this post was submitted on 23 Apr 2025
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chapotraphouse
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While based, this would accelerate a hot war
tbh it's possible a hot war would be 2 months of China's Red Banner-9s fending off stealth bombers then 10 months of United States ran out of Tungsten.
From a game theory perspective, I think a war, even a seemingly winnable one, isn't in their best interests. They know they are going to win long term, so taking short term risks to expedite change is unnecessary. Hot wars are always more complex than they seem and always have unintended consequences. For instance, it could interrupt China's trade with other NATO countries and their vassals. The US might miraculously find deposits of rare earth metals and then the war could get very long and very bloody.
If there was a realistic enormous certified deposit of every single rare earth mineral in the most Goldilocks location and the deck was stacked for this deus ex machina miracle, it wouldn't matter.
In mining a deposit of minerals is a concentration of minerals. Think Minecraft, in a 9x9x9 cube the vein takes up an 8x8x9 space and runs into the next 9x9x9 cube. That's what mining companies look for.
Rare earths are called rare earths not because there are few deposits, it's because they're more uniformly distributed in low quantities in mineral deposits. Again think Minecraft, but for every 9x9x9 cube there is a single block of antimony.
Rare earths cannot create mining economies of scale. The reason China has the most rare earth production is because they "use every part of the Buffallo" more than other country's mining companies do. Rare earths are usually not refined from minerals that contain them in America because the labor to do so is too expensive. America's access to rare earths has always been an economic question of cheap labor, not a question of locating the resources.