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Critical Minerals: Reducing U.S. import reliance with substitution and recycling

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Re: Critical Minerals: Reducing U.S. import reliance with substitution and recycling

#31
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

reflect on what? both things can be true at the same time.

When both are true at the same time, one might reflect on why "because China" is given as the pat answer.

When the subject is China, the reflection isn't "because China". What we are seeing here is "Because US", which is very different.

Re: Critical Minerals: Reducing U.S. import reliance with substitution and recycling

#32
post #8
post #5

Why is everyone preparing for war so hard

Because China has stated they will take Taiwan, they have been threatening Philippines sovereignty too. Japan and others are on edge too. China currently has been behaving very adversarial and has a huge fraction of the minerals under their control that this article is posting about. I think sovereignty is a good thing. Plan for the worst, hope for the best.

[flagged]

Re: Critical Minerals: Reducing U.S. import reliance with substitution and recycling

#33
post #5

Why is everyone preparing for war so hard

A war with large geographic scope has been independently modeled as having a high probability of occurring circa 2030 by major governments for a decade or more. As time has passed, reality has not diverged from those models, so confidence in the conclusions have grown. It is worth noting that this pre-dates current political dramas, Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022, etc. The underlying strategic geopolitics drivi…

> A war with large geographic scope has been independently modeled as having a high probability of occurring circa 2030 by major governments for a decade or more

Do you have more information about this, or a source?

Re: Critical Minerals: Reducing U.S. import reliance with substitution and recycling

#34
post #18
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because China has stated they will take Taiwan, they have been threatening Philippines sovereignty too. Japan and others are on edge too. China currently has been behaving very adversarial and has a huge fraction of the minerals under their control that this article is posting about. I think sovereignty is a good thing. Plan for the worst, hope for the best.

And yet all sorts of people are advocating for using Chinese LLMs because they are less expensive. It seems like a very risky move to save a few dollars.

It'd be interesting to know how much of that is truly organic support versus what the CCP pushes out across the internet as agitation/propaganda.

Are they cheaper? They are open-weight, so in theory, they are cheaper to run and do with them as you wish.

The problem is that they come from a place with a long and storied history of attacking digital assets in the US and the West in general.

Re: Critical Minerals: Reducing U.S. import reliance with substitution and recycling

#35
post #5

Why is everyone preparing for war so hard

A war with large geographic scope has been independently modeled as having a high probability of occurring circa 2030 by major governments for a decade or more. As time has passed, reality has not diverged from those models, so confidence in the conclusions have grown. It is worth noting that this pre-dates current political dramas, Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022, etc. The underlying strategic geopolitics drivi…

There is a lot of nuance missing in public discourse about the US threats of leaving NATO, stopping direct arms support of Ukraine (except for intelligence), and generally scaring NATO members and Europe into funding their own defense.

Every USA president since the fall of the Berlin Wall has implored NATO members take control of their own defense. The US has long since abandoned the two theater war doctrine. The US is not going to fight Russia. Doing so would just be taking the bait to split their forces when China simultaneously decides to mobilize in the South China Sea. All of USA military planning has been in preparation for that theater.

Trump's belligerence has accomplished the US foreign policy goals of every administration for the last 40 years.

Re: Critical Minerals: Reducing U.S. import reliance with substitution and recycling

#36
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A war with large geographic scope has been independently modeled as having a high probability of occurring circa 2030 by major governments for a decade or more. As time has passed, reality has not diverged from those models, so confidence in the conclusions have grown. It is worth noting that this pre-dates current political dramas, Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022, etc. The underlying strategic geopolitics drivi…

There is a lot of nuance missing in public discourse about the US threats of leaving NATO, stopping direct arms support of Ukraine (except for intelligence), and generally scaring NATO members and Europe into funding their own defense. Every USA president since the fall of the Berlin Wall has implored NATO members take control of their own defense. The US has long since abandoned the two theater war doctrine. The US…

How's the Iran thing figure in, then? That's a lot of the stockpile used up before China starts.

Re: Critical Minerals: Reducing U.S. import reliance with substitution and recycling

#37
post #5

Why is everyone preparing for war so hard

I hope its less because of war and more because its better to not be so dependent on other countries, similar to how Europe is trying to rely less on the US for digital infrastructure. I also feel like the boomers offshoring everything to China in the 70's is one of the reasons things are worse off nowadays, but I digress.

In the 70s it was offshoring to Japan. China’s market opened to the west in the late 80s/90s.

Re: Critical Minerals: Reducing U.S. import reliance with substitution and recycling

#38
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a lot of nuance missing in public discourse about the US threats of leaving NATO, stopping direct arms support of Ukraine (except for intelligence), and generally scaring NATO members and Europe into funding their own defense. Every USA president since the fall of the Berlin Wall has implored NATO members take control of their own defense. The US has long since abandoned the two theater war doctrine. The US…

How's the Iran thing figure in, then? That's a lot of the stockpile used up before China starts.

It's the same as Venezuela. These are strategic moves to control China's crude oil supply.

Re: Critical Minerals: Reducing U.S. import reliance with substitution and recycling

#40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The USA keeps threatening my country; Canada. I can say with a reasonable amount of confidence that going "but china" isn't going to help the US much going forward.

I'm in canada. I don't think the two are even comparable.

You're sort of right. What the US is doing in Canada right now is more comparable to what Russia was doing in Ukraine in the early 2010s[0]

The upcoming Alberta separatist referendum that is funded and boosted by foreign agitators isn't intended to succeed. It's intended to cause a festering wound in Canada to prevent it from growing in strength and independence from America.

As far as I'm concerned America has already lost the next impending major war. They've spent the past 25 years blowing trillions on purposefully unwinnable wars that serve to enrich American oligarchs. This has left the American military structurally weakened and mis-optimized to fight small groups of terrorists instead of fighting an enemy with comparable and perhaps superior ability.

We've also seen the decimation of the manufacturing base in America and with it the economic security that it provided the middle class and with it the power and skill set that comes from being able to design and build thing. Finally, the United States' recent choice to blow half their stockpile of numerous kinds of missiles all all at once while at the same time lacking the supply chain or even the manufacturing base to adequately restock their munitions as the nail in the coffin for the American empire.[2]

So what's going to happen in a world where America can't win a global conflict but is still protected from invasion by thousands of nuclear weapons? America is going to decline into a regional power that attacks its neighbours with impunity. You're already starting to see it and it won't be long until you see articles like this[1] about Alberta.

I don't want it to be this way, but it is.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43487443

[1] https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-hit-with-demand-for-answ...

[2] https://www.csis.org/analysis/last-rounds-status-key-munitio...

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