alt Hacker NewsSome analysts, notably Andre Martyanov, describe how the US has lost strategic thinking and long-range planning in the military domain. The loss of the US ability to mine and refine rare earths is a good example of absence of strategic thinking in the supply chain.
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barelysapient • today at 9:22 PM
Or corruption.
vrganj • today at 9:08 PM
Capitalist businesses don't work in strategic and long-range terms, they work on quarterly earnings.
Who gives a shit about sovereign capability if you can have a real good earnings report?
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I’ve been wondering more and more lately if it was designed this way by whoever made these decisions at the top level to prevent another cold-war standoff situation.
By requiring the US to rely on often adversarial countries to supply some of its most crucial military components like rare earth minerals, the US couldn’t really go toe to toe with those countries.
I’m just not sure if they factored in the rapid technological rise of those adversarial countries like China.
Or maybe it really is the simplest answer that it was all purely in effort to obtain the greatest profit margins…