Tungsten doesn’t often make headlines, but it’s built into nearly everything that keeps American industry and defense running: cutting tools, electronics, manufacturing equipment, and military systems. As Cliff Nance likes to put it, “anything that goes BOOM has tungsten in it.”
In a new interview with Interesting Engineering, Tungco CEO Cliff Nance explains why tungsten has become a national security priority and why a big part of the answer may already be sitting inside the country.
The tungsten we already have
New domestic mines matter, and Cliff is clear that they need to succeed. But mines take years to permit, build, and bring online. In the meantime, large amounts of tungsten are already above ground in American shops and factories as spent cutting tools, drill inserts, and carbide scrap. Too much of that material ends up in landfills or leaves the country. Recovering it keeps a valuable, strategic resource in the domestic supply chain today, not years from now.
Project 74: from scrap to supply
That’s the idea behind Project 74, Tungco’s initiative to recover tungsten from industrial scrap and process it into high-purity sodium tungstate, a key building block for new tungsten products. In the interview, Cliff describes it as “turning yesterday’s scrap into tomorrow’s critical mineral supply.”
Why traceability matters now
With new defense sourcing requirements starting in 2027, manufacturers and contractors will need to show where their tungsten comes from, not just who sold them the finished part. That means documented chain of custody and qualified suppliers. Cliff’s advice: “don’t wait.”
Read the full interview
The full conversation covers much more, including what a major new US tungsten discovery does and doesn’t solve, where the supply chain is most vulnerable, and what a truly resilient American tungsten supply could look like.
Read the full interview on Interesting Engineering →
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