Executive Order 14415, Securing America’s Defense Supply Chains and Ensuring Domestic Acquisition of Critical Materials, was signed on 20 July 2026 and published in the Federal Register on 23 July. Its operative sentence is short: on 1 January 2027 the Secretary and the secretaries of the military departments “shall cease to issue waivers under 10 U.S.C. 4872(c)(1)” except through an approved mitigation plan.
The order uses the title Secretary of War and the Department of War throughout; that is the naming in the document, and this article follows it.
What 10 U.S.C. 4872 actually covers
This is the part that matters to anyone in mining, and it is usually skipped. Section 4872 is the specialty metals rule: it bars the Department from buying certain materials melted or produced in a covered nation — North Korea, China, Russia and Iran. The covered materials are:
- samarium-cobalt magnets
- neodymium-iron-boron magnets
- tungsten metal powder
- tungsten heavy alloy, and finished or semi-finished components containing it
- tantalum metals and alloys
- molybdenum
Gallium and germanium join that list on 18 December 2027, under the FY2026 National Defense Authorization Act, which also added molybdenum with immediate effect — see the NDAA piece.
Read that list again. Not one entry is an ore or a concentrate. A magnet, a metal powder, a heavy alloy, a metal. Every single one is the output of the step between the mine and the factory — the step this site argues the United States gave away. The US is not short of molybdenum in the ground; it is a byproduct of copper mining here at scale. What the rule demands is molybdenum that has been through a domestic or allied processing chain.
The waiver, and why closing it is the whole policy
A nonavailability waiver is the release valve: if compliant material cannot be had, the contract proceeds with non-compliant material. The order does not abolish the waiver, it makes it expensive. From 1 January 2027 a contractor seeking one must produce a mitigation plan that identifies the source of the non-compliant material, documents “evidence of exhaustive efforts to obtain compliant material,” describes the steps that will remove it from the supply chain, and sets a strict projected timeline for doing so. Knowingly false statements in that plan carry False Claims Act exposure and debarment risk.
Alongside it comes a tracing requirement. Within 180 days the department is to develop supply chain mapping policy, under which contractors submit “a complete indentured Bill of Materials that traces all components, parts, equipment, software, and materials back to the origin of raw materials.” Progress is reported to the National Security Advisor every six months until 1 January 2028.
The order states the intent directly: that “not only the finished equipment deployed by our military, but also the critical materials and components necessary to manufacture, maintain, sustain, and repair that equipment, are sourced domestically or from allied nations.”
What this changes
It converts a supply chain problem into a contracting problem with a date. A prime contractor that cannot name the origin of the tungsten powder in a component has, from January, a documentation burden rather than a form to file — and an incentive to find a domestic source that did not exist while the waiver was routine.
What it does not do is create the capacity. An order can require that magnets be sourced outside four countries; it cannot conjure a magnet plant. That is the gap the money announced elsewhere is meant to fill, and the reason to watch whether the two arrive in the same decade.
