On August 7, the Pentagon's Office of Strategic Capital offered $400 million to an Australian mining company.
Nothing unusual there. Governments finance foreign projects all the time.
Here's what was unusual.
The deal came with a right of first offer on the mine's future output. It required Sunrise Energy Metals to build a supply chain running from Australian soil to American factories.
And it targeted scandium, a metal with no dedicated primary mine anywhere on Earth, one where China, Russia and Ukraine supply nearly all of the world's needs.
Read that again.
The U.S. government picked a material. It picked a friendly-country resource. It wrote a 25-year loan. It tied that loan to American processing. And it locked in preferential access to the metal before a single ton had been mined.
That is a term sheet, not a subsidy.
And it is the clearest sign yet that Washington has stopped playing referee in the critical minerals market and started playing investor.
The Government Builds a Balance Sheet