South Korea, Japan, and the United States' trilateral partnership has expanded to include collaboration on economic security, including on critical minerals supply chains (CMSCs). This report offers analysis, tools, and recommendations to strengthen South Korea's CMSCs and economic security through trilateral cooperation and collaboration among South Korea, the United States, and Japan. Included in the report are (1) analysis of the trio's CMSC vulnerabilities and four industry case studies on cobalt, gallium, molybdenum, and tungsten; (2) summaries of the key organizations and governance leading critical minerals efforts, national legislation, policy tactics and tasks, and available financial mechanisms in each country, along with a supply chain net assessment tool and analysis to evaluate supply chain securitization efforts; (3) case studies on trilateral engagement with India and Mongolia and political alignment metrics to evaluate potential partnerships with mineral-rich countries; and (4) opportunities for and barriers to trilateral cooperation. Although barriers exist, opportunities to secure South Korea's supply chains through trilateral cooperation include trade policy and sectoral trade agreements, steering the Minerals Security Partnership (MSP) into new directions, and joint stockpiling initiatives, such as mineral swap agreements. South Korea can improve its supply chain vulnerabilities by expanding its concepts of economic security to include securing raw material inputs for its defense industrial base. This report should be of interest to South Korean, Japanese, and U.S. policymakers; to researchers of Indo-Pacific and East Asian security, economic security, techno-economic competition, supply chain resilience, and related policy; and to the private sector.

The potential emergence of a seabed mining industry has important ramifications for the diversification of critical mineral supply chains, revenues for developing nations with substantial terrestrial mining sectors, and global geopolitics. In this report, the authors present the results of a multi-pronged examination of each of these issues, exploring the likelihood and magnitude of their impacts to better inform planning and policymaking. The goal of their analysis was to evaluate the potential for seabed mining to diversify critical mineral supply chains, the opportunity and appetite for doing so, the factors influencing the viability of a seabed mining industry, and the broader implications of establishing a global seabed mining industry. They used several methods to accomplish these objectives, including a literature review, expert interviews, economic modeling, and an expert workshop. The authors found that the emergence of a seabed mining industry would introduce a new source of supply for critical minerals that are key elements for energy transition and defense technologies, and this would present several opportunities and challenges for the United States in terms of diversifying critical mineral supply chains away from China, cooperating with allies and partners, working with developing nations, and addressing environmental, regulatory, and security concerns. They offer several recommendations for the U.S. government to address these issues.

The way in which a military organization plans for and conducts logistics can provide critical insights into how capably the military can achieve its operational objectives. Assumptions are often made about the capability of the People's Liberation Army (PLA) to carry out and sustain high-end operations, but missing from that discussion is an assessment of how capably its logistics systems and processes perform, which affects how well the military might operate in actual conflict. A review of literature on China's evolving military capabilities indicates that little attention has been given to the topic of the PLA's logistics capabilities, particularly understanding and analyzing the PLA's approach to some key subfunctions of logistics, such as maintenance. The People's Liberation Army's growing ability to project and sustain power will rely on its logistics capabilities, systems, and processes. The PLA is rapidly modernizing its military systems, which requires sophisticated maintenance management practices to keep pace with and maintain much more complex systems. An assessment of PLA progress in these capabilities requires an understanding of the PLA's approach to maintenance, which includes an assessment of its maintenance apparatus and how it operates within their system. In this report, the authors look at the PLA's historical approach to maintenance, identify critical reforms that affect maintenance practices, and highlight key themes related to the PLA's current maintenance capabilities.