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"Rare earths" aren't rare, they're just hard to separate and produce quite toxic & radioactive slag (they're the bottom 2 rows of the periodic table and "rare e
by Tangurena2 2mo ago
"Rare earths" aren't rare, they're just hard to separate and produce quite toxic & radioactive slag (they're the bottom 2 rows of the periodic table and "rare earth" mines & refineries that were operating in the US are now SuperFund sites). Due to CEOs offshoring work, most of the refining is now done in China. And the Chinese don't want to keep exporting the bare metals, they want to export the things made from those metals - like motors and electric cars made from those motors.
And the "memory shortage" is a byproduct of the AI datacenter bubble. Which is a disaster that will crash the economy.
- iamnothere 2mo agoThis is needless pedantry. They are not technically rare, yet we do have a shortage due to China’s tit-for-tat response to our sanctions, and we seem unwilling to invest in the industry needed to secure a domestic supply. And regardless of the causes of the memory shortage, there is indeed a shortage, which will hopefully help to prevent the mass deployment of drones here at home.