Tungsten 90-Year Price High: Missiles Now Outbid Chips

Every Tomahawk missile that hits an Iranian bunker contains tungsten. On detonation, that tungsten is gone — not recycled, not recovered. Just consumed.

The US and Israel have fired thousands of munitions since strikes began. Each one burned through a metal that's also inside your smartphone, your laptop's processor, and the solar panels on your neighbour's roof. Now the bill is coming due.

The numbers don't lie

Tungsten prices have surged 557% since China imposed export controls in February 2025. The Rotterdam benchmark for ammonium paratungstate (APT) — the intermediate product used to make tungsten metal — jumped from under $400 per metric ton to over $2,200. According to consultancy Project Blue, citing US Geological Survey data, tungsten products haven't traded this high in at least 90 years.

That makes tungsten the strongest-performing commodity of the past year. It's outpaced gold, copper, and oil — all during a period when those metals were already surging.

The Pentagon knew what was coming. The day before US and Israeli strikes on Iran began, the Department of Defense issued urgent procurement requests for 13 critical minerals. Tungsten was on the list.

Two crises in one metal

Here's where it gets uncomfortable. The defence sector consumed roughly 10% of global tungsten last year, according to Project Blue. That ratio is climbing fast as Western countries rebuild munitions stocks drained by five years of Ukraine fighting and the missile-heavy Iran campaign.

Military buyers will always outbid civilian buyers. That's the rule. And the civilian buyers in question aren't making luxury goods — they're making semiconductors, printed circuit boards, and solar panels.

Tungsten hexafluoride (WF₆) is essential for forming electrical connections in advanced chips. The shift toward sub-2nm processors has only increased demand. Chinese investment bank CICC forecasts a global tungsten deficit of 20,000 metric ton units by 2028, as demand from defence, semiconductors, EV batteries, and AI data centres all compete for the same shrinking pool.

China holds the cards

China mines about 80% of the world's tungsten. It also controls a majority of refining capacity — so even tungsten mined elsewhere often gets shipped to China for processing.

Since February 2025, Chinese tungsten exports have fallen nearly 40%, according to Wolfram Advisory. Chinese mined production also dropped 10% year-on-year to 61,000 tons in 2025 due to lower government quotas and environmental crackdowns on smaller operations.

More tungsten is also being absorbed by China's growing domestic industries. Even without export controls, supply would be tightening.

Chinese media frames this very differently than Western coverage does. As Reuters notes the supply crisis, Mandarin-language outlets at 21st Century Business Herald celebrate tungsten stocks as "war metals" with companies hitting 100x valuations. China's tungsten export controls aren't an accident — they're a deliberate strategic lever.

Western media calls it a supply crisis. Chinese media calls it leverage.

The perception gap: three regions, three framings

The Albis Perception Gap Index scores this story at 6 — "selective visibility." Only three regions are covering it: the US, Europe, and Asia-Pacific.

US coverage frames tungsten as a military readiness problem. How do we keep making missiles? European outlets frame it as an industrial vulnerability — how do we reshore critical mineral supply chains? South Korean and Japanese media frame it as a semiconductor emergency, with Samsung and SK Hynix facing 70-90% price hikes on tungsten hexafluoride.

The 3.87 billion people living in South Asia, the Middle East, Latin America, and Africa — regions that use phones, buy solar panels, and depend on the same global chip supply — aren't hearing about this at all.

What this means for you

Non-Chinese tungsten production rose 20% last year to 19,000 tons, helped by a new mine in Kazakhstan. The US is funding studies into Nevada deposits and enhanced recycling. But these projects are years from producing metal.

In the meantime, the war burns through tungsten every day. Each strike narrows what's available for chips, clean energy, and medical devices.

The Iran conflict isn't just reshaping oil markets and food supply chains. It's quietly depleting the raw materials that power the technology economy. Every missile that detonates in Iran makes the next generation of semiconductors slightly more expensive, the clean energy transition slightly slower, and the AI boom slightly more fragile.

The war you can see is fought with missiles. The one you can't is fought over the metal inside them.