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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, Interesting) by PartTimeZombie on Thursday May 23 2019, @12:38AM

    by PartTimeZombie (4827) on Thursday May 23 2019, @12:38AM (#846450)

    The US has hit China where it hurts by going after its telecom champion Huawei...

    I don't think that is true.

    Still, trade wars are good and easy to win.

  • (Score: 5, Interesting) by takyon on Thursday May 23 2019, @12:46AM (1 child)

    by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Thursday May 23 2019, @12:46AM (#846453) Journal
    • (Score: 4, Interesting) by physicsmajor on Thursday May 23 2019, @05:55AM

      by physicsmajor (1471) on Thursday May 23 2019, @05:55AM (#846539)

      Yeah this was my reaction. My understanding is that the US has sources for all of these, but basically the mines closed down because prices from abroad were too cheap to be competitive. Well guess what: China starts this sort of game, and there's a ceiling on how far the prices can go before we just reopen the mines. And it isn't all that high.

  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 23 2019, @01:10AM (9 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 23 2019, @01:10AM (#846461)

    You keep using that word, I do not think it means what you think it means.

    Long live the era of fake news and click bait!

    • (Score: 4, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Thursday May 23 2019, @01:27AM (7 children)

      by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Thursday May 23 2019, @01:27AM (#846466) Journal

      There are multiple forms of weapons. China has been using their rare earths as an economic weapon for decades already. Using natural resources as an economic weapon is part of the Assassin's Mace.

      https://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/29/business/global/29rare.html?rref=collection%2Ftimestopic%2FRare%20Earths [nytimes.com]

      https://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/27/business/international/china-export-quotas-on-rare-earths-violate-law-wto-panel-says.html?rref=collection%2Ftimestopic%2FRare%20Earths [nytimes.com]

      Maybe, one day, the US will actually learn recycling. Most of the rare earths we import end up in landfills. If we recycled diligently, we wouldn't need to worry so much about strategic minerals.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 23 2019, @01:32AM (5 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 23 2019, @01:32AM (#846469)

        Until now it hasn't been a problem. One would hope we'd find that all the BS going on would be a huge kick in the ass to develop our own sources

        • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Thursday May 23 2019, @01:40AM (3 children)

          by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Thursday May 23 2019, @01:40AM (#846474) Journal

          As the world, and especially China, drains the wealth out of the US, it will become an increasingly bigger problem. Your observation is valid, as is my observation about recycling.

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 23 2019, @01:59AM

            by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 23 2019, @01:59AM (#846486)

            Both are equally valid, but we need new sources of rare earth metals. How we do it is left to *better* minds than mine.
            *Better is merely a hope. It'll be left to the politicians and we'll be fucked as usual.

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 23 2019, @07:15PM (1 child)

            by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 23 2019, @07:15PM (#846748)

            The only wealth being drained out of the US is that of the 99% by the 1% who will suck this shell dry before moving on to its next host, like any other parasite.

            • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Friday May 24 2019, @01:17AM

              by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Friday May 24 2019, @01:17AM (#846867) Journal

              If you genuinely believe that, you really need to start looking at the world.

              #1, the drug cartels have been leeching money out of the US for as long as I've been alive.
              #2, the illegal alien traffic leeches money out of the economy
              #3, the various trade deals are leeching money away

              All of that money leaves the US, and the US economy, and very little of it comes back into the US. Your 1%'ers do the same thing, yes, but you can't dismiss the other money sinks either.

        • (Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday May 23 2019, @04:17AM

          by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Thursday May 23 2019, @04:17AM (#846515) Journal

          As I noted above, there was a lot of talk about weaning off of China's rare earth production years ago. But talk is cheap.

          --
          [SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
      • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 23 2019, @02:50PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 23 2019, @02:50PM (#846652)

        > Maybe, one day, the US will actually learn recycling.

        A recent story (radio, NPR or BBC, I've forgotten) looked at electronics recycling outside the USA. Seems that organized crime is now involved and they start by burning/melting whole circuit boards down, damn any foul gasses or poisons that some out of the fire. This is done in rural areas where the mob can easily buy off local law and pollution enforcement. When they have all the metals & glasses, and the organics are burned off, they have something with higher gold content than typical gold ore, and probably other valuable material at useful concentrations.

        We can do the same things in USA, but doing it responsibly, with minimal pollution, makes it currently not cost effective relative to the international competition.

    • (Score: 2) by pipedwho on Thursday May 23 2019, @03:21AM

      by pipedwho (2032) on Thursday May 23 2019, @03:21AM (#846506)

      This.

      With this lack of definition doing the rounds, everything can be termed a tool of ‘war’ and therefore ‘weaponised’. Negating the useful meaning of the word.

      For example we could ‘weaponise’ efficient algorithms in the war to clean up a product codebase.
      Or we could ‘weaponise’ love and compassion in the quest for peace.
      We could even ‘weaponise’ tantric breathing techniques in the battle for the ultimate transcendent orgasm.

      Some people have to have everything around them be some sort of adversarial conquest.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 23 2019, @01:31AM (5 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 23 2019, @01:31AM (#846467)

    The term rare earth doesn't mean it's actually rare, just less common than dirt. China is the main exporter because they're selling the stuff at the lowest price, them "weaponizing" it will just lead to other places beginning to export it again because their prices aren't being undercut by the Chinese.

    • (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.
      • (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.

  • (Score: 2) by CZB on Thursday May 23 2019, @04:14AM (1 child)

    by CZB (6457) on Thursday May 23 2019, @04:14AM (#846514)

    Worse case, the US will just have to learn to recycle, and make products that last longer.
    There's no hardware reason a cell phone with a replaceable battery can't last 10 years if the software ecosystem had a better business model.

    • (Score: 4, Interesting) by Rupert Pupnick on Thursday May 23 2019, @12:55PM

      by Rupert Pupnick (7277) on Thursday May 23 2019, @12:55PM (#846623) Journal

      You mean hardware will be less likely to be a disposable commodity, and as a result there will be less incentives for businesses to release software that obsoletes old hardware revisions? Horrors!

  • (Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 23 2019, @11:32AM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 23 2019, @11:32AM (#846597)

    Good and easy to win! Maybe China could put an export tax for Apple iPhones at 100% or 200% or do other arbitrary bullshit like Trump is doing. Two can play at that game.

    The bottom line is that Trump is a fucking idiot

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 23 2019, @12:51PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 23 2019, @12:51PM (#846621)

      The trade war has hurt China's economy much more than ours.
      The reason for this is the trade imbalance where we buy so much from China but they buy little from us... even after decades of "free" trade.
      We can buy cheap stuff made in other poor countries. China is not special.

  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by donkeyhotay on Thursday May 23 2019, @02:01PM (2 children)

    by donkeyhotay (2540) on Thursday May 23 2019, @02:01PM (#846642)

    Why would I want them to weaponize rare earth elements? Firstly, we'll finally start having to pay the true cost of something, instead of letting the Chinese totally ruin their, and ultimately our, environment with their methods for extracting rare earth elements. Recycling of electronics will become feasible. Secondly, more expensive electronic doo-dads means less frivolous and mostly useless technology being placed in everything. Do we really need smart toasters? Do we really need RFIDs in our underwear?

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 23 2019, @07:49PM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 23 2019, @07:49PM (#846758)

      No, we can still get our rare earths from the cheap child slave labor in the Congo and other countries.

      • (Score: 2) by donkeyhotay on Friday May 31 2019, @02:23PM

        by donkeyhotay (2540) on Friday May 31 2019, @02:23PM (#849797)

        Good point, except the Chinese will probably get in there ahead of us to exploit them (if they haven't already).

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