this post was submitted on 08 Mar 2026
405 points (95.5% liked)
Technology
82488 readers
4023 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
China does not control the vast majority of rare earths because they're only found in China (or even because they're particularly rare, they're not.)
China controls the market because they were the only people who actually bothered to build extraction and refinement capabilities.
If the US invested half the money it puts into "clean coal" or oil and gas extraction into rare earth extraction and processing, it would have its own supplies. But that would be woke, or something.