America is running out of helium

You'd think it couldn't happen, but America is running out of helium. It's the second most abundant element, after hydrogen. Still, it's only available naturally, usually as a by-product of natural gas production. The war in Ukraine, the ongoing assaults by Iran on the Gulf states, and China's decision to crack down on exports have cut the world's supply by almost half. If that only meant fewer blimps and balloons, America could ride it out. Most people don't know it's also essential to semiconductor manufacturing, the operation of medical resonance imaging devices, missile defense, and computer-guided smart weapons. We can't do without it. If it were rubber, oil, or natural gas, we could work around the shortage using a synthetic alternative. That's how America dealt with supply chain issues in World War II. We invented alternatives to what we couldn't get. But helium is only found in nature. There is no synthetic alternative and probably never will be, making it imperative to our national and economic security to have a way to keep an appreciable quantity in reserve in case the supply chain is disrupted. From 1925 to just recently, we did. The management of the National Helium Reserve was privatized under Bill Clinton, and the inventory was eventually sold off by Joe Biden to a German company with strong ties to China. What we have now is mainly what we can get on the open market, just as the helium market is at its most fragile in decades. America's strategic position is weakened when we lack alternatives. Congress hasn't given this problem the attention it deserves, and we may be sleepwalking into a supply chain crisis with consequences more serious than the last one. Think of it this way: if America runs out of helium, domestic semiconductor manufacturing stops. People will die because hospital MRI machines will be rendered inoperable. Production of fiber-optic cables will cease, as will satellite launches. Superconducting defense technologies, nuclear detection equipment, and the cooling systems that power advanced data centers will all have to be turned off. That's not a place in which we'd be safe. To prevent that, Congress needs to act quickly to reestablish the National Helium Reserve, and for the same reasons it created one under Calvin Coolidge: to fill gaps that may arise from geopolitical crises such as war, embargos, or the severing of diplomatic and commercial ties. Without reliable domestic sources and a supply reserve, we're more dependent on imports coming from politically unstable parts of the world. That's not a good place for the United States to be and, in the race for global economic leadership, it puts us behind China. Helium matters as never before. It is as important to the future as all the so-called rare earth metals already prioritized by the Trump administration. It's not as though we're lacking in resources. A report by Ned Mamula for Unleash Prosperity pegged the total value of U.S. mineral reserves at somewhere close to $12 trillion, with a "T," and said mining them could generate an additional $1 trillion in federal revenue. The U.S. government has designated those minerals as "critical" under U.S. law, opening the door to their rapid exploitation. The need for them is so urgent that, as described, those who mine them can apply for expedited permitting, receive investment incentives, gain additional authority to produce them under the Defense Production Act, and otherwise receive support to bolster production and domestic processing capacity. It should be the same for helium, which comes out of the ground alongside America's plentiful supplies of natural gas, which we have in abundance thanks to Donald Trump's embrace of the "drill, baby, drill" energy development strategy. But even that is not enough. In all of North America, only about 1% of natural gas production results in the release of extractable helium. U.S. Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum is trying to up the numbers, but a spat between the Bureau of Land Management offices in Utah, which would be heavily involved in any helium project, and Colorado, which wouldn't, and wouldn't get any additional money as a result, is keeping things from moving forward. Burgum and Mamula, now director of the U.S. Geological Survey, could move things along by cracking a few heads inside the Bureau of Land Management. More than that, they must make the case to the president and Congress that with no reserves on hand, the time to act is now, before the crisis worsens. All too often, America only realizes trouble is at hand when it starts. Whether it's Fort Sumter, Pearl Harbor, or 9/11, we tend to ignore the warning signs until after the balloon bursts. The global supply chain's strategic vulnerability was something many people talked about, but until COVID hit and the lockdowns began, nobody did anything about it. No more lessons learned the hard way. We can see what's coming. The U.S. still has immense geological resources and the technical expertise to make the most of them. We need a strategy to secure the supply of helium through imports, domestic development, and the establishment of reserves, with the priority it deserves. – Copyright 2026 Peter Roff distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate. Peter Roff is former U.S. News and World Report contributing editor and UPI senior political writer now affiliated with several DC-based public policy organizations. He writes for numerous publications and appears regularly on international television talking about U.S. politics. You can reach him at RoffColumns@gmail.com and follow him on Twitter @TheRoffDraft.