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posted by martyb on Thursday May 23 2019, @12:10AM   Printer-friendly
from the Ruh-Roh! dept.

Phys.org:

The US has hit China where it hurts by going after its telecom champion Huawei, but Beijing's control of the global supply of rare earths used in smartphones and electric cars gives it a powerful weapon in their escalating tech war.

A seemingly routine visit by President Xi Jinping to a Chinese rare earths company this week is being widely read as an obvious threat that Beijing is standing ready for action.
...
However, analysts say China appears apprehensive to target the minerals just yet, possibly fearful of shooting itself in the foot by hastening a global search for alternative supplies of the commodities.

Better buy your new devices now...


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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by BK on Thursday May 23 2019, @01:49AM (4 children)

    by BK (4868) on Thursday May 23 2019, @01:49AM (#846481)

    Fundamentally, that's what tariffs will do too. Artificially, yes... but it may now be cost effective for someone else to sell rare-earths into the US market. And so they will.

    The problem is that it takes a few years to get the mines and refineries built or online and whatnot. So for a few years, China could make things painful... but at the price of pissing off basically everyone else.

    --
    ...but you HAVE heard of me.
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  • (Score: 2) by MostCynical on Thursday May 23 2019, @03:00AM (3 children)

    by MostCynical (2589) on Thursday May 23 2019, @03:00AM (#846505) Journal

    everyone not Chinese

    Do they care, really?
    They are going to win, even if it takes 500 or 1,000 years.

    --
    "I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
    • (Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday May 23 2019, @12:04PM (2 children)

      by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Thursday May 23 2019, @12:04PM (#846607) Journal

      They are going to win, even if it takes 500 or 1,000 years.

      Unless, of course, that doesn't happen, say because they're vastly outnumbered by a more competent and freer rest of the world. Is there even a basis for claiming China is thinking a game that long term?

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 23 2019, @01:26PM (1 child)

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 23 2019, @01:26PM (#846633)

        Also, there's little reason to assume that the world in 1000 years will be any more similar to the world today than the world today is to the world 1000 years ago.

        Quite possibly in 1000 years, whatever happens on Earth will be considered local affairs, irrelevant to the big empires spanning the solar system. If you think that sounds unlikely, think about how unlikely a transatlantic flight would have seemed 1000 years ago.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 23 2019, @07:47PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 23 2019, @07:47PM (#846757)

          More likely, in 1000 years, average global temperature will have long ago reached 9C over today's average. The oceans will have largely become anoxic. Methane from sea beds would be freed and surged upward, blasting water hundreds of feet into the air along with the released gas. Shockwaves propagate outward in all directions, causing more eruptions nearby.

          If a lucky lightning strike or other spark or flame ignites the methane (only need a 5% mixture of methane in air), there will be one hell of a vacuum bomb explosion at sea level. Get near enough to that and it'll suck the lungs right out of your corpse. Then, of course, there will have been the clouds of hydrogen sulfide that spread out from our dead and dying oceans. Corrosive, poisonous, and flammable, it will have devastated the coastal areas and eventually far inland. The few surviving humans will be too busy fighting over what few resources remain to consider the fantasy of colonizing the solar system when their ancestors couldn't even prevent runaway anthropogenic global warming.