JoNova

OWID

By Jo Nova

Means, motive, and opportunity. It looks for all the world like China used dirty tactics to corner the rare earth processing plants of the world.

Michael Kern argues that for the last twenty years, every time a Western rare earth mining operation looked like it was about to build its own processing plant, Chinese producers would flood the market and crash the price of the metal. The investment case would evaporate and the company would go out of business.

This kind of predatory capitalism is all very well until the nice guys realize what’s going on and ban your products from their defense contracts, back their own start ups, and those companies develop their own processing techniques, which is what is starting to occur in the US now.

China was treating rare earths as a strategic weapon, while the West assumed the free market was free, and was hooked on the cheaper stuff.

All’s fair in love and war, but dirty tricks have their own price.

How China Killed Every Rare Earth Competitor Before It Could Get Started

By Michael Kern, Oilprice

The West handed its rare earth processing […]

Given the advantage of controlling essential strategic resources, China would be crazy if they weren’t:

Pro-China group running online campaign against US rare-earths industry, says cybersecurity firm

Raghav Bikhchandani, ThePrint

A report released Tuesday by Mandiant says a pro-China group named Dragonbridge has been using “nuanced tactics” against firms like Lynas, Appia, and USA Rare Earth. These included posing as local residents online to drum up protests against the construction of a Lynas rare-earths processing facility in Texas. The facility’s development is the result of an agreement signed between the US Department of Defense and Lynas to boost America’s rare-earths domestic industry.

“The accounts claimed that by placing the Lynas plant in Texas, the Biden administration would expose the area to irreversible environmental damage and the local population to radioactive contamination and adverse health effects such as cancer risks, gene mutation, and deformities in newborns,” the Mandiant report said.

‘Tactics to manipulate public discourse’

Elaborating on its claims, Mandiant also shared several screenshots of purported sockpuppet Twitter and Facebook accounts dating from April and May that called for a boycott and shared concerns over Lynas and its rare-earths plant. Mandiant also found […]