On King Island, which lies between Tasmania and the Australian mainland, the Dolphin Mine has one of the world’s largest deposits of tungsten — a rugged metal used to harden bullets and shells. According to Bloomberg News’ David Fickling, the mine (which opened in 1917) is used as an unlikely predictor of major wars — and it’s opening again.
“First opened in 1917 to support munitions production in World War 1, it shut down three years later when peace crashed the tungsten market,” Fickling explains in a Bloomberg News opinion column. “Starting up again in 1938 on the eve of World War 2, it was saved twice more as conflict broke out first in Korea and then Vietnam. In 1990, exactly 12 months after the fall of the Berlin Wall, it closed, seemingly for good. Water flooded its pit and underground tunnels, and the workers’ settlement became a ghost town.”
Fickling continues, “Viewed from the perspective of 2026, this boom-and-bust cycle looks like a foolish way to have treated such a vital strategic element. With geopolitical tensions on the rise, the retrenchment of supply chains that began with the COVID-19 pandemic has turned into a global scramble to secure critical minerals such as rare earths, lithium and cobalt.”
In 2026, Fickling observes, one is seeing an “eruption of speculative interest reminiscent of previous wartime tungsten rushes.”
“Since the start of 2025,” the Bloomberg News columnist observes, “prices have jumped almost eight-fold, attracting the attention of many players — including the president of the United States. Donald Trump’s sons are collaborating with the family of Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick on a tungsten project in Kazakhstan, according to the New York Times.”
Fickling points out that Kevin Pallas, CEO of the Dolphin Mine’s parent company, “is betting that global interest in tungsten” will work in the mine’s favor.
Pallas told Fickling, “The phone started ringing in January, and it hasn’t stopped ringing. The majority of the early calls we got were people saying, ‘We thought you were dead.'”
Fickling notes that during wartime, tungsten “has a deadlier purpose” and “can slice straight through armor plating.” A “metal rain of tungsten pellets,” according to Fickling, “can destroy drones and missile batteries.”
“These lethal properties explain why tungsten was once seen as the ultimate military and strategic mineral, as vital to victory as steel or oil,” Fickling notes. “During a 1932 League of Nations disarmament conference, prices first collapsed and then soared again as prospects of a deal waxed and waned. Through the decade, as fears of war grew, the belligerents scrambled to secure stockpiles before conflict severed their supply lines. In the run-up to the 1944 D-Day landings, the U.S. imposed an oil embargo on Francoist Spain to force it to stop selling the element to Nazi Germany…. Military strategists have another reason for alarm: the rising tide of conflict is depleting tungsten supplies at the fastest pace in decades.”