In relation to my previous post, read this article from the South China Morning Post.
Excerpt:
After China’s 2010 strong-arm tactics against Japan, some in the West raised warnings but were soon drowned out by economics, a supply glut engineered by China and limited political will. “The Pentagon has built its entire advanced weapons on Chinese quicksand,” military consultant James Kennedy wrote in a Defence One commentary in 2016.
China controls the market of refined rare earth minerals crucial to the defense industry for advanced electronics and metal alloys. The United States has one (1) active rare earth mine, and its entire production is sold to a Chinese state-owned refinery.
So if the SHTF and China simply cut us off, our military technological superiority will shortly be eliminated.
I’ve been just a fountain of joy recently.