Comment by tmnvix
4 months ago
> For context, the law that allows this all to happen was passed in 1952 and has never before been used.
Interesting parallel here with China recently invoking - for the first time - their own legislation from the 50's to ban rare earth exports for military uses.
Probably not an awesome sign if multiple actors are invoking never-used laws that were created while WWII was still fresh on everyone's mind.
Let’s hope this one is still cold.
s/while WWII was still fresh/the cold war was
I always wondered how the large unified world of Roman Empire with running water and sewer fell apart (and backwards) into multitude of small feudal pieces with no technology to speak of for the 1000 years after Roman Empire. I think our modern civilization is probably at the beginning of similar process.
_Washington Post_ just had an article about why (https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/10/12/america-r...).
"In 1984, a German historian compiled 210 explanations historians had suggested for Rome’s fall, from lead poisoning and barbarian invasions to Christianity, moral decline and gout.
After studying dynamic civilizations such as Athens, Rome, Abbasid Baghdad, Song China, Renaissance Italy and the Dutch Republic, I can attest that there is no single explanation. Each golden age had its own character and its own downfall."
I always figured it was a combination of the volcanic winter of 536[1] and the Justinianic plague[2] (which happened right as the eastern roman empire was reconquering the western empire to reunify).
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volcanic_winter_of_536 and https://www.science.org/content/article/why-536-was-worst-ye...
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plague_of_Justinian
And i have my own ideas why it fell :) My point though ins't about pure why. It is about why it went into such feudal fractal mode.
As I understand it, the Roman Empire was fuelled by expansion (stealing other people stuff), enabled by their exceptional military machine. Once they could not profitably expand any further, they were in trouble.
It lasted for many centuries after they ran out of stuff to conquer, so no.
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Aren't you exaggerating it?
I lived in USSR, and know first hand that it means to be separated from common technological space. USSR wasn't that small, especially if one adds Eastern Block, yet it was falling behind the world becoming fully incapable to produce their own comparable computers, cars, etc.. If world get to split into such islands, the speed of technological progress will fall dramatically while social progress may go fully backwards. If you look at some ideologies rising around the world - they are straight medieval, and in many cases only connectedness to outside world has been preventing them from taking over their "islands".
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I think we are fine in term of infra -- I don't work as a civil engineer, but considering companies in my city repair the roads every year /s they probably retain the knowledge.
How easy is the machinery and tools needed to keep all the infrastructure running? Earth movers are pretty maintainable and barely depreciate. Survey tools though? They have gotten famcy right? Water management has gone quite high tech in some ways. I could see them falling apart kind of like when some hospitals had to revert to paper tape logs. It didn't scale anymore.
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Exactly. Building roads and aqueducts were empire-level knowledge skills in Ancient Rome, performed by the army legions. Thankfully they're highly localized skills today.
The infra today is internet and semiconductors which run it, as well as global shipping without each we end up without even necessities.
Why stop there why not Indus Valley Civilization
our knowledge (at least my knowledge of it) is much much smaller that that of Roman Empire, and in particular i don't know whether the fall of that civilization demonstrated the effect of splitting into multitude technologically inferior pieces stagnating for such a long time after that.
Netherlands imported more CeO2 (a rare earth) from China than any other country, with 517 metric tons during the first half of 2025.
with Dutch stats like this it’s always important to note what’s for Dutch use or transporting through the Port of Rotterdam.
It's likely for Dutch. China exported 2414 metric tons of CeO2 in that period. The top 4 destinations are Netherlands (517 tons), Italy (438 tons), Japan (353 tons), USA (284 tons). So others can import it themselves just fine.
How can you say what the minerals were actually used for though is the question I always have in these types of situations. There are multiple uses of the minerals. Since I've now gotten a literal boat load of the minerals from you, I can use those minerals on other things which now frees up my personal source of minerals on the things you didn't want them used in. In the spirit of the agreement, I'm in full compliance all while achieving the thing you didn't want me to achieve. It's nothing but Pilate washing his hands
Are you tracking that harvesting REM is a nasty business with a lot of “don’t look” environmental impacts? As such, most countries don’t do it, or have an infrastructure for it.
https://rareearthexchanges.com/best-rare-earth-mining-compan...
Plenty of US companies ready and willing. They've finally gotten an administration that is of like mind on screw the environment and dig dig dig.
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Who cares what their legislation says. Xi and ccp can change that at will at anytime.
So can Trump and USA.
If the west want's the other 7 billion to care, you're going to have to find some principles and live by them. Without exception.
Same dude!
This is it.
That whole REE thing is more of a scare tactic than anything. REEs are really not all that rare, and the current imports of REEs into the US are worth around $200-250M annually. That is millions, not billions. It's actually a laughably small amount.
The main reason that it's mostly China producing them may simply be due to the fact that the volumes are so small that building your own industry is not really worth it.
Strategic REEs, i.e. heavyREE (Dysprosium, Terbium) are infact exceptionally rare, as in GEOLOGICALLY RARE. They are produced in China, because China (and Myanmar deposits controlled by China) are where ionic clays containing strategic HREEs can be economically extracted at scale. It's not just building altenrate HREE (empahsis on H) is not worth it, the technology simply doesn't exist to do so in other geologic deposits, i.e. all the har rock REE US+co has access to. The fact is PRC controls 90% of deposits and 99% percent of processing for elements that enable high temperature magnets, high power sensors, EW aka all the good shit that enables modern military capabilities... which was designed BECAUSE PRC commericialized process on specific geologic deposits that enabled commoditizing those materials. US built their miltary overmatch on material science and dirt that PRC controls and is nearly exclusively geopgraphically bound to PRC, with no short/medium term alternatives. PRC as monopoly supplier has much more complete ability to enforce export controls. This is just MIC specific, there's also stuff like dysprosium for highend capacitators where PRC has functionally 100% control, i.e. less performant alternative materials would effective regress performance by 10-25%, comparable to losing node size.
I really wonder how much rare earth element deposits are not found for want of looking. Not much reason to source them yourselves if the country (China) uses them for products that you're going to buy.
According to this map, China has vastly more. But is there something special about China/Myanmar geologically? I guess being downstream of the Himalayas is something.
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/rare-eart...
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> The main reason that it's mostly China producing them may simply be due to the fact that the volumes are so small that building your own industry is not really worth it.
There's also an element of their production generating pollution and us preferring to think of ourselves as cleaner than that. We only use the rare earths.
Compare how desalinization is very cheap, but California prefers constant screaming about drought.
Dollar value is not the point. For the US MIC this matters a lot. There are not really any ready replacements for some vital weapons components at a time when US weapons stockpiles have been heavily depleted.
If we really needed them they'd cut through the red tape and mine them here, clean water act, screeching idiots, NIMBYs, everything else be damned.
So, we’ll pay more and still get them. You think China is the only one that can game the system?
Who’s got the money?
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