Each one contains nearly a half a ton of whats called rare earth elements, almost all of which come from china. The guidance systems on Weapons Systems and tomahawk cruise missile, any of the smart bombs have rare earths in them. Id be hardpressed to name anything that we consider Worth Building today and Going Forward that would not have a rare earth compound in it. Stahl because of this, because of the monopoly on rare earths, does china threaten our National Security . Unchecked, yes. cheers and applause rose heres something you havent seen before an astrophysicist, on stage, in a soldout auditorium. Neil Degrasse Tyson is re igniting a fascination for the great beyond. Hes succeeded carl sagan as the countrys most captivating scientific communicator. When i was 11, i said, this is so amazing, who wouldnt want to study the universe . Rose what was so amazing . The endless frontier of it all, the vastness of it, the mystery of it. Im steve kroft. Im lesley stahl. Im lara logan. Im bill whitaker. Im charlie rose. Im scott pelley. Those stories tonight on 60 minutes. Cbs money watch update brought to you in part by good evening. The new Prime Minister of greece meets with germanys chancellor tomorrow over growing tensions over the greek bailout crisis. The number of working oil rigs in the u. S. Is down to 825, a 50 drop from last october. And today delphis driverless car began a Cross Country trip. Im vinita nair, cbs news. The new, twentyfifteen ford focus believes in more. More to see. More to feel. More to make things really really. Interesting. The new focus. From the auto brand more people buy, and buy again. My name is brenda, and this is my aha moment. In the flood of 1997 my husband, my sons, myself, our dog. We all got out. Everything was fine. However, the water was over our house. We lost all of our possessions. It made me realize what is important and what isnt. You have your family you have your health and anything else is just extra and it can all be replaced. Mutual of omaha. Insure your possibilities. Insurance. Retirement. Banking. Investments. Logan there are few places on earth where christianity is as old as it is in iraq. Christians there trace their history to the firstcentury apostles. But today, their existence has been threatened by the terrorist group that calls itself Islamic State. More than 125,000 christians men, women and children have been forced from their homes over the last ten months. The Islamic State, or isis stormed into iraqs second largest city, mosul, last summer and took control. From there, it pushed into the neighboring villages and towns across this region, known as the Nineveh Plains, a vast area thats been home to christians since the First Century after christ. Much of what took almost 2,000 years to build has been lost in a matter of months. chanting on the side of a mountain overlooking the Nineveh Plains of ancient mesopotamia is the monastery of st. Matthew. Its one of the oldest on earth. The voices of its monks have echoed here since the fourth century, uttering prayers that have not changed. You do the service in aramaic. Joseph ibrahim yes. Logan which was the language of jesus. Ibrahim yes. Logan are you among the last people on earth to speak this language . Ibrahim we think so, because we kept this language through the language of prayers. Logan prayers through centuries of persecution. Father Joseph Ibrahim is one of only seven monks left here. He told us the monastery was founded in 363, and has survived the persian and ottoman empires, mongol invaders, and kurdish conquests. Today, its threatened by the Islamic State, whose fighters advanced towards st. Matthews gates shortly after taking mosul last summer. Kurdish soldiers pushed them back to this village, where their flag still flies only four miles from the monastery. What are you most afraid of . Ibrahim unknown future. Logan the unknown future . Ibrahim yes. Logan what do you think is going to happen . Ibrahim we dont know exactly, but we are expecting the worse. Logan the road from st. Matthews brings you to the frontline, just six miles from the outskirts of mosul. Every town and village between here and the occupied city is in the hands of the Islamic State. And now, were told, for the first time in nearly 2,000 years, there are no christians left inside mosul. Nicodemus sharaf they take everything from us, but they cannot take the god from our hearts, they cannot. Logan Nicodemus Sharaf is the archbishop of the Syriac Orthodox Church in mosul, one of about 10,000 christians who fled the city. We found him living as a refugee in the kurdish capital, erbil. He said isis fighters were already inside mosul when he escaped. Sharaf i didnt have any time to take anything. I was told i had five minutes to go. Just i took five books that are very old. Logan among them, this aramaic manuscript. He told us it was written 500 years ago, and said he left behind hundreds more older than this one, christian relics that may never be recovered. Sharaf i think they burn all the books. And we have books from the First Century of the christianity. Logan you had from the First Century . Sharaf of the christianity. When i remember this, i cannot. From the beginning the christianity, this is the first time we cannot pray in our churches. Logan as it seeks to erase christianity from the landscape, the Islamic State allows no christian symbols. It just released these photographs, which show the desecration of the church at what is believed to be the monastery of mar gorgis just north of mosul. And nothing is sacred. Isis blew up this mosque just over a month after taking here. Its a site holy to both christians and muslims because the Old Testament prophet jonah was said to be buried inside. Just like the nazis marked the property of jews, Christian Homes in mosul have been marked with this red symbol. Its the arabic letter n for nasara, an early islamic term for christians. When isis puts it on your home you either convert to islam, pay an extortion tax, or face the sword. Issah al qurain is one of tens of thousands who had to make that choice. He was at home with his family in the Christian Village where hed lived all his life when isis fighters came looking for him. He told us the fighters first took all his money, then his wife and children. They were telling you convert, convert, convert . translated yes, convert. In the beginning, i refused. I told them i was christian, and i had my religion and they had their religion. But they told me, if you dont convert, we will kill you and take your wife and children. Logan he agreed and was taken to mosul to convert where he was reunited with his family. Soon, isis fighters were asking about his young daughter, and he told us that frightened him more than anything. Al qurain they said to me that, in islam, the sharia says girls that are ten years old should get married. As soon as they left, my wife and i shut the door. We looked at each other and she started to cry and pray. We were so scared they were going to take our daughter from us. Logan they escaped in the back of a taxi. Issah says they talked their way through three isis checkpoints and traveled for over four hours on back roads to erbil where like archbishop sharaf, they now live as refugees. Some 30,000 christians were living in erbil before this crisis, most of them chaldean catholics, who follow their own ancient traditions but recognize the authority of the pope. Bashar warda is the archbishop of this diocese. He says his congregation has swelled by more than 60,000 refugees as kurdistan, the semi autonomous region in the north of iraq, has become a safe haven for christians fleeing the Islamic State. This is one of the oldest Christian Communities in the world, thousands of years old. Bashar warda 2,000, almost. Logan and when you look at it today, where is that Christian Community here . Warda disappearing. Its dying. Logan archbishop warda said christians in iraq, ironically felt safer under saddam hussein. Democracy brought a new wave of persecution and prompted a mass exodus of christians. When the u. S. Withdrew completely in 2011, archbishop warda says the situation became even worse because iraqs new leaders were incapable of governing without help. Warda i think american support was needed, needed forcefully. You cannot leave the country like this and tell them, well weve liberated you. We cannot do the job for you and we are walking away. This is your country, rule it. Logan so, in your view walking away in 2011 was just as damaging to iraq as 2003 when the u. S. Invaded . Warda yes. Its not blaming, but thats the reality. This is not what you came for in 2003. The 4,000 sacrifices of the american soldiers was not meant to come to this day. Logan christianity in iraq was born in the towns and villages of the Nineveh Plains like this one called tel isqof which lies less than 20 miles north of mosul. Christians have lived here and walked these streets for over a thousand years. But today, theres no one. Theyre all gone, driven out by fear. And one of the most striking things you notice is the silence. Every road was deserted, houses and possessions abandoned, others destroyed. Tel isqof had always been a refuge for Iraqs Christians until last august when isis moved in and 7,000 christians fled. Three weeks later, kurdish soldiers pushed the terrorists out. But father rony hana says isis instilled such fear here that his people wont come back. He worries, too, but returns for a few hours every morning to check on his church, which he said isis fighters used as their base. He told us one of them called him on his cell phone to ask how to operate the church generator. They really did, they asked you that . And you told them . I guided them to where it was located around the corner from here, he told us, and explained how to turn it on. The last thing i said was to please take care of the church and they just hung up. The cleansing of Iraqs Christians from this land is something archbishop sharaf believes ought to be generating a much louder cry of outrage from his muslim friends and neighbors. Sharaf speak up. Of course, there is good people of the islam people. There is not all muslim people they are bad, i believe. But where is the good people . Where is their voice . Nothing. Few. Few. Logan with everything that has happened here to the christians, what has been lost . Sharaf they lost our dignity here. Im sorry to say that. We dont have dignity in our country, in our land. Logan most everyone we met welcomed u. S. Led air strikes here, but they also said it is not nearly enough. Taking back mosul, a city of about 1. 5 million people, is widely understood to be a difficult prospect. Archbishop warda believes the iraqi army cant do it alone and as long as the city remains in the hands of isis who he refers to as daesh, its arabic name no christians will be going home. Warda for me, daesh is a cancer. Its a disease. So, sometimes, you take some hard measures, unfortunate measures to deal and to treat this cancer. Logan so you want to see a Major Military offensive to retake mosul . Warda yeah, to get iraq to its normal situation. Logan and by getting iraq to its normal situation, you mean restoring the border between iraq and syria . Warda yes. Logan getting rid of daesh, the Islamic State . Warda exactly. Logan defeating them militarily . Warda please god. Logan the Christian Community hastily set up militias to guard their deserted villages and homes along the frontline, and theyre getting a little help. We were surprised to come across american brett felton, a christian veteran of the iraq war, who traveled on his own from detroit to train christian volunteers. And this man, khamis, who said he came from australia, driven to defend the land where he was born. What do you think the Islamic State intends to do with the christians here . Khamis to wipe them out, to be nothing. No place left that bears the name of christian or christianity. Logan christians in the Frontier Town of al qosh live in the shadow of the Islamic State. Under constant threat, the militiamen keep watch as they celebrate their faith and carry out traditions that are as old as christianity on the Nineveh Plains. bells tolling why has this American Christian volunteered to battle isis on his own . Go to 60minutesovertime. Com. Sponsored by lyrica. 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They all depend on something called rare earth elements unusual metals that are sprinkled inside almost every piece of high tech you can think of. Most people have never heard of them. But we have become so reliant on rare earths that a few years ago, an intense global power struggle broke out over their free flow. The reason is that one country has a virtual monopoly roughly 90 of the mining, refining, and processing of rare earths, china. And in 2010, it used that power to disrupt the worlds supply. Its especially troubling, because it was the United States that started the rare earth revolution in the first place. It all began here at this mine in Mountain Pass, california, an hour west of las vegas, when geologists first identified rare earth elements deep in the Mojave Desert. They were considered geological oddities until the 60s, when it was discovered that one of these elements, europium, enhanced the color red in tv sets, and soon the rare earth industry was born. Cbs presents this program in color Constantine Karayannopoulos rare earth chemistry is fascinating. Theres so many more things that we could be doing with rare earths. Stahl Constantine Karayannopoulos, chairman of molycorp, which has owned and operated the Mountain Pass mine for six decades, took us to the heart of the operation. Is this considered a big mine . Karayannopoulos in terms of rare earth standards, yes. Its one of the biggest in the world. Stahl are we actually walking on rare earth elements right now . Karayannopoulos were physically on the ore body. Stahl we are right on it. Karayannopoulos it starts at the top of the mine, then comes down, and were walking on it and it goes in that direction. Stahl so, what are rare earth elements . If you ever took high school chemistry, you learned that theyre clumped together at the end of the periodic table atomic numbers 57 through 71 and they have difficultto pronounce greek or scandinavian names. Karayannopoulos lanthanum, cerium, neodymium, praseodymium, samarium, terbium. Stahl some of them are phosphorescent. Erbium amplifies light, and is used in fiberoptic cables. Gadolinium has Magnetic Properties and is used in m. R. I. Machines and xrays. As for neodymium . You may be carrying some of it in your pocket. Karayannopoulos next time your phone vibrates, think of us because the vibration motor is a small motor that contains a tiny neodymium magnet in it. Stahl karayannopoulos showed us around a new model home to illustrate that rare earths are making our appliances Energy Efficient, like stateoftheart refrigerators, touchscreen thermostats, Energy Efficient light bulbs, the air conditioning systems. Theyre also in our cars in the form of catalytic converters sensors, and hybrid car batteries. Karayannopoulos hybrids, in particular, use a lot more because they contain electric motors that would not fun