Free Republic

There is a high probability that the small battery in your smartphone contains lithium from Chilean deposits, Indonesian nickel, as well as cobalt mined in Congolese mines controlled by the Chinese and employing local children. Critical minerals and rare earth metals have today become the central point of geopolitical rivalry between powers, because whoever controls critical minerals controls the future. "You can't produce clean energy without dirty extractive industry." These words from the director of advanced magnet lab perfectly capture the paradox of our times. On one hand we talk about decarbonization and green transformation' on the other we need...

COVID-19: It’s all we talk about, on the cable news, and in our 6-foot socially-distanced prison walks around our silent neighborhoods. And in nearly every conversation comes the intellectual shrug, “who could have seen this coming?” A single phrase that neatly absolves governments and experts alike of any responsibility of predicting the pandemic and, if not being able to stop it, at least cushioning its blow........ But is it unfair to engage in so much 20-20 hindsight? After all, who could see COVID coming? Well, we did. We — as in nodes within the U.S. Government tasked with tracking critical...

Chinese President Hu Jintao's three-day visit to Denmark may ostensibly have been about signing billions worth of business deals, but a stake in Greenland's huge mineral wealth may have been the elephant in the room. Greenland, a self-governing dependency of Denmark, has some of the world's biggest deposits of rare earth elements, strategically important metals in which China has a near monopoly. The Atlantic island is also situated next to sea lanes that are increasingly important as the Arctic melts, and Washington has an air base in the northwest of the territory. That may explain why the leader of the...