China's Rare Earth Ban: A Geopolitical Game Changer?

China since last year has banned the export of the knowledge of how to extract rare earths from ore. In other words, you can't even ex you if you're a company in China, you can't sell the know-how of how to do this to any other country or you probably end up in a Chinese prison. Do you know that? No, I will comment on it though, and this is comes from general knowledge because you know, mining is one of my, you know, what we write about for five years. My understanding up to what you just said was that it's a very dirty, ugly, environmentally unfriendly process. Absolutely. And the only way to do it and get away with it is China where the world organization said, you know, Chinese would give you a pass on the environmental restrictions that the rest of the world faces. And that's why it's done in China and China alone pretty much. As far as technique specific, you may be right, I'm not saying you're not, but just what I said is important to understand that you couldn't get away with the cost effective method all to use in China anywhere else ...