Diamonds 'R US

"Welcome to Apollo Diamond," Linares says, waving me inside and quickly shutting the door. He hands me a bunny suit, including booties, goggles, and a hair cap, and leads me into a third room. Three men dressed in similar contaminant-control outfits stand around a cylindrical contraption that looks like a heavy-duty coffee urn outfitted with a bolt-on porthole. A preternatural purple-green glow emanates from the window.

I peer through the glass. Four diamonds are growing beneath a shimmering green cloud. "It took me a long time to get to this point," says one of the men standing beside the machine. This is Robert Linares, Bryant's father. In the 1980s, he was a well-known researcher in advanced semiconductor materials. His company, Spectrum Technology, pioneered the commercialization of gallium arsenide wafers, the microchip substrate that succeeded silicon and allowed cell phones to become smaller and handle more bandwidth. Linares sold the company to PacifiCorp, a diversified utility, in 1985 and disappeared from the semiconducting world.

It turns out he took the money and built a secret diamond research lab. "I knew diamonds were going to be the ultimate semiconductor at some point, but everybody thought it was impossible at the time," Linares says. "I had the freedom to do what I wanted after I sold my company, so I spent almost 15 years researching on my own."

To grow single-crystal diamond using chemical vapor deposition, you must first divine the exact combination of temperature, gas composition, and pressure - a "sweet spot" that results in the formation of a single crystal. Otherwise, innumerable small diamond crystals will rain down. Hitting on the single-crystal sweet spot is like locating a single grain of sand on the beach. There's only one combination among millions. In 1996, Linares found it. This June, he finally received a US patent for the process, which already is producing flawless stones.

The vast public ignorance about DeBeers and the entire subject of diamonds and precious gems never fails to astonish me! This thread is a perfect example.

For instance, if you people want to become outraged by a really nasty cartel, direct your anger toward OPEC. Oil is something you HAVE to use while diamonds are, like AIDS, purely optional. The dollar value of trade in oil makes gem diamonds utterly trivial. Yet various so-called "human rights" organizations (read Communist/Marxist) in league with the U.N. have managed to politicize and demonize the diamond trade to a degree I'd never have believed possible. It's as if some DeBeers thug was holding a gun to people's heads demanding they go to the nearest jewelry store to buy a diamond. It's ADVERTISING, people! If you fall for it, that's your problem.

I'm not a defender of DeBeers -- it's engaged in some pretty authoritarian practices during its history -- but it's nothing like the Demon from Hell portrayed in this thread or by outfits like Global Witness or Oxfam. It has generally been a force of stability and progress in African countries where it has established operations.

As for this story from "Wired," the author himself must have been totally "wired" when he researched and wrote it. It's full of incredible nonsense and conclusions! Yet DeBeers is the outfit everyone loves to hate, so his nonsense goes largely unchallenged.

Anyone wishing to begin to educate themselves on this matter should go to:

http://www.jckgroup.com/index.asp?layout=article&articleid=CA317139&industry=Gemstones+and+Pearls&industryid=704&webzine=jck&publication=jck

As for DeBeers, it has pretty much voluntarily given up its efforts to try to monopolize the supply of diamonds to the world. That's because it now has competition from large diamond sources in Australia and Canada which are selling their goods outside the cartel. The Russians will probably soon join them. DeBeers will now try to capitalize on its trade name in presenting its cut and polished product to the world. The diamond business is in for lots of changes in the near future.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.