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When we hear the word "byproduct," it often designates something unwanted or even negative coming out of a decision or process that provides some product or outcome we do want. In the world of mining, however, byproducts are often valuable minerals produced in the course of extracting other desired minerals from their ores.

For example, zinc mines often also produce profitable quantities of lead and silver. And, it can be the other way round; gold, silver, and copper mines can sometimes also contain profitable quantities of zinc.

I mention zinc in particular because zinc mines are one source for gallium, a metal that is important for advanced semiconductors. Gallium is also used in aerospace, optical devices, and medical devices. Needless to say it is in high demand and is important for military applications.

Another source of gallium is aluminum ore, usually bauxite, and it's the biggest source. What you will not find on planet earth are any gallium mines because geologic processes in the Earth simply do not allow gallium to concentrate in a manner that would create a profitable ore body.

So, it turns out that no matter how high the price of gallium goes—and the price is up by almost a factor of 5 since 2016—its supply depends almost exclusively on the rate of extraction of aluminum and zinc ores (and not all such ore bodies have concentrations of gallium that are worth extracting).

It turns out that zinc ore is also the main source for indium, a metal currently crucial for the production of flat screens. Indium is also used in LED circuits to create blue and white light, and it's often utilized in the semiconductor industry. A relatively small amount of indium is also recovered from certain copper ores. Like gallium, there are no indium mines. Its production depends on the rate of production of zinc and, to a much smaller extent, copper.

Zinc ores are also the source of most of the world's germanium, a metal with applications in advanced semiconductors, in optics (because of its high index of refraction), in fluorescent lighting, and in equipment for detecting radiation. And, of course, you guessed it; there are no germanium mines.

These three byproduct metals also share another thing in common: The dominant supplier of these critical metals to the world is China. China controls 98% of the production of gallium, 70% of the production of indium and about 60% of germanium production.

Import dependence is therefore high for most countries that use these metals in their industries. The United States, for example, imports 100% of its gallium and indium. And, the country imports about 50% of its germanium needs. For the record, indium and germanium have more than doubled in price since 2016.

Some supply of these metals is obtained through recycling. But this does not appear to provide much of the world's supply. The United States and other countries are now trying to incentivize new domestic mines for many key metals. That may at some point have an indirect effect on the domestic production of the three byproduct metals mentioned above. But, so far, the focus has been on rare earth elements used for high-powered magnets, not on zinc and aluminum mines.

Perhaps more concerning is that the entire electronics industry is dependent on these metals in their current technology. It's possible that new technologies could be developed that don't require these metals. But that could take a long time, and the capital already invested in manufacturing products that use these metals is vast. Companies are going to be reluctant to abandon that investment anytime soon.

The thing about metals is that they are elements and, unless you have access to the energy and pressure of something akin to the sun, it's very hard to turn cheaper more plentiful elements into scarce ones. While we know how to transmute elements, we still don't know how to turn lead into gold at a profit.

That means we'll have to do with (or do without) our current supplies, which are becoming ever more precarious as China continues to dominate production of many high-tech metals and has shown that it will limit exports when the country feels it is in its interests.

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