That i believe is current capacity, Australia is pouring billions into developing critical metals to sell to the americans or more likely juat out them have it for sweet fuck all because why should the mineral wealth of the nation be used to benefit the nation as a whole when we can make a couple of rich assholes richer
The issue isn’t really with the mining, it’s the refining technology. China spent decades investing into figuring out how to do this and perfecting this tech. The West can’t replicate that overnight regardless of how much money they throw at the problem.
https://www.spf.org/en/units_japan-us-and-security-studies/document-detail062.html
That i believe is current capacity, Australia is pouring billions into developing critical metals to sell to the americans or more likely juat out them have it for sweet fuck all because why should the mineral wealth of the nation be used to benefit the nation as a whole when we can make a couple of rich assholes richer
The issue isn’t really with the mining, it’s the refining technology. China spent decades investing into figuring out how to do this and perfecting this tech. The West can’t replicate that overnight regardless of how much money they throw at the problem.