this post was submitted on 16 Apr 2025
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[–] NaibofTabr@infosec.pub 22 points 1 week ago (11 children)

This is kind of interesting... China has been working on monopolizing sources of raw materials for awhile now, and putting them on the market cheap so that they become the de facto supplier, making it difficult or impossible for any other sources to be developed.

But... there are other sources of things like lithium and cobalt, it's just been cheaper to buy it from China so everyone does.

Cutting off the supply will cause some slow-downs and a bit of chaos in the short term but what will happen is local sources will suddenly become worth developing. What this does is effectively burn a big piece of China's economic power... I wonder what they're getting out of it right now? The impact won't last very long.

[–] setsubyou@lemmy.world 32 points 1 week ago (8 children)

Neither lithium nor cobalt are rare earths, and China isn’t particularly dominating their production either. The leading producers are other countries. These are completely unrelated to the rare earths problem.

With rare earths the situation is that China isn’t only leading in production of the ores, but also in processing capacity, and the technology needed for it. The US already is the second largest producer of rare earth ores, but they still have to send them to China for processing because they can’t do all of it in the US. For the same reason, China produces ~90% of the world’s permanent magnets (these use rare earths like neodymium or samarium). Basically it’s not about developing sources for the ores. Rare earths are not that rare in the first place. It’s about the technology and capacity to do anything with them.

I do agree that the impact might not last long. They’re just forcing the competition to work faster. But maybe the explanation is that they think that making everybody speed up their rare earths development doesn’t change much in the long run anyway, while throwing a wrench into the US industry right now is a pretty good deal.

[–] count_dongulus@lemmy.world 5 points 1 week ago (1 children)

It's perfectly possible to do in the US, just costs a bit more. So, capitalism being what it is, that work got outsourced so the vultures could see higher numbers.

[–] taladar@sh.itjust.works 8 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Is it possible to do in the US where most of the qualified people already do other jobs and a lot of the rest had the reading comprehension of a 6th grader before they had the brillant idea to abolish the department of education and remove funding from universities in other ways though?

[–] IndustryStandard@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

All the brightest US minds to go McKinsey where they figure out how CEO's can buy even more yaghts*.

[–] utopiah@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago

yaughts

Yachts.

Also fuck McKinsey.

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