Comments by "David Himmelsbach" (@davidhimmelsbach557) on "What everyone is getting wrong about Trump’s Ukraine peace talks" video.
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In a Big Negotiation -- something that most Internet posters have never experienced even indirectly -- it's common to totally obfuscate your positions on just about everything. Hanoi spent six-weeks of delay arguing about the very shape of the negotiating table: round, square, hexagon, octagon -- these were ALL critical issues -- in 1968.
I can't believe rare earths are ANY serious asset in play. Start thinking about gas & oil. They are what PUTIN wants most. Back in 2014, Putin went straight for them. The ENTIRE reason for the 2014 invasion turned on Kyiv's decision to bring in US drillers and kick Putin's boys out -- for lack of result. The US teams promptly started getting terrific results. (Burisma, anyone?)
Suddenly, Putin reached for his 'Little Green Men' who fooled exactly no-body... ever. Why that gambit? Lord only knows.
Here's the kicker with rare earths: Red China has monopolized the refining technology in current use. Yup. Even Vietnam sends its concentrates straight north up to Red China. Consequently, Red Chinese (blended-metal) exports utterly dominate trade.
The next kicker: Red China's RE deposits are being run through so rapidly that the easy stuff will be exhausted in a decade. (Inner Mongolia) Refining rare earths is super energy intensive, BTW. They are that difficult.
Beyond that -- rare earths are NOT all that rare. They are as common as COPPER deposits. Think about THAT! What's rare are really easy ores. Back in the day, the US was the monopolist in rare earths. A single mine in Southern California sufficed to meet demand -- it being so LOW. How times have changed.
Lastly, Uranium is a rare earth, too. The rare earth phrase so much in common use refers to LIGHT rare earths.
The next series are the heavy rare earths, of course. What they all have in common: brutally expensive separation methods.
Greenland, like Sweden, has some serious deposits of rare earths. I don't expect them to be ever exploited, same as Canada's.
[ Geologically, Canada, Greenland, Norway, Sweden and Finland are brothers. This is only obvious from a polar view.] Minerals have to be astoundingly concentrated before anyone will fight the northern climate.
Above all, prospectors have never even hunted for rare earths until mighty recently. Compare and contrast with gold, silver, copper.
The hunt for white hydrogen has just begun. There are many reasons to assume that natural gas is a by-product of white hydrogen. It's abiological, which shows up as an utter lack of Carbon 14 atoms in it. ( C-14 is created by cosmic rays.)
Trump really wants US drillers back into Ukraine -- the exact opposite of the American experience in Iraq and Kuwait. Trump also wants the US to exploit minerals -- the very opposite of our role in Afghanistan -- a treasure of heavy minerals brought up from the sea floor millions of years ago. Now, they're right at the surface -- and Red China has the best/only shot at them.
Backing Red China off and down is Job One for Trump. But, he dares not say it. Duh.
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