Section 834 of the FY2026 National Defense Authorization Act, signed December 18, 2025, requires the Secretary of Defense to eliminate Pentagon reliance on optical glass and optical systems sourced from covered nations by January 1, 2030. The covered nations are China, Russia, Iran, North Korea and Belarus. The scope reaches beyond finished electro-optical systems to raw optical materials and critical intermediate processes, per a LightPath Technologies compliance guide. | |
| The world’s largest optical glass manufacturer, per the company, is CDGM Glass Company in Chengdu, a subsidiary of China South Industries Group Corporation. China South Industries appeared on the Department of Defense’s January 2025 Section 1260H list of Chinese military companies. | |
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Elon Musk’s One Stock Retirement Plan
Sometimes you come across an opportunity so explosive…
That it has the potential to turn a small stake…
Into a six figure and in some rare cases even a seven-figure nest egg…
Like it happened when I picked Nvidia in 2016.
It jumped high enough to turn $5,000 into an entire retirement nest egg of $1,895,000.
And while I can’t guarantee you’ll become a millionaire...
I think this little-known AI stock is one of those opportunities…
Which is why I call it “Elon Musk’s One Stock Retirement Plan.”
Now, if this idea of retiring with a single stock sounds crazy to you…
You should know that some of the best investors in the world believe that the idea of diversification is a little overrated.
Stanley Druckenmiller said…
“You don’t get rich by diversifying into 50 mediocre assets. You get rich by finding two or three asymmetric home runs.”
Or listen to legendary investor Peter Lynch. He said…
“I would own one stock if I can find one great stock.”
Even Warren Buffett said…
“Diversification is protection against ignorance. It makes little sense if you know what you are doing.”
| PLATE · Japan’s rare earth procurement response, 2010 |
| In September 2010, amid a territorial dispute over the Senkaku Islands, China halted rare earth exports to Japan, at a time when China supplied roughly 90 percent of the country’s rare earth imports, per the Institute of Energy Economics Japan. Prices rose about tenfold in the following year, per the same institute. In October 2010, Japan allocated a supplemental budget of 100 billion yen, roughly $1.2 billion, for rare earth countermeasures, per the World Economic Forum. The response had five pillars: reduce use, develop substitutes, recycle, diversify mines outside China and stockpile. |
| China’s halt lasted roughly two months, per RUSI. The procurement redesign that followed lasted more than a decade. |
| Japan’s 2022 Economic Security Promotion Act designated critical minerals as specified critical products, per East Asia Forum. |
| PLATE · SCHOTT North America optical glass facility, Duryea, Pennsylvania | |||
| The United States Air Force approached SCHOTT in Germany in the mid-1960s to open a domestic optical glass facility, after the largest American manufacturers were leaving the industry, per a PBS WVIA feature broadcast in December 2024. The first optical glass melt at Duryea was on July 1, 1969, per the company’s 2019 anniversary feature. It grew from 55,000 square feet to more than 200,000 square feet over 50 years, per the same feature. | |||
| On April 15, 2026, SCHOTT North America announced assembled protective windows manufactured entirely in the United States, consolidating melting, polishing, coating and mechanical integration within its U.S. operations. The facility has 136 employees as of 2026, per SCHOTT’s site page. After a fire damaged the plant in 2015, SCHOTT invested $20 million to rebuild it, per the company. | |||
| SCHOTT AG, the Duryea plant’s parent, is owned by the Carl Zeiss Foundation, founded in 1889, with headquarters in Mainz. | |||
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| Every supply figure carries a date and a source in the text. Not a footnote. In the sentence. | |||
| FREE. NO STOCK PICKS. NO PREDICTIONS. | |||
| Nothing here is investment advice. No company is named as an investment. |
