The article makes sense, but in a way it jumped over 1 thing. The US has just as much as "rare" earths/minerals as China has, maybe even more. But getting the

The article makes sense, but in a way it jumped over 1 thing. The US has just as much as "rare" earths/minerals as China has, maybe even more. But getting these minerals is costly compared to China and other countries. The reason is environmental and labor. Mining rare earths right now creates an environmental disaster in the area, land and water table destroyed. No community will let such a mine any where near them. And of course labor is far more expensive here. So, maybe it is easier to put a puppet gov in place and allow mining companies wreak havoc in that country then trying to ramp up this type of mining in the US. Plus you get the benefit of large oil reserves. But after seeing what happened in Iraq, I doubt even this will succeed.