Rare Earths are incredibly common and could be mined in the US. The hard part is not the resources themselves but the processing and refinement of the resources, which China has invested decades into building and mastering. They have millions of earth scientists specializing in rare earths. The US can't compete without building this same educated base of workers and expensive and advanced infrastructure.

Considering they just abolished the Department of Education and have gutted colleges of anyone willing to speak out against genocide, long term prospects on millions of American scientists ain't great. American colleges don't even offer the types of courses you would get in China on these subjects like Material Sciences and Earth Sciences and Chemical Engineering.

[–] QuietCupcake@hexbear.net 9 points 4 days ago

Rare Earths are incredibly common and could be mined in the US. The hard part is not the resources themselves but the processing and refinement of the resources, which China has invested decades into building and mastering.

If anyone is interested, our own @SeventyTwoTrillion@hexbear.net wrote an excellent essay/effort post about this whole situation a while back. It's a great read for those wanting more details about what RE minerals even really are and what the geopolitical situation is with them, at least as of a couple years ago.

The Epic Tale of How China Took Over The Rare Earth Elements Industry - An Essay

[–] Damarcusart@hexbear.net 3 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Rare Earths are incredibly common

Makes for a pretty bad name then.

[–] InexplicableLunchFiend@hexbear.net 8 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

Yeah it's a bit confusing. They are rare in terms of the percentage of the earth's crust that is made up of those elements, but they are found in most areas of the world evenly distributed. You just have to sift through massive quantities of ordinary earth and you find them. That's the problem, making an industry of such scale that processing through huge amounts of earth is profitable requires a lot of build-up and investment and supply lines.

And by "sift" I mean, an extremely long and complex process of chemical regimes to extract specific elements. It's very complicated. There's like 70 "rare earths" that all require different processes.