PrintJuly 21, 2010
America's Fast Track to the Third World
The Department of Defense has sounded an alarm about our access to a strategically vital group of metals called the rare earth elements. A report on the problem prepared by the GAO is not pretty. It concludes that the Chinese now control the production, processing, and manufacture of final products of these vital metals and now own the patents for many of these processes. The worries of the DoD are well-justified; missile guidance systems, smart bombs, night vision gear, unmanned aircraft, and much more are dependent on the rare earth elements in some way. Without these metals, our weapons technology would be approximately that of the Korean War. Battery-powered tools, hybrid vehicles, the environmentalists' precious windmills, and almost everything else electric cannot get by without them. Rare earth elements have been described as the vitamins of modern technology. It took Beijing approximately twenty years to strip this technology from its birthplace in the United States and move...(Read Full Article)
