4 ms·

As far as I am aware, there is nothing rare about "rare earth metals". The only reason the west relies on places like China and Russia is because refining them

As far as I am aware, there is nothing rare about "rare earth metals". The only reason the west relies on places like China and Russia is because refining them is very very polluting, producing a lot of toxic by products. So we either do that locally and pay 100x more to fund the clean up after. Or we import from China and Russia where they apparently don't mind everyone getting poisoned. So this isn't really anything to do with national security. It's a better moral outcome with some economic trade off...

dwighttk 4y ago
There can be more than one reason to do something… perhaps security isn’t the primary, but it is still in there. It is the startup time that relates to security.
marsokod 4y ago
The main reason this is looked at is that, while you are right in saying these materials resources are well distributed, China has been a major supplier for decades, buying out all their big competitors. The result is that they are way ahead of anyone else in the engineering processes to extract, process and transform these elements into viable products at scale. If China were to stop selling them, everyone else would have a lot of difficulties replacing them right away and would need at least 5-10 years to pick up the pace.
chrisjc 4y ago
The last time I went down this rabbit hole, I discovered one of the other reasons that China is effectively the refinement bottleneck is because of all the related patents that they've picked up over the years.
- amaranth 4y ago
  A world where you can't buy rare earth metals from China is also a world where those patents are ignored.
b112 4y ago
As far as I am aware, there is nothing rare about "rare earth metals". My understanding is that both China and Russia underpriced on purpose, driving (for example) US mines and production out of business. And after, then raised pricing. There are many rare earth mines in North America, sitting fallow... (This isn't an unknown business tactic for anyone to follow.)

dwighttk 4y ago

There can be more than one reason to do something… perhaps security isn’t the primary, but it is still in there. It is the startup time that relates to security.

marsokod 4y ago

The main reason this is looked at is that, while you are right in saying these materials resources are well distributed, China has been a major supplier for decades, buying out all their big competitors. The result is that they are way ahead of anyone else in the engineering processes to extract, process and transform these elements into viable products at scale. If China were to stop selling them, everyone else would have a lot of difficulties replacing them right away and would need at least 5-10 years to pick up the pace.

chrisjc 4y ago

The last time I went down this rabbit hole, I discovered one of the other reasons that China is effectively the refinement bottleneck is because of all the related patents that they've picked up over the years.

amaranth 4y ago
A world where you can't buy rare earth metals from China is also a world where those patents are ignored.

b112 4y ago

As far as I am aware, there is nothing rare about "rare earth metals". My understanding is that both China and Russia underpriced on purpose, driving (for example) US mines and production out of business. And after, then raised pricing. There are many rare earth mines in North America, sitting fallow... (This isn't an unknown business tactic for anyone to follow.)