GE/General Electric aerospace rhenium supply constraint

Raised by a student as an extension of the rare-earths-as-political-leverage point. Tom acknowledges the case without prior familiarity, then connects it to his own turbine-blade work (six-percent-rhenium superalloys at roughly forty dollars per ounce).

Student: One other example is with the aerospace engines. GE got slammed really hard because the trace elements they use for the turbine — they changed to rhenium, and China had all the rhenium and cut supply, and it caused their engine production costs to almost double, right?