Yes, everyone’s searching for and investing in rare earth metals. But mining them is one thing, while actually processing them into usable form is quite another. My understanding is that essentially 100% of rare earths processing is done by China, so the West will need to develop its own processing capability too — and pronto.
As we both know, the reason it is all done in China is because refining rare earths generates lots of toxic waste, and China has no environmental laws to inhibit its refinement.
Since they’re very similar chemically processing out the individual elements is a challenge.