THAAD is one of the military-industrial complex’s most expensive boondoggles—and most Americans have never heard of it.

The Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system ranks among America’s most advanced ballistic-missile defenses. It aims to intercept ballistic missiles during their terminal phase, as their warheads reenter the atmosphere from space and descend toward their targets.

According to the GAO, it took decades and roughly $12.5 billion in research and development to get THAAD off the drawing board. Today, each interceptor costs an eye-watering $13 million. So every time the US military fires a THAAD interceptor at an incoming ballistic missile, taxpayers spend at least $13 million—and each engagement can require more than one interceptor.

The system had troubled origins.

After a string of failed tests in the 1990s, THAAD looked like it might become an expensive embarrassment.

The failures triggered reviews, redesigns, and mounting questions over whether the Pentagon was throwing good money after bad.

After years of improvements, THAAD entered operational service. Yet despite the billions spent developing it, the US military has acquired just eight batteries—not much of a vote of confidence in the system.

In short, THAAD is expensive—and it is no panacea against ballistic missiles.

Yet THAAD remains a key part of the front-line defense protecting US forces and allies in the Middle East from Iranian ballistic missiles. Few systems can do what THAAD attempts: track and destroy an incoming warhead as it reenters the atmosphere from space and plunges toward its target.

THAAD can intercept conventional ballistic missiles, but maneuvering hypersonic weapons pose a much tougher challenge. Iran has developed missiles that can maneuver at hypersonic speeds during the final stage of flight, making them harder for missile-defense systems to track and destroy. Even the Houthis in impoverished Yemen claim to field missiles with similar capabilities.

At the start of the June 2025 war, analysts estimated that the US had around 534 THAAD interceptors in its global inventory. By the end of the conflict, some estimates put the stockpile near 400, though the US military does not disclose the actual number for obvious reasons. In less than two weeks of fighting, the US burned through roughly 25% of its THAAD interceptor stockpile.

In other words, the US fired around 134 THAAD interceptors during the June 2025 conflict. At roughly $13 million per interceptor, that puts the cost above $1.7 billion—despite an interception rate well below 100%.

It’s also crucial to understand the state of THAAD production. The US will not receive new interceptors until 2027. Even then, current production capacity stands at just eight per month.

That was the state of THAAD—a crucial part of US and allied missile defense—when war with Iran erupted again in February 2026. That war continues today.

The US military does not disclose its THAAD inventory, but months of combat appear to have pushed the stockpile to dangerous levels. The 12-Day War in June 2025 consumed around a quarter of the US supply, with no new deliveries to replace those losses. Since February 2026, a longer and more intense war has drained the stockpile further.

And interceptor losses tell only part of the story. Iran has demonstrated that it can strike US missile-defense infrastructure across the Middle East with precision missiles and drones, putting THAAD batteries, radars, and other equipment at risk.

When you put it all together, it’s not hard to see the problem. Even if THAAD performs as intended, the US cannot sustain this rate of interceptor consumption for long. Months of combat have strained the missile defenses protecting US forces and allies in the region. If another round of intense fighting starts, there is a real possibility they could find themselves almost naked in front of Iranian ballistic missiles.

Iran still has thousands of long-range drones and ballistic missiles in its arsenal—and can replenish them at a much faster rate than the US can replace the interceptors needed even to try to shoot them down.

And that brings us to the real problem.

The bottleneck isn’t money.

As the leader of the world order and issuer of the world’s reserve currency, Washington can print or borrow more than any other country on the planet.

The real bottleneck is physical production capacity—factories, skilled labor, rocket motors, electronics, and the critical minerals needed to build the interceptors.

Congress can appropriate another $10 billion overnight. It cannot build a rare-earth processing plant, missile factory, or trained industrial workforce overnight.

That is where rare earths enter the story.

Modern weapons systems like THAAD depend on small quantities of rare earths and other critical minerals for high-performance magnets, guidance systems, sensors, actuators, electronics, and other components.

The amounts involved can look trivial next to the cost of the finished weapon.

A missile-defense system worth $150 million can depend on critical-mineral components worth only tens of thousands of dollars. But take away those materials, and the $150 million system becomes an expensive collection of parts that cannot do its job.

That makes rare earths one of the strangest choke points in the global economy. In short, rare earths have become indispensable to the US military and the modern American economy.

Measured in dollars or tonnage, the rare-earth market looks small. Yet this tiny physical market sits underneath trillions of dollars of economic value—from advanced weapons and aircraft to semiconductors, electric motors, robotics, data centers, and other high-tech industries.

Think of it as an inverted pyramid.

At the top sit trillions of dollars of military hardware, technology companies, industrial equipment, and economic output.

At the bottom sits a sliver of obscure elements that most investors could not name.

Remove that sliver and parts of the pyramid start falling apart.

And China controls much of it.

That dominance did not happen by accident. China spent more than three decades building mines, processing capacity, engineering expertise, equipment, supply chains, and manufacturing know-how around rare earths.

The West went in the opposite direction.

For decades, the US and Europe embraced the cheapest available supply while environmental restrictions, permitting obstacles, high costs, and public opposition made domestic production less attractive. China built the industrial base while the West consumed its output.

Now Washington wants to reverse that process.

But opening a mine solves only one piece of the problem.

The US also needs processing facilities to separate rare-earth elements from ore. It needs plants that turn those materials into metals and alloys. It needs factories that manufacture high-performance permanent magnets. It needs specialized machinery, engineers, metallurgists, chemists, technicians, and workers who know how to operate the entire chain.

In some cases, China also leads in the equipment and processes needed to perform those steps.

You cannot recreate 30 years of accumulated industrial knowledge with an executive order and a pile of money.

And China has shown that it understands the leverage this gives Beijing.

During its trade confrontation with Washington, China tightened controls over exports of critical minerals and processed materials. The message was hard to miss: the US may control the world’s reserve currency, but China controls physical inputs that parts of the American industrial and military machine cannot function without.

That exposes a weakness few investors appreciated until recent years.

The US can create dollars. It cannot create dysprosium, terbium, neodymium magnets, processing plants, or experienced engineers with a keystroke.

Washington now understands the problem. The Pentagon has poured money into domestic critical-mineral projects, and the US government has pushed defense contractors to remove Chinese materials from their supply chains.

That will create opportunities, but it will not solve the shortage in time to meet today’s military needs. Building a Western rare-earth supply chain will take years, while war is consuming weapons faster than American factories can replace them.

That mismatch between what Washington can spend and what American industry can produce is the heart of the problem.

This mismatch also creates an extraordinary investment distortion. Washington will pour vast sums into rebuilding the industrial capacity and supply chains it allowed to disappear. But that money will chase a limited number of scarce resources and productive companies.

And this is only one part of a much larger shift. Soaring debt, relentless money printing, and the breakdown of the current financial system could trigger the largest wealth transfer in modern history.

I have prepared an urgent presentation that explains what is coming and reveals three overlooked areas where I believe investors could find some of the biggest opportunities.

Please stay tuned… revelation will come soon

Globalism speaks in the language of “democracy” while ignoring – or even criminalizing – the will of the people. Across the West, citizens have opposed open border policies that have flooded their nations with unassimilable, foreign immigrants. Globalists have categorized this dissent as “hate speech,” censoring – and even prosecuting – citizens for their social media posts and public speech. Globalists insist that there must be limits on free speech. They seek to punish “thought crimes.” They label opposing points of view “disinformation” or “misinformation.” In practice, globalists protect governments and institutions from public criticism.

Globalism also speaks in the language of “free markets” while heavily regulating industrial production, encumbering the use of private property, and manipulating currency valuation, stock markets, and trade. By effectively “printing money” and intervening in markets, central banks steal from citizens who save their cash earnings, inflate the prices of essential household goods, and protect privileged companies or industries deemed “too big to fail.” By ginning up “global warming” fears among the public, lawmakers, bankers, and bureaucrats have justified the imposition of “carbon controls” that regulate energy use, economic production, and human activity. By expanding public welfare programs while weakening protections for property ownership, globalists tax citizens at increasingly higher rates, redistribute earned income and savings, confiscate real property, and even permit squatters (often foreign migrants) to occupy private residences.

Globalism falsely clothes itself in principle and tradition. Its proponents speak of “Western values,” while encouraging non-Westerners to migrate to and radically change the culture and demographics of Western nations. Its propagandists claim to represent “the people,” while doing the bidding of multinational corporations and investment banks. Its defenders pretend to respect public opinion, while mandating slavish devotion to “expertise.” Globalism seeks to end the nation state while demanding that citizens sacrifice themselves for government bureaucracies. It wages war against Christians who refuse to worship government institutions as the highest authorities on “truth.” Globalists divide societies into “victims” and “oppressors,” so that citizens remain too busy fighting each other to notice the surveillance prison being built around them. Globalists criticize opponents by saying things such as, “That’s not who we are,” while taking a sledgehammer and blowtorch to Western identities.

In defiance of globalism’s steady advance since WWII, a revolution has been brewing. Although its messengers have appeared all over the world – including Pat Buchanan in the United States, Shinzo Abe and Sanae Takaichi in Japan, Marine Le Pen in France, Geert Wilders in the Netherlands, Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, Javier Milei in Argentina, Alice Weidel in Germany, and Nigel Farage in the United Kingdom – President Donald J. Trump is the unofficial leader of the rebellion. What these men and women have in common is a strong sense of duty to their respective nations, a firm belief that culture matters, a preference for common sense, and a commitment to their countrymen over the international institutions, multinational corporations, and globalist NGOs (such as the World Economic Forum) that seek to eliminate national borders and condemn citizens to lives as disposable serfs.

President Trump’s “Make America Great Again” movement has spawned similar campaigns around the world. Whether in El Salvador or Nigeria, Spain or Australia, Canada or India, there are locals who have appropriated that slogan as part of an effort to make their own nations great. While globalism diminishes the importance of culture and celebrates amorphous “multiculturalism” as an inscrutable ideal, nation-builders around the world know better: Culture is the lifeblood of every society. It is the glue that binds a people together, fosters cooperation, and turns dreams of the future into reality. Just as members of a family help each other to succeed, members of a shared culture ensure their nation’s success.

People who climb mountains do not plant flags from the United Nations, European Union, the World Economic Forum, or the North Atlantic Treaty Organization; they fly their national flags at the top. Because no matter how much globalists lecture us about the evils of nationalism and the moral equivalence of all cultures, human beings know better. Our families, traditions, religious convictions, and historical memories matter. And when we ascend the icy peaks that few people have reached, we mark the moment, not as an achievement for “multiculturalism,” but rather as a testament to the inherent greatness of the places we call home.

For decades, globalism has been promoted as a “free market” ideal that would generate economic growth and foster international peace. But how has it operated in practice? Powerful corporations and lobbying groups have worked with governments to construct elaborate trade agreements that benefit the bottom line of political and financial elites. Rarely are the interests of the common man considered, except in the context of labor unions, standards bodies, or trade groups that purport to represent the average worker. Instead, complex legal documents such as the North American Free Trade Agreement have assisted in the creation of large industry monopolies while squeezing out small businesses. After the creation of NAFTA and similar “free trade deals,” American corporations and investment firms became multinational conglomerates, while Main Street mom-and-pop shops disappeared.

Globalism’s preferred winners became entities “too big to fail.” Why were they “too big to fail”? Because their trillion-dollar operations stretched like a circulatory system around the globe. Their drive for “efficiencies of scale” pushed them into every local bank, industry, and consumer market that could be secured as a beachhead for future profit. But in the endless expansion of it all – the mergers, acquisitions, and amalgamated monopolies – globalism’s circulatory system resembled that of a morbidly obese man only one meal away from a massive heart attack. A system so interconnected that it cannot survive the loss of any part makes the whole thing vulnerable to a few drops of poison.

Globalism’s rise has been debilitating for national self-sufficiency. In their unending quest for returns on investment, the globalists have built a world in which slave labor is used in communist China, India, and most of the African continent (while corporate news media ignore the story). Natural resources are extracted from third-world countries where environmental protection laws do not exist (while corporate news media ignore the story). Companies exploit both illegal immigration flows and legal work visas to drive down wages and drive up demand for (and therefore the prices of) food, fuel, rents, household necessities, and homes (while corporate news media ignore the story).

In treating individual nations as stolen cars being stripped and sold for parts, globalists have taken what is most valuable from each country while depriving those countries of the resources to build resilient economies of their own. From the slave mines of Africa to the sweatshops of China, globalism profits from blood. From the American Rust Belt to Germany’s decommissioned nuclear plants and the U.K.’s abandoned oil and gas fields, globalism sacrifices the wealth of nations, so that multinational investment banks can suck just a little more profit from the husks of countries with one foot already in the grave.

Why is it that patriotic love for one’s nation is making a comeback? Because globalism’s hatred for nations has left a trail of social conflict, government dependence, drug and alcohol addiction, deteriorating public health, environmental degradation, and cultural decline in every land it drains of life. What President Trump and his fellow rebels understand is this: Nations and their people matter. You cannot make the world great, while letting great nations die.

And to prevail in this battle you need to use the right tools:

• privacy protecting tools like VPN’s, encrypted communication, offshore hosting, sometimes even publishing on the dark net, one of the first addresses to turn to for help is privacy.li , the undisputed outfit from Liechtenstein, if it comes to privacy and even anonymity
• intelligent usage of crypto tokens for untraceable payments (like it was in the old days with plain old cash, which the globalists want to abolish all together), a great place to start with is dawnswap.com

Guess who’s back? Marc Harris