It's almost certain some new use for chips will show up. The question is how they're gonna make them without rare earths.

Incorrect. The internet didnt go away over night just cause the dotcom bubble burst. AI still has value, just not the value these companies are overinflating. Many fields of science have been able to use AI for major advancements in their fields. They just dont need chatgpt or grok to do it because those models arent very focused and specialized. Even recent research from Anthropic pointed out how little effort it takes to poison models that rely on public information as training data, vs models that use heavily curated data.

That and its not like gaming or digital design is going to suddenly stop existing. Graphics cards were valuable before the bubble, and will continue to be after.

Demand will certainly decrease, but its not gonna go away. Nvidia can easily fall back on their older business model of being a GPU company, while still supplying parts of the AI market that survive the collapse. All the other companies, however, might have a very bad time.

That's definitely a problem for them but it's one that's independent of the bubble itself - in fact, it's one that would be solved by the bubble popping! When the bubble pops Trump will be forced to end the trade war, and then China will go back to selling rare Earths to US companies because the trade war is fueled entirely by US aggression.