If rare earths are already so abundant on land, why go to such lengths to mine them under the ocean and in space? And then what can they do when China still controls the processing logistics?
If the USA already has so much land to spare for building Data Centers, why go into space to build them? Oh, they said the reason was lack of energy and space has plenty of it. To harness such energy, Musk will have to build solar energy infrastructures the size of which cannot be imagined. Such infrastructures face severe maintenance problems if they break down, unlike on earth. Think about it.
Anonymous
Mining rare earth in space is a sick joke. They can't be mining and refining them in space, right? Now, even building refining logistics on the ground is a non-starter and have to rely mostly on Chinese expertise. How realistic is the talk about building those processing logistics in space?
ReplyDeleteSo, the USA and its allies can continue with the rhetorics and the fairy tale. It goes nowhere and fools no one. China will just let the roosters crow standing on the heap of cow dungs. Cow dungs are a dime a dozen in India by the way and there is another good use for it.
By the way, Trump said that by this year or next, the USA would have so much rare earth dirt that it does not know what to do with it. He is right, because piling up the dirt is one thing but getting to the bottom of what to do with it to extract the essential elements is another. So, why is there a need to source for rare earth in space, I wonder? The man can coax a bird down from a tree but has no idea how rare earth ores are going to become useful magnets. A pile of dirt is a pile of dirt. What China has achieved is there for all to see. What USA achieved is all only apparent on twits.
Now we are seeing desperation all around, with Japan and India talking about cooperating in rare earth procurement and processing to counter China's dominance, after the recent sanctions by China. The Japanese Yen just collapsed to 162 yen to the US$, really reaching for the banana note status that we are familiar with. Oil imports for Japan are going to be highly expensive, and manufacturing cost are going to soar for Japanese products. This is bad for Japan. Japanese living standards are going to be a pain, but they will continue to have to bear the misery.
One warning though for China. A desperate Japan is dangerous. The USA found out the hard way. China should watch the Japs closely. They are militarizing and have ulterior motives for doing that.
The USA and its allies are trying to pull another 'Plaza Accord' on China, trying to force China to revalue the Yuan upwards to curb its exports. China is not going to play by USA and Western rules unlike Japan.
ReplyDeleteChina does not have to play by USA and Western rules, unlike Japan that in 1985 had to depend largely on the USA and Europe for its exports. China is already moving away from the USA and Europe, focusing on expanding trade with the Global South. Why would China cut its nose to spite its face when it can continue to export cheap things to the Global South, leveraging on its currency that the USA and the West claims is too cheap. It is a bonus for the Global South for China to stick to the status quo, albeit a cheaper Yuan.
A cheaper Japanese Yen could have helped Japan actually, but Japan is no longer the kingpin in the export sector anymore, other than vehicles, which is also facing severe headwinds. The Plaza Accord actually made the Yen very expensive and that was the straw that broke the camel's back, with Japan unable to crawl back from the stroke of lightning that crippled its economy for decades. It was a sacrifice for the USA, just like the sacrifice of the hundreds of thousands of Japanese from the two nukes dropped on Japan earlier.
What are friends of the USA for anyway? It is a fatality, according to Henry Kissinger.
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