Yup.
“Chinese rare earth minerals are present everywhere, including in our phones, our cars, and our military equipment,” he said. “We cannot give authoritarian regimes any chance to exploit our vulnerabilities and undermine us.”
In its new strategic concept agreed in June, NATO described China as a challenge to the alliance’s “interests, security and values”, as an economic and military power that remains “opaque about its strategy, intentions and military build-up”.
China has the First Family on their payroll. NATO might want to consider that ‘strategic concept’ the top of their list of concerns about shared interests, security, and values.
China has the First Family on their payroll.
And more than half of Congress, too.
And yet, there isn’t a quick solution to this. China has invested in the manufacturing and refinement of the rare earth elements. We have some of them in the US, but no refineries, because they are extremely dirty and unhealthy. Not only that, but the cost for us to do it is a magnitude higher than China because of safety requirements and worker costs, making it difficult to compete.
If this is that critical to our national security, we need to subsidize companies to help make it more enticing to do this here in the US. And even if we DO that here in the US, we currently do so little of the manufacturing that would use the materials here in the US. So you still need to ship it overseas. And like the middle-east and oil, China currently controls the prices. They can make it very cheap to drive out competition.
We are talking a long term generational shift in order to change the dynamic.
The dream is much of this is solved with space mining. Asteroids and the moon. But the costs are astronomical (pun intended) currently. That is probably a minimum of 30 years away before we start thinking about making that remotely economical if we continue on the pace we are on now.
>but no refineries, because they are extremely dirty and unhealthy. Not only that, but the cost for us to do it is a magnitude higher than China because of safety requirements and worker costs
And yet the irony lost on the tree huggers is that these are what is needed for “GREEN ENERGY AND UNICORN HUGS”.