Kyle Bass, co-chief executive of Rochefort Asset Management and a China hawk who serves as an informal adviser to US Indo-Pacific command, says the fragile China truce is “nothing more than a high-stakes hostage exchange”.

“America is held captive by China’s stranglehold on rare earth metals and critical minerals essential for our tech and defence industries, while Beijing desperately clutches at Nvidia’s AI chips to fuel its military modernisation to challenge US supremacy,” says Bass. “It’s turned into a desperate race for both nations to extricate themselves from this precarious entanglement before the other gains the upper hand.” (Financial Times, February 23, 2026)