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A comment on Critical Minerals: Reducing U.S. Import Reliance with Substitution and Recycling. Parent comment

Re:Critical Minerals: Reducing U.S. Import Reliance with Sub... by jandrewrogers on Wednesday July 22, 2026 @02:50PM (#49011593)
This has been discussed in strategic geopolitical circles for a long time. When surveying defense analysts and similar if they believe a "great powers conflict" will occur in the near future, the percentage that say yes has been rising rapidly (currently 40-50%). If you search for "probability of global war in $YEAR" you will find a lot of discussion of varying quality.

The major alignment is almost always assumed to be something like Russia/China vs Europe/US/Japan.

You can find circumstantial evidence for this in the change in military posture of many countries and rapid scaling of production capacity. Some random examples:

French General states that they are preparing for open war in "3-4 years" in 2025:

https://www.politico.eu/article/french-top-general-expects-s...

Sweden increases defense spending by 40% starting in 2021:

https://www.defensenews.com/global/europe/2020/12/15/sweden-...

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Re:Critical Minerals: Reducing U.S. Import Reliance with Sub... by ColdStream on Wednesday July 22, 2026 @09:23PM (#49015679)
Up until a about a decade back, here in Australia/New Zealand, politicians behind door always talked about the tyranny of distance. Simply due to distance we were largely kept out of or behind larger global flows.

Nowadays it is seen as having the world largest moat.

When things like global conflict starts, it does impact us but it is more the flow on effects rather than direct impacts.

The last few minutes of this 2025 recap by 'Ordinary Things' did the best job or summarizing how the world is getting ready for war.

https://youtu.be/ZEobLPh82-w?si=hrUaw-vTx4mWU6T6&t=6627

I hope we avoid this but I fear we will not.

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Re:Critical Minerals: Reducing U.S. Import Reliance with Sub... by jandrewrogers on Friday July 24, 2026 @01:33AM (#49031549)
Australia at least is taking it very seriously and aggressively upgrading their capabilities.

If things go down in the Pacific no one will be safe.

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