By 
The Pentagon’s top acquisition official on Wednesday detailed a new focus toward bolstering the domestic supply chain for microelectronics fabrication and rare earth mineral processing. Ellen Lord, the under secretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment, said during a Brookings Institution discussion that the pandemic has specifically exposed vulnerabilities in the supply chains for those two areas. “One of the silver linings, frankly, to COVID has been the fact that there’s a much larger awareness of issues we have with…
