Pentagon Losing Control of Bombs to China’s Monopoly

[True_Blue]

Sept. 30 (Bloomberg) -- A senior manager at a company that churns out metals routinely used in U.S. smart bombs pauses in mid-sentence when his phone rings: a Wall Street stockbroker looking for information. He makes a note to have an assistant call back -- someone who is fluent in English, not just Chinese.

“It’s a seller’s market now,” says Bai Baosheng, 43, puffing a cigarette in his office in Baotou, China, where his company sells bags of powder containing a metallic element known as neodymium, vital in tiny magnets that direct the fins of bombs dropped by U.S. Air Force jets in Afghanistan.

A generation after Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping made mastering neodymium and 16 other elements known as rare earths a priority, China dominates the market, with far-reaching effects ranging from global trade friction to U.S. job losses and threats to national security.

The U.S. handed its main economic rival power to dictate access to these building blocks of modern weapons by ceding control of prices and supply, according to dozens of interviews with industry executives, congressional leaders and policy experts. China in July reduced rare-earth export quotas for the rest of the year by 72 percent, sending prices up more than sixfold for some elements.
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-09-29/pentagon-losing-control-of-bombs-to-china-s-monopoly.html

[JDPriestly]

1. What exactly are the rare earth elements. Why does China control that market?

Are these elements found outside China? Sorry. I went to school before the expression "rare earth elements" was common. Could someone please explain?

[dipsydoodle]

2. Probably lab creations

to fill known gaps in the periodic table. See here for example :

Welcome, ununseptium. With 117 protons, it is the latest super-heavy element to be created in the laboratory.

The discovery fills in a gap in the current periodic table of elements, and bolsters the idea that we may yet find an "island of stability" among heavyweight atoms, with elements long-lived enough to be useful.

Uranium, which contains 92 protons, is the heaviest element that is stable in nature. But researchers have synthesised a number of even heftier elements.

This effort has created a host of new atoms, containing as many as 118 protons. But there has been a gap in the periodic table where element 117 might be.

http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/shortsharpscience/2010/04/newly-discovered-atom-helps-fi.html

Question is : if they maunfactured a really dense one would they call it Palinium ?

[JDPriestly]

3. If they are lab creations, why do we buy them from China?

Why don't we create them ourselves?

[dipsydoodle]

4. They're not easy to create

and the US may not have cracked it. Aside from that China may have patented the elements. If you think that sounds odd then its no odder than the US allowing patenting life forms which they have done.

DNA Patents Create Monopolies on Living Organisms http://www.actionbioscience.org/genomic/crg.html

In other words you can't have it both ways and if China has patented the elements then tough : the patent would be bullet proof.

[JDPriestly]

5. Thanks. We would have to do the research and find our own substitutes

for these products.

[Posteritatis]

7. This is about as incorrect as is possible. (nt)

[Posteritatis]

6. Reply #2 is wrong

They're seventeen metals which were thought to be very rare once upon a time - hence the name - though they're still all somewhat uncommon. Finding them is similar to most of the other elements - there's better deposits in some places than others due to the whims of geology and ease of access. Many countries have access to them, with India and Brazil having the best luck in that department last I heard.

Most of them are particularly useful in high-tech applications - lasers, nuclear energy, superconductors, X-ray machines, magnets (hence "rare earth magnet") and various alloys.

The full list is scandium, yttrium, lanthanum, cerium (which is far from rare), praesodyminium, neodyminium (the most common material used in rare-earth magnets, common enough to be used as kid's toys in science stores - they're quite fun!), promethium, samarium, europium, gadolinium, terbium, dysprosium (whose name actually means "this is hard to get"), holmium, erbium, thulium, ytterbium and lutetium.

[eridani]

8. It's worse that that--we've actually shipped related manufacturing plants from here to China

Magnequench once made highly specialized rare earth magnets-crucial components in guidance systems of JDAM bombs and Cruise Missiles-here in the U.S., but they've outsourced our jobs and our national security to China.

In September 2003, Magnequench closed its last plant in Indiana, sending 450 workers into unemployment and moving its operation to China. The shift to China was no surprise. In 1995, the company was purchased by a front company for two Chinese companies, each of whose executives were in-laws of Chinese Premier Deng Xiaopeng. Magnequench’s CEO Archibald Cox Jr. had pledged in 1995 to invest heavily in the U.S plants, but in 1998 shut the first plant and moved operations to China. Cox is now managing the final phase of the transfer of operations to China.

http://www.counterpunch.org/stclair10252003.html
http://www.insightmag.com/news/2003/02/18/World/Missile.Technology.Sent.To.China-357426.shtml

http://www.counterpunch.org/stclair10252003.html
http://www.insightmag.com/news/2003/02/18/World/Missile.Technology.Sent.To.China-357426.shtml

[AdHocSolver]

9. The corporations are selling out U.S. national security to China and this got only 3 recs.

The U.S. is battling the multinational corporations for its survival and the majority of Americans are clueless. The prognosis is not favorable.