Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:
China is exploring limiting the export of rare earth minerals that are crucial for the manufacture of American F-35 fighter jets and other sophisticated weaponry, according to people involved in a government consultation.
The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology last month proposed draft controls on the production and export of 17 rare earth minerals in China, which controls about 80 percent of global supply.
Industry executives said government officials had asked them how badly companies in the US and Europe, including defense contractors, would be affected if China restricted rare earth exports during a bilateral dispute.
“The government wants to know if the US may have trouble making F-35 fighter jets if China imposes an export ban,” said a Chinese government adviser who asked not to be identified. Industry executives added that Beijing wanted to better understand how quickly the US could secure alternative sources of rare earths and increase its own production capacity.
Fighter jets such as the F-35, a Lockheed Martin aircraft, rely heavily on rare earths for critical components such as electrical power systems and magnets. A Congressional Research Service report said that each F-35 required 417kg of rare-earth materials.
[...] “China’s own rare earth security isn’t guaranteed,” said David Zhang, an analyst at Sublime China Information, a consultancy. “It can disappear when the US-China relationship deteriorates or Myanmar’s generals decide to shut the border.”
While China’s dominance in rare earth mining is under threat, it maintains a near monopoly in the refining process that turns ores into materials ready for manufacturers.
The country controls about four-fifths of global rare earth refining capacity. Ores mined in the US must be sent to China as the US has no refining capacity of its own yet.
Industry executives, however, said China’s strength in refining had more to do with its higher tolerance for pollution than any technological edge.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 19 2021, @09:50PM (22 children)
The F35 is the latest waste of money that the US is doing. There are much better ways to spend military funds than on the F-35, and there are much better ways to spend federal funds than on military.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Ethanol-fueled on Friday February 19 2021, @10:04PM (16 children)
Our internal customers, such as our military, and external customers such as Canada know it's a piece of shit. That's why our internal and external customers are quietly choosing proven but modernized airframes such as the Super Hornet and the F-15EX [boeing.com] for manned air superiority. There's been a lot of interest in doing more with less, using F/A-18's with external fuel tanks as in-flight refueling tankers, [nasa.gov] for example.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by RamiK on Saturday February 20 2021, @08:34AM (13 children)
If you're putting a man in the cockpit you're not designing with anything "modern" in mind. That said, I'll give you the F15 since you could make it work: Take any old twin-seater, put a drone operator in the back seat and have them designate targets to a semi-autonomous drone fleet via radio bursts. Anything trying to interfere with the radio will be doing so by generating enough noise for the twin-seat to take down with a radio hunting missile so the opposition is either giving off their location for you to take down or is forced to deal with dozens of small unmanned drones maneuvering at milliseconds reaction times and without g-force considerations.
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(Score: 3, Interesting) by quietus on Saturday February 20 2021, @08:51AM (12 children)
Unpredictability is an important part in modern warfare, and human behavior/thought processes are an important component therein -- beating technological/materiel superiority. You might want to read up on Patterns of Conflict, by Boyd. Me estimates the F35 is designed around that, hence its value.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by RamiK on Saturday February 20 2021, @11:54AM (1 child)
Just because horses are unpredictable doesn't mean you'd want to charge them against machine gun emplacements. And in case you haven't noticed, a swarm of drones each carrying enough fire power to take down dozens of manned aircraft costs about as much as a single F35. So, I don't know about you, but I tend to contest any such design value.
Speaking of values, what's the going rate for a weapon platform that depends on foreign supply chain?
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(Score: 2) by quietus on Monday February 22 2021, @07:34PM
In the Korean War, American F-86 Sabre pilots beat the Soviet MiG-15 pilots time after time -- a kill ratio of 10 to 1. Yet the Sabre was technically inferior: the MiG-15 flew higher, turned more tightly and accelerated faster. Boyd showed that the reason behind this was that the US planes could brake and manoeuvre in ways that confused their adversaries, keeping better visibility -- and thus avoiding confusion themselves. The F-86 pilots could change tactics more quickly: Soviet and North Korean opponents felt like they were fighting ghosts.
Boyds analysis shattered the then-prevailing opinion in the US Air Force, and led to the introduction of totally new types of aircraft. Boyd later went on to develop military doctrine around this -- Patterns of Conflict -- and the OODA concept [wikipedia.org].
The F16 and F/A-18 were designed based on his principles -- hence why I wouldn't be surprised the F35 is, too.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by khallow on Saturday February 20 2021, @05:24PM (9 children)
(Score: 2) by quietus on Sunday February 21 2021, @12:34PM (8 children)
I do not know, Khallow. It is just my experience that, if people with more experience about a subject, take an action which looks unwarranted to me, there's usually a good reason for it. Have you never given an otherwise smart/experienced customer an advice, seen it ignored, than later on having to intervene when the fallout became clear?
The reason behind this is that we're all specialists, used to reasoning in our own specific way. Failure to understand this, combined with insecurity and distrust of others' intentions, is what leads to wrong decisions, I think.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday February 21 2021, @02:45PM (6 children)
What's the unwarranted action here that people with more experience about the F35 are taking? I doubt there's anyone here that thinks Lockheed Martin isn't good at scoring massive contracts from the US government, like the development and construction of F35s. Or that strictly from their viewpoint, scoring something like half a trillion dollars to build a substandard aircraft is unwarranted.
(Score: 2) by quietus on Sunday February 21 2021, @06:29PM (5 children)
You think that the combined militaries of NATO base their decision about their core fighter for the coming 25 - 35 years on Congressional pork?
(Score: 2, Insightful) by khallow on Sunday February 21 2021, @08:14PM (1 child)
Yes, I think it is that fucked up. You stated before
The "good reason" here is conflict of interest. There's a lot of kickbacks and other benefits in buying these white elephants with Other Peoples' Money.
My take is that in a few decades, the US and perhaps NATO will lose a war badly because of these games.
(Score: 2) by quietus on Monday February 22 2021, @07:16PM
That's a strong opinion. Set out against total defense expenditure, the situation must be really dire, and extensively documented, no?
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Monday February 22 2021, @09:57AM (2 children)
The US conditions its NATO financial contributions on US-exclusive procurement like it does with its foreign aid. It's why so many NATO members use M16/4 despite cheaper and better alternatives: They get them for free.
To be fair with these types of corporate welfare, the US maintains it's geopolitical dominance by being the only supplier for certain machinery since those sorts of subsidies maintain the demand for them. That is, everything from CNC machinery to satellite launch platforms tends to be interconnected from the supply-chain to the engineers so if you want to have the one you'll need to subsidize the other so long as other nations are willing to subsidize theirs.
Regardless, the French and Germans are going with FCAS based on the drone swarm model I've been describing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Future_Combat_Air_System [wikipedia.org]
The drone swarms and all that jazz is all part of the 6th gen fighters specs and the reason there's still talks about 5th gen stuff like the F35 is because people aren't too interested in wasting money on competing against an already obsolete design so they'd rather use their US foreign aid dollars to buy F35s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sixth_generation_fighter [wikipedia.org]
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(Score: 2) by quietus on Monday February 22 2021, @07:00PM (1 child)
Both the M16 and M4A1 are actually produced by a Belgian company, FN. NATO's European allies' main battle tank is the German-produced Leopard 2. EADS -- now Airbus Space and Defense? BAE Systems? French, German, Italian frigates, destroyers, submarines?
I guess somebody -- actually, a lot of somebodies -- must have misread the clausule in NATO's contract which says "US-exclusive procurement".
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Tuesday February 23 2021, @07:40AM
FN's M4s are produced in FN Manufacturing LLC plant in Columbia, South Carolina along with the rest of their US military and most of their NATO products. Regardless, when they do manufacture elsewhere they pay the licensing fees via the aid payments.
As I've already said, the Europeans have their own programs for almost everything. The foreign aid money isn't limitless so they use it for the F35 specifically because they don't want to bother making 5th gens and a few other too-lame-to-bother weapons if they feel they can always / will need to replace them later anyhow.
It's not a contractual clause since there aren't any courts with the authority to adjudicate at that nation-state level. It's the US rep sitting on the boardroom telling the other reps they'll get so and so money to buy so and so F35s and what-nots and the reps calling back to their forging offices to get the ok. If the US doesn't deliver the money, NATO doesn't make the purchase. If NATO/UN/whatever doesn't make the purchase, the US drops from the program in question. This happened with many such programs over the years, most recently the WHO and UNESCO. But there a few TRIPS arbitration bodies the US similarly chose not take part in under similar conditions.
Regardless, these sorts of funding-based procurement are constantly pulled and pushed mixing money and politics just like congressional pork ends up being spread across the 50 states when the SLS is put together. It's been that way since the Romans and Greeks started wars on which city-state's patron God should represent them in some official ceremony since the priests in question were relatives of the kings on both ends. Any procurement deal that doesn't seem to have this sorts of politics woven into it is a procurement deal you don't understand.
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(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday February 22 2021, @12:50PM
A glaring example is financial investment. There are huge number of would-be experts looking to invest your money for you. But we run into all three of the above problems. Conflict of interest is the worst (because they can get more wealth by extracting it from your investments with them), but the other two apply as well. It's very easy to present the illusion of expertness, and someone who has actually tried investing in the stock market for a few years might have more actual knowledge of investment (and its many problems) than someone who merely has great marketing.
Here with the F-35 and many similar military programs, we see many signs that there's something very wrong with the quality of the expert advice: performance and reliability falling short of the promises, the extraordinary price tag, and the remarkable disinterest on the experts' part to fix the previous two problems.
(Score: 3, Informative) by corey on Saturday February 20 2021, @11:45AM (1 child)
I’m not going to engage in a F-35 argument as I’ve seen how long it can go for in some forums I’m in. Anyway I just wanted to state that I think you need to understand what the main use case for the F-35 is. Have a look at Wikipedia. It’s certainly not air superiority. As you said there are other better airframes for that. It’s not intended for that, just like a tow truck isn’t intended to transport people, but it’s still a road vehicle. The F-35 is for stand-off interception without being seen. Everything it has is long range sensors, 5th Gen comms and data links, situational awareness etc. An enemy aircraft will not see it and wonder why a missile is coming at it from a Navy vessel, but it was launched by, and tracked by, the F-35 that it can’t see 100km away.
I know it isn’t perfect, given the airframe is designed for both VTOL and conventional takeoff. But it’s still a great aircraft, in my opinion.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday February 20 2021, @05:40PM
Unless, of course, the F-35 disappears from radar first [kyodonews.net]. I get that new equipment always has teething problems. The F-35 has built quite the reputation.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Arik on Friday February 19 2021, @10:30PM
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Saturday February 20 2021, @08:16AM
Far from the latest. It's a 90's design.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Saturday February 20 2021, @10:59AM
Navy may just do that. Those Zumwalt destroyers were finally dumped, primarily because the costs kept mounting higher and higher. Those destroyers threatened to consume the entire budget of the Navy. Worse, those "modular" piles of scrap were proving incapable of meeting missions. And, my own personal pet peeve with them, seaworthiness, has never been proven. One of them went through one storm, and all the Zumwalt cheerleaders claimed it as some kind of victory. One storm, and not even a very bad one.
(Score: 2) by corey on Saturday February 20 2021, @11:36AM (1 child)
First comment and already straight off topic to opinion on F-35. This aircraft is polarising, and ends up like a political discussion. As Arik says somewhere above or below, rare earths are in a lot of other stuff.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 20 2021, @05:46PM
Including sex toys. Bad sex toy, bad!
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 19 2021, @10:00PM (6 children)
There is as much rare earth ore in Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming as there is in China. They're not that rare, they just sound like it because of the name. China just doesn't have environmentalists trying to make mining
impossiblehappen somewhere else where they don't have to think about it. Mining and refining should be done in North America, where environmental protection is important, not exported to China where the environment takes a back seat.It's no different from the article about mercury refining that happened a year or so back, where developed countries decided not to export mercury any more because it was used in gold mining, so now gold-producing countries produce their mercury locally at vastly higher environmental cost.
Now, all that said, 417kg (about 900 pounds) of rare earths seems like both a lot, and an oddly specific number for an airplane whose design is mostly classified. There are whole airplanes that don't weigh that much.
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by Ethanol-fueled on Friday February 19 2021, @10:23PM
Good, maybe all those out-of-work pipeline and oil/gas workers can have something to do. Of course CCP Puppet Biden won't allow us to start mining rare earths and generally being self-suficient because he was put in place specifically to weaken the U.S., but that won't last long.
Not an insider, but MUH STEALTH relies heavily on MAGRAM (magnetic radar absorbent material) and MAGRAM materials/coatings are heavy as fuck due to their metal content. Also, fly-by-wire stuff uses a lot of motors and strong motor fields (stators) use a shitload of rare earths. Makes sense for something like the B-model that has a lot of internal switches that have to be physically flipped using motors, or more generally the actuation of the internal weapons bays as another example etc. etc.
(Score: 5, Informative) by PinkyGigglebrain on Saturday February 20 2021, @04:34AM (4 children)
I remember, and I may be wrong, that one of the major reasons rare Earth's aren't mined anywhere outside China was simply that getting them from China was cheaper than mining/refining them locally.
Sure the Environmentalists made some noise about the mines but lets face it, RE's are actually so common that a lot of them get pulled out in the waste tailings of active mines that are focused on other high profit metals.
And if the mining companies really wanted to open dedicated RE mines they would, period. Just look at coal, Uranium, Gold, Silver, etc. mines. If the item being mined is valuable enough the Environmentalists loose or only get minor concessions at best.
It was just cheaper to get them from China.
"Beware those who would deny you Knowledge, For in their hearts they dream themselves your Master."
(Score: 4, Informative) by mhajicek on Saturday February 20 2021, @08:22AM (2 children)
My understanding is that any time someone outside China starts producing REs, they flood the market to put them out of business. Then when they're the only player again they restrict it.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 20 2021, @05:50PM (1 child)
Isn't that called competition? If we run RE mining at a loss for a few years it forces them to run at a loss too. Everybody loses.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday February 21 2021, @08:17PM
Except the people buying rare earths. They win.
(Score: 4, Informative) by driverless on Saturday February 20 2021, @10:29AM
And it was quite justified. Mountain Pass alone had sixty spills of radioactive waste [theatlantic.com] over a 15-year period. That's not just random complaining, it's "we would prefer not to have radioactive waste distributed across the landscape".
Agree with the rest of the post, it's just cheaper and easier to get it from China. Molycorp or whatever it'll be called this week is a share-market distraction rather than any kind of viable business. This quacks a lot like another pump-and-dump attempt for their stock.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 19 2021, @10:45PM (1 child)
Kim Kardashian has filed to divorce Kanye West, reportedly so she can become a concubine to Chairman Xi. It's one thing to hobble our defense industry, but go after our beloved Black entertainers and you're asking for war.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 20 2021, @02:53AM
I thought it was Joe proffering his ass to Xi?
(Score: 0, Informative) by Arik on Friday February 19 2021, @10:59PM
Reuters frame this around the idea that the coup is disruptive to China's supply.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-myanmar-politics-china-metals-explain-idUSKBN2AA12U
This doesn't seem to make a lot of sense though. Wikipedia says the coup starts February 2021.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_Myanmar_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat
The border was closed in December 2020.
https://roskill.com/news/rare-earths-myanmars-border-to-china-recloses/
"Roskill understands that some Chinese producers and operators in Myanmar have been asked to head back to China after the border between the two countries closed once again in mid-December. The border had recently reopened in October following a “permanent closure” in May 2019, making this the third switch within the year."
https://www.irrawaddy.com/news/burma/china-closes-myanmar-border-stop-covid-19-returning.html
"By ZARNI MANN 24 April 2020
Mandalay – China has ordered a 60-day closure of all border checkpoints with Myanmar on Thursday, as the confirmed cases of COVID 19 rose to 139.
The order from the Yunnan Province government said all kinds of travel between Myanmar were banned and Chinese citizens would not be allowed to cross the border until June 24."
If you keep going back there's been one form of border closure or another a great deal of the past 10 years or so. The current restrictions seem to have more to do with COVID than any hostility toward the coup.
https://www.ttrweekly.com/site/2020/03/myanmar-closes-all-borders/
"YANGON, 24 March 2020: Myanmar’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs has shut all border checkpoints to foreign visitors in a bid to keep the country Covid-19 free.
The temporary closure remains in place until further notice.
Myanmar has 27 land checkpoints between Bangladesh, India, China, Laos and Thailand. Some checkpoints are limited to local trade, but the ones valid for international travel have now closed indefinitely."
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/9/15/china-locks-down-city-on-myanmar-border-over-coronavirus
"China has locked down a city on the border with Myanmar and announced plans to launch a mass coronavirus testing programme after authorities detected two new coronavirus cases there."
"They said every resident would be tested for the virus in Ruili, which is home to more than 210,000 people. Businesses have been closed except for supermarkets, pharmacies and food markets.
The Global Times, a state-run tabloid, said authorities in Ruili and several other border areas had entered “wartime status” to enhance anti-epidemic measures and border management.
The infections were brought in from Myanmar and Chinese authorities would “crack down on illegal immigrants”, officials said."
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 4, Informative) by legont on Friday February 19 2021, @11:14PM (4 children)
I am hearing this story at least third time this century. Our masters at Goldman Sacks hyped and dumped it twice. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mountain_Pass_mine [wikipedia.org] has a shitload of it and was brought up 20x and down the same. We even have mines in former Russian Estonia https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/sillamae [atlasobscura.com] and it was sold a few times. .Come on. Something new please.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by bzipitidoo on Saturday February 20 2021, @02:35AM (3 children)
It's a very stinky dead horse. That "hobbling the military" is just the thing to trigger the neo-cons. Ridiculous to talk of the American military being in any way hobbled, as massively overfunded as they are. Seems unlikely China wants to trigger those nuts, and that this is the spin that the American media is putting on the story for their own purposes. Perhaps it's merely selling more news. More likely this is various special interests spewing propaganda to scare people into backing more mining with fewer regulations. The thing about mining is that of course America can do a lot more of it, but to do it in an environmentally friendly way costs more money. The Military Industrial Complex loves to sell more weapons, and if the old child's trick of "you can't have it" works and suckers people into demanding to be allowed to have more, then they've achieved their goal.
The F-35 is one of those projects of very dubious value. In what scenarios is the thing useful? A war with an enemy that can field a respectable air force, but not nuclear weapons, and that's about it. If the enemy doesn't have an air force, the F-35 is utterly useless. An enemy that can field an air force is likely to be able to field nuclear and other weapons, which also render it irrelevant. The F-35 is the Maginot Line of the early 21st century.
(Score: 3, Informative) by quietus on Saturday February 20 2021, @08:40AM (1 child)
It was global times that started it this time (though suggestions of we've got you by the balls with rare earths go back to at least May 2019, by that same global times); specifically, the first article appeared on Jan 15, about a draft regulation to limit the export of rare earths; followed by a series of articles, returning to the subject. It was only picked up by the Financial Times (a Nikkei company) on Feb 16, and from there to the rest of western media.
Note that it was the global times that used the specific language of hobbling the US military (one of the lesser warmongering articles, btw) . You might want to start reading global times or the people's daily on a regular basis. If you can find the time, add in the Japan Times, and the Times of India.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Runaway1956 on Saturday February 20 2021, @04:01PM
https://www.wsgs.wyo.gov/products/wsgs-1991-mr-03.pdf [wyo.gov] 1991
https://pubs.er.usgs.gov/publication/cir930N [usgs.gov] 1993
https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/prd-wret/assets/palladium/production/mineral-pubs/rare-earth/740495.pdf [amazonaws.com] 1996
http://www.china.org.cn/english/2003/Dec/83092.htm [china.org.cn] 2003
http://www.usmagneticmaterials.com/documents/RARE-EARTHS-IN-US-DEFENSE-APPS-Hendrick.pdf [usmagneticmaterials.com] 2004
https://www.mvis-indices.com/indices/hard-asset/mvis-global-rare-earth-strategic-metals/statistics [mvis-indices.com] 2007
https://www.wired.com/2009/08/china-all-your-rare-earth-metals-belong-to-us/ [wired.com] 2009 with a really cute title
https://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/01/business/global/01minerals.html [nytimes.com] 2009
https://sites.nationalacademies.org/cs/groups/pgasite/documents/webpage/pga_054534.pdf [nationalacademies.org] 2009
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/j.1751-3928.2008.00068.x [wiley.com] 2010
http://threeconsulting.com/pdfs/RareEarthsNabeel.pdf [threeconsulting.com] 2016
The actual search used was: https://www.google.com/search?q=china+rare+earth+strategic+minerals&tbs=cdr%3A1%2Ccd_min%3A2%2F1%2F1990%2Ccd_max%3A2%2F13%2F2010&start=30&sa=N&biw=1920&bih=900 [google.com]
The purpose of the search was only to demonstrate that this discussion does come back from time to time. The majority of hits (on the first ten pages at least) are for 2009. Altering the search to include dates before 1990 might be interesting, but I've done enough here.
(Score: 2) by legont on Saturday February 20 2021, @01:47PM
BTW, SU-57 aka T50 - a Russian 5th generation stealth fighter bomber - has 4 times less parts than it's 4th gen predecessor. The result? It's lighter, easier to produce, and *cheaper*. Russians actually have a deflation in their weapons business - something the US can only dream about.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 20 2021, @12:03AM (1 child)
Actually, lithium is a genuine "rare" metal, I'm told, and China is the dominant producer.
But I've heard they recently found a large lithium deposit somewhere in South America.
Anyone know about this?
(Score: 2) by stretch611 on Saturday February 20 2021, @12:59AM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium#Reserves [wikipedia.org]
Now with 5 covid vaccine shots/boosters altering my DNA :P
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 20 2021, @12:53AM
The US will never produce these rare earths cheaper than China but reality show “ Neodymium we loady’m with Parker Schnabel” can bring in the extra cash to make it economically feasible and rescue flagging ‘Gold Rush’ at the same time.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 20 2021, @03:10AM (2 children)
"Industry executives, however, said China’s strength in refining had more to do with its higher tolerance for pollution than any technological edge."
As others have pointed out in the comments already, this has already been discussed before. It actually creates more pollution to send it to China to have it refined there because you are still producing the pollution required to refine it regardless (just now in China) plus the pollution associated with the extra transport.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 21 2021, @01:42PM (1 child)
This also makes me wonder about the discontinuation of the keystone pipelines. The keystone pipeline could displace oil that would otherwise come from other countries in environmentally less efficient manners. So was its cancellation more of a political posture for Biden to say that he's doing something different than Trump even if what he's doing might actually be worse?
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Sunday February 21 2021, @08:57PM
I forget. Was Keystone supposed to transport heavy crude? Or natural gas? Or something in between?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 20 2021, @04:14AM
So either we find a way to reduce unwanted by-products, or find some other poor schmuck country to do it.
(Score: 2) by PinkyGigglebrain on Saturday February 20 2021, @04:58AM
Seriously.
I've read so many articles over the last 20 some years about how China's monopoly on RE production and supply was a major concern for many governments that I lost track of the count.
The reason nothing ever got done was because it was just cheaper to just buy the stuff from China than produce it locally, and no one, private or governments, wanted to spend the money to build the processing infrastructure needed to have a local supply when, not if, needed. There used to be loads of RE mine outside China but the all closed down because they couldn't compete with China's prices.
And it wasn't just the Liberal or Conservative parties in particular, it was both and everyone in between.
And now the monsters are at the gates and the world's industrial nations have been caught not only with their pants down but their spears and swords barely sharp enough to cut warm butter.
Of course now there will be emergency measures put in place in every industrial nation to get local RE production up to speed, and within 2 years China will no longer have the rest of world by it's short hairs. Until next time.
"Beware those who would deny you Knowledge, For in their hearts they dream themselves your Master."
(Score: 2) by istartedi on Saturday February 20 2021, @07:34AM (1 child)
I'm not directing this comment at Arthur T Knackerbracket. This Soylent user is most likely just picking up on something he read and is not "in on it", if there is anything to be in on. I'm thinking about the origins of the press he's picking up on. When you follow the trail you get to MP Materials, $MP, which has had a nice run from the teens last Fall up to $45/sh lately and 6% on Friday alone. Is this press release designed to flip shares to retail suckers? What do insiders know?
Not financial advice. I have no positions in MP.
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by quietus on Saturday February 20 2021, @08:44AM
Arthur is a bot. Apart from that minor detail -- hopefully you have no positions at all, as articles about commodities are a regular feature in the financial press.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 20 2021, @02:45PM
YEAH!!! #MAGA!
Oh, wait.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 20 2021, @10:16PM
Trade wars are good and easy to win, aren't they?