It takes nearly a decade to get a mine online, under optimal conditions. If a conflict breaks out and China embargoes the West, what's your plan then?

Stockpile it beforehand and don’t create pointless conflicts.

Stockpile 10 years worth of the entire west's consumption of rare earth minerals? That's not gonna be cheap. Would China even have the production capacity to handle it in a reasonable time frame?

Would China even want to sell it, even if they could? Letting a country stockpile doesn't seem in their interest: the whole reason you want to do it is to reduce reliance on them, they'd probably want to keep you hooked

We're letting them buy all our gold reserves and water rights (see alfalfa farming in the West), so everyone's got their price.

Question is whats more cost-effective: paying market rates to secretly stockpile, or paying for another Iraq or Afghanistan in the south china sea...

We're reasoning about the current state of things. We're /not/ suggesting this is good or should continue.

The unwritten implication is, we can do it ourselves, but the price will skyrocket as a result. I personally think that would be fine. Wait a minute and someone else will come by to yell about this the other way.