August 19, 2025 • 16 mins
Myanmar is the world’s third-largest producer of rare earths and a critical supplier for neighboring China. But rebels have recently taken control of most of the country’s mines — creating a complicated situation for Beijing and for global supply chains.
On today’s Big Take Asia Podcast, host K. Oanh Ha and reporter Timothy McLaughlin discuss the Kachin Independence Organization’s newfound control of a majority of Myanmar’s rare-earth mines, how the change is shifting Myanmar's political dynamics and what the group’s growing influence could mean for the future of rare earths.
Read more: A Rebel Army Is Building a Rare-Earth Empire on China’s Border
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
In the jungles of northern me and Maar, close to
the border with China, a town called Pungwah sits in
a small valley. It's surrounded by forested peaks that are
sometimes dusted with snow. But against this scenic backdrop, a
sprawling industrial operation is transforming the hilltops.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
So you have these hills, these very dramatic hill slopes,
with these pools kind of midway up the hill. So
there's like kind of a lattice work of pipes that's
laid over boreholes. So yeah, it is sort of industrial
and dystopian, but also set in a very remarkable, very
beautiful part of the world.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
Timothy McLaughlin is a journalist and a freelance contributor for
Bloomberg based in Singapore. He says Punghwa and the surrounding
region of Kachin State have come into the spotlight lately
because a ground there is rich with precious metals rare
earths that are in high demand right now.
Speaker 1 (01:03):
Meanmar is hugely significant in the rare earth's industry. It
is the third largest producer of rare earths globally, behind
the US of China.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
These rare earth elements are worth billions of dollars. They're
key components in your iPhone, your electric vehicles, and even
missiles used by the US military. And Me and Mar
isn't just any producer of rare earth. It's a crucial
supplier to China, accounting for more than half of the
country's total imports last year. But the region around Pungwa
(01:35):
has been disrupted by a long running conflict between me
and Maar's military junta and a rebel group, the Kachin
Independence Army or KIA.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
The current Hunter took power in twenty twenty one, and
it has been a very tumultuous, bloody period for the
country for the past couple of years. It's important to
understand that Memr already had a large number of armed
groups who were fighting the central military primarily for greater
(02:05):
autonomy for their ethnic groups, and so the past four
years has seen a massive surge in fighting. You know,
the military has been able to hang on to most
of the middle of the country, but their control over
the periphery of the country and the borderlands has suffered
quite a bit.
Speaker 2 (02:23):
Hungwah is part of that embattled region. The Kia took
control of the area late last year and that's created
a headache for China.
Speaker 1 (02:33):
So they take over to these mines by the Kia
a huge complicating factor for Beijing and came at a
really inopportune time because whereas became this big global trade
issue kind of rate as the KA took over these mines,
and so Beijing and Chinese companies are now buying rare
earths from them, so funding them. But then they are
(02:53):
also supporting the memr military of the junta, so they
are on both sides of this fight.
Speaker 2 (03:05):
This is the Big Take Asia from Bloomberg News. I'm wanh.
Every week we take you inside some of the world's
biggest and most powerful economies and the markets, tycoons and
businesses that drive this ever shifting region. Today on the show,
how a rebel army in me and Mar became a
major player in the rare earth's industry and what its
(03:27):
new dominance means for China next door and for global
supply chains. Despite the name, rare earths are really not
that rare. They can be found all over the world,
but they're almost never found on their own in nature.
(03:47):
The minerals are mixed in with other elements in the
ground and often at low concentrations, and that makes mining
them a complex process. In me and Mar, rare earths
are usually extracted from the soil on hillsides.
Speaker 1 (04:01):
So you have these very dramatic hill slopes with these
collection pools that are sort of at the bottom midway
up the hill. The collection pools they're lined with tarps,
so the water tends to have this kind of turquoise
color to it.
Speaker 2 (04:14):
And to get these rare earth elements into these vast
collection pools, a process called n C two leaching comes in.
Speaker 1 (04:22):
It's sort of like an IV drip for a hillside.
You're dripping this leaching agent into the hillside. So there's
like kind of a lattice work of pipes that's laid
over boreholes and then there's little taps and so this
is just going down into the ground and then later
towards the bottom of the hill washed out and what
comes out at the bottom is this mixture of rare
(04:44):
earth water leaching agent that's collected in large pools sort
of like concrete industrial swimming pools, and the rare earth
sludge settles at the bottom. The water is drained off,
and that sludge is then baked in these big furnaces
that look like massive pizza ovens, and the resulting product
is are rare docksides.
Speaker 2 (05:07):
When demand for these metals began to take off in
the mid two thousands, China was by far the biggest
miner of rare earths. It accounted for nearly all of
the world's mind rare earth supply and was also the
biggest refiner. But around twenty ten, China began shutting down
many of its small scale mines.
Speaker 1 (05:26):
China started to see the environmental impact it was having.
Pumping millions of liters of this fluid into the ground
had enormous ecological impact, especially of watersheds and river weys.
Speaker 2 (05:38):
The wastewater that's full of chemicals and toxins is typically
directed right back into the nearest river. It can contaminate
the soil and the waterways downstream and cause landslides. A
lot of the mines that China shut down were located
in the country's southwest, along the frontier with Miunmar, and
as the industry shut down in China, the mine opera
(06:00):
looked just across the border. To get back to business.
Speaker 1 (06:04):
You can see that on the ground level when you
know Chinese miners arriving, but eventually you can start to
see it from space because the mines start to get dug,
the pools start to fill up. You can also see
the road network getting built, and the road network kind
of goes not that far. It goes from China into
these mines and then and then the trucks kind of
go back out.
Speaker 2 (06:25):
A geospatial analysis found that in just about seven years,
hundreds of new mining sites have sprung up in the
area where Pungwa is located. China became the biggest buyer
of me and Mars rare earth. It imported more than
eight hundred million dollars by twenty twenty one. That's eight
hundred times what it bought just a decade ago.
Speaker 1 (06:46):
They have large deposits of two specific elements which are
turbum and dysprosia, and they are important to making rare
earth magnets, and these magnets are now found in a
lot of electric vehicles, five trains, wind turbines, guided missile systems,
and these two elements are added to magnets to enhance
(07:08):
their capabilities to make them able to work at higher
temperatures without losing the magnetism that they have. And so
right now these magnets are a huge point of contention
between the US and China. While these magnets are coming
from China because that's where they are made, the elements
that are going into them are coming from Vanmar in
(07:29):
many cases.
Speaker 2 (07:32):
And what kind of impact then, are we seeing of
this mining boom on the environment and on local communities.
Speaker 1 (07:38):
You're seeing people and other groups realize that there is
a huge amount of money, huge amount of demand. We're
going to see these minds expand probably outside of Kitchen
State to places that are controlled by other groups who
think that they have similar geology and they can also
kind of cash in on this rare gold rush at
the moment, but I think the environmental impact is probably
the most pronounced right now. All you're seeing the rivers
(08:01):
and streams that are very important to the way of
life for small villages and cities and towns at this
part of the world getting totally ruined. And it is
also becoming a cross border issue because these watersheds run
through Southeast Asia and so some of this stuff is
now flowing into Thailand, and so you see the Thai
government tie civil society becoming concerned about this. There's also
(08:23):
concerns about the structure of the mines, the safety you
could imagine, pumping millions of gallons of liquid into the
side of a hill makes it inherently unstable. Often people
are getting trapped in tunnels or killed by landslides. So yes,
overall environmentally and labor regulations wise, very much sort of
the Wild West at the moment.
Speaker 2 (08:44):
And while mining companies have been tearing up the ground
in search of rare earth minerals, the region around the
mines is being torn by a bloody conflict between the
government and rebel groups. After the break, the crucial supply
of rare earths in the hands of a rebel army
the risks for China and the world. For years, the
(09:16):
town of Pungwa in northern me and Maar was under
the control of a warlord allied with the country's military junta.
The rare earth's minds in the region were operated by
Chinese companies, and the shipments of the precious metals ran
like clockwork. Reporter Tim McLaughlin says the Chinese government generally
sees me and Mar's military regime as a stabilizing force
(09:38):
along its border.
Speaker 1 (09:39):
Beijing's greatest fears that the country would splinter apart and
there would be some sort of Syria type situation right
on a huge border that they have, And so they
sat on the fence for a while, and then when
they saw the MEMR military started to struggle last year
and maybe losing some key strategic outposts, they really kind
of came off the fence and threw their port behind
(10:01):
the ME and R military. Not because I think there's
any deep love there. I think it's because they really
fear the country just crumbling, and they think much like
the BOMR military does, that they are kind of the
glue holding this all together.
Speaker 2 (10:16):
But that changed late last year when the KA, the
armed ethnic group battling the military junta, advanced on Pungwa.
Speaker 1 (10:24):
The Kitschin Independence Army is fighting a larger, decades long
struggle against the VMMR military for greater autonomy for the
Kitchen ethnic people. Late last year, the KIA started fighting
their way towards this point, looking to capture not just Pangwa,
but capture all of Kitchen Special Region one and kind
(10:45):
of take it as their own.
Speaker 2 (10:47):
The KIA took control of Pungwa along with hundreds of
valuable rare earth minds overnight. That made the rebel army
one of the largest players in the rare earth industry.
But Tim says this change of control in Pangwa has
put China in a difficult position. It's bordered with me
and mar Is Long, so it needs to secure the
(11:08):
cooperation of the military junta, but it also needs the
rare earths that are now controlled by the rebels.
Speaker 1 (11:16):
The KA is complicated because they are fighting the VNMR
junta and so Beijing and Chinese companies are now buying
rare earths from them, so funding them. But then they
are also supporting the menmar military of the junta, so
they are on both sides of this fight, and they
have voiced their displeasure to the Kia. They've also closed
(11:37):
the border on occasion to try to sort of force
their hand. So we did see the mining shut down
and saw the border close for a long time. It
is since reopened because we could see the exports going
out of VMMR into China now, so you know, an
agreement of some sort between these companies between the Kia
between China has been reached. For now, but like many
things in Nmar, at the moment, how long it will last,
(11:59):
how steady it is, is in open question.
Speaker 2 (12:02):
By purchasing the rare earth's mind in Me and Mar,
China is effectively funding the Kia, perhaps a military Hunta's
greatest and most long standing enemy. This puts China in
a pickle, and that's why it's now looking for other
suppliers of these in demand elements.
Speaker 1 (12:19):
You'll see much more coming from Laos. You'll see mining
startup in parts of Meanmar where Beijing has better relations
with the armed groups that have closer relations to Beijing,
and so the big official Chinese companies could go in
and operate. You're not relying on this kind of ragtag
middleman to kind of do this stuff.
Speaker 2 (12:39):
As China tries to find other places beyond Me and
Mar for rare earths, the US is also scrambling to
find its own alternative to China. Last month, a rare
earth mine opened in Wyoming, the first in the US
in more than seventy years. At the same time, the
US is also tentatively eyeing Me and Mar.
Speaker 1 (12:58):
For rare earths. There's been some interest from State Department
and other groups. About kind of sussing out and getting
a feel for the current situation and what it's like
on the ground. Right now, the US has very limited
engagement with Meanmar, meanmr is massively unstable at the moment.
You know, you have the hunta fighting armed ethnic groups,
(13:21):
you have them fighting smaller pro democracy groups that popped
up down for the coup. The Hunt is starting plans
for an election, which I think could be very destabilizing.
And then of course you see the military running a
really horrific campaign against its own citizens.
Speaker 2 (13:38):
And Tim says there are more than just political and
humanitarian considerations for the US to factor.
Speaker 1 (13:44):
There's just really, really really huge logistical issues. I mean,
it would take moving tons of rare earth material from
a sort of undeveloped, far remote corner of the kind,
and then you'd have to move it across the country
that's covered with hundreds of warring ethnic groups and armed
(14:06):
groups to a point of exit. Then the question is, well,
where do you bring it to refine it? And the
answer to that question is you bring it to China,
because China is the only place that has the capability
to refine this stuff. So now we're back where we started,
right and that is assuming that Beijing would allow this.
Why would China allow any US firms or companies or
(14:29):
linked people come into their own backyard and take what
they have obviously deemed a national security asset from them.
So there's a myriad of issues. There's obviously been the
sort of moral issues of the country and dealing with
various militaries, but just the logistics and geopolitics of it
alone make it sound almost inconceivable.
Speaker 2 (14:53):
And now you've got this rebel army added to the
geopolitical mix. It's such a wild card.
Speaker 1 (14:59):
Yeah, I mean, I don't think there's another situation that
ever reached the geopolitical tension that we're seeing now between
the US and China with rarersts in the middle. And
so you have these big superpowers and these big tech
companies and huge investments, and then when you drill down
one of the key players here is this group that
(15:19):
really was born out of a anti colonial struggle against
the MR government. And then I think the other thing
kind of wildcard here is technology in the advancements. Maybe
rare earth magnets will be innovative out of existence. Do
you already see some companies touting that they're running their
ev motors with batteries that don't have rare earths in them.
(15:42):
Maybe we're not talking about of them in the same way,
whether it's in ten years or fifteen or twenty years.
So there's also this other kind of unknown as the
kind of where this whole industry goes.
Speaker 2 (15:57):
This is The Big Take Asia from Bloomberg News. I'm
wanh to get more from The Big Take and unlimited
access to all of Bloomberg dot Com. Subscribe today at
Bloomberg dot com slash podcast Offer. If you like the episode,
make sure to subscribe and review The Big Tack Asia
wherever you listen to podcasts. It really helps people find
the show. Thanks for listening, See you next time.
Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
In the jungles of northern me and Maar, close to
the border with China, a town called Pungwah sits in
a small valley. It's surrounded by forested peaks that are
sometimes dusted with snow. But against this scenic backdrop, a
sprawling industrial operation is transforming the hilltops.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
So you have these hills, these very dramatic hill slopes,
with these pools kind of midway up the hill. So
there's like kind of a lattice work of pipes that's
laid over boreholes. So yeah, it is sort of industrial
and dystopian, but also set in a very remarkable, very
beautiful part of the world.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
Timothy McLaughlin is a journalist and a freelance contributor for
Bloomberg based in Singapore. He says Punghwa and the surrounding
region of Kachin State have come into the spotlight lately
because a ground there is rich with precious metals rare
earths that are in high demand right now.
Speaker 1 (01:03):
Meanmar is hugely significant in the rare earth's industry. It
is the third largest producer of rare earths globally, behind
the US of China.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
These rare earth elements are worth billions of dollars. They're
key components in your iPhone, your electric vehicles, and even
missiles used by the US military. And Me and Mar
isn't just any producer of rare earth. It's a crucial
supplier to China, accounting for more than half of the
country's total imports last year. But the region around Pungwa
(01:35):
has been disrupted by a long running conflict between me
and Maar's military junta and a rebel group, the Kachin
Independence Army or KIA.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
The current Hunter took power in twenty twenty one, and
it has been a very tumultuous, bloody period for the
country for the past couple of years. It's important to
understand that Memr already had a large number of armed
groups who were fighting the central military primarily for greater
(02:05):
autonomy for their ethnic groups, and so the past four
years has seen a massive surge in fighting. You know,
the military has been able to hang on to most
of the middle of the country, but their control over
the periphery of the country and the borderlands has suffered
quite a bit.
Speaker 2 (02:23):
Hungwah is part of that embattled region. The Kia took
control of the area late last year and that's created
a headache for China.
Speaker 1 (02:33):
So they take over to these mines by the Kia
a huge complicating factor for Beijing and came at a
really inopportune time because whereas became this big global trade
issue kind of rate as the KA took over these mines,
and so Beijing and Chinese companies are now buying rare
earths from them, so funding them. But then they are
(02:53):
also supporting the memr military of the junta, so they
are on both sides of this fight.
Speaker 2 (03:05):
This is the Big Take Asia from Bloomberg News. I'm wanh.
Every week we take you inside some of the world's
biggest and most powerful economies and the markets, tycoons and
businesses that drive this ever shifting region. Today on the show,
how a rebel army in me and Mar became a
major player in the rare earth's industry and what its
(03:27):
new dominance means for China next door and for global
supply chains. Despite the name, rare earths are really not
that rare. They can be found all over the world,
but they're almost never found on their own in nature.
(03:47):
The minerals are mixed in with other elements in the
ground and often at low concentrations, and that makes mining
them a complex process. In me and Mar, rare earths
are usually extracted from the soil on hillsides.
Speaker 1 (04:01):
So you have these very dramatic hill slopes with these
collection pools that are sort of at the bottom midway
up the hill. The collection pools they're lined with tarps,
so the water tends to have this kind of turquoise
color to it.
Speaker 2 (04:14):
And to get these rare earth elements into these vast
collection pools, a process called n C two leaching comes in.
Speaker 1 (04:22):
It's sort of like an IV drip for a hillside.
You're dripping this leaching agent into the hillside. So there's
like kind of a lattice work of pipes that's laid
over boreholes and then there's little taps and so this
is just going down into the ground and then later
towards the bottom of the hill washed out and what
comes out at the bottom is this mixture of rare
(04:44):
earth water leaching agent that's collected in large pools sort
of like concrete industrial swimming pools, and the rare earth
sludge settles at the bottom. The water is drained off,
and that sludge is then baked in these big furnaces
that look like massive pizza ovens, and the resulting product
is are rare docksides.
Speaker 2 (05:07):
When demand for these metals began to take off in
the mid two thousands, China was by far the biggest
miner of rare earths. It accounted for nearly all of
the world's mind rare earth supply and was also the
biggest refiner. But around twenty ten, China began shutting down
many of its small scale mines.
Speaker 1 (05:26):
China started to see the environmental impact it was having.
Pumping millions of liters of this fluid into the ground
had enormous ecological impact, especially of watersheds and river weys.
Speaker 2 (05:38):
The wastewater that's full of chemicals and toxins is typically
directed right back into the nearest river. It can contaminate
the soil and the waterways downstream and cause landslides. A
lot of the mines that China shut down were located
in the country's southwest, along the frontier with Miunmar, and
as the industry shut down in China, the mine opera
(06:00):
looked just across the border. To get back to business.
Speaker 1 (06:04):
You can see that on the ground level when you
know Chinese miners arriving, but eventually you can start to
see it from space because the mines start to get dug,
the pools start to fill up. You can also see
the road network getting built, and the road network kind
of goes not that far. It goes from China into
these mines and then and then the trucks kind of
go back out.
Speaker 2 (06:25):
A geospatial analysis found that in just about seven years,
hundreds of new mining sites have sprung up in the
area where Pungwa is located. China became the biggest buyer
of me and Mars rare earth. It imported more than
eight hundred million dollars by twenty twenty one. That's eight
hundred times what it bought just a decade ago.
Speaker 1 (06:46):
They have large deposits of two specific elements which are
turbum and dysprosia, and they are important to making rare
earth magnets, and these magnets are now found in a
lot of electric vehicles, five trains, wind turbines, guided missile systems,
and these two elements are added to magnets to enhance
(07:08):
their capabilities to make them able to work at higher
temperatures without losing the magnetism that they have. And so
right now these magnets are a huge point of contention
between the US and China. While these magnets are coming
from China because that's where they are made, the elements
that are going into them are coming from Vanmar in
(07:29):
many cases.
Speaker 2 (07:32):
And what kind of impact then, are we seeing of
this mining boom on the environment and on local communities.
Speaker 1 (07:38):
You're seeing people and other groups realize that there is
a huge amount of money, huge amount of demand. We're
going to see these minds expand probably outside of Kitchen
State to places that are controlled by other groups who
think that they have similar geology and they can also
kind of cash in on this rare gold rush at
the moment, but I think the environmental impact is probably
the most pronounced right now. All you're seeing the rivers
(08:01):
and streams that are very important to the way of
life for small villages and cities and towns at this
part of the world getting totally ruined. And it is
also becoming a cross border issue because these watersheds run
through Southeast Asia and so some of this stuff is
now flowing into Thailand, and so you see the Thai
government tie civil society becoming concerned about this. There's also
(08:23):
concerns about the structure of the mines, the safety you
could imagine, pumping millions of gallons of liquid into the
side of a hill makes it inherently unstable. Often people
are getting trapped in tunnels or killed by landslides. So yes,
overall environmentally and labor regulations wise, very much sort of
the Wild West at the moment.
Speaker 2 (08:44):
And while mining companies have been tearing up the ground
in search of rare earth minerals, the region around the
mines is being torn by a bloody conflict between the
government and rebel groups. After the break, the crucial supply
of rare earths in the hands of a rebel army
the risks for China and the world. For years, the
(09:16):
town of Pungwa in northern me and Maar was under
the control of a warlord allied with the country's military junta.
The rare earth's minds in the region were operated by
Chinese companies, and the shipments of the precious metals ran
like clockwork. Reporter Tim McLaughlin says the Chinese government generally
sees me and Mar's military regime as a stabilizing force
(09:38):
along its border.
Speaker 1 (09:39):
Beijing's greatest fears that the country would splinter apart and
there would be some sort of Syria type situation right
on a huge border that they have, And so they
sat on the fence for a while, and then when
they saw the MEMR military started to struggle last year
and maybe losing some key strategic outposts, they really kind
of came off the fence and threw their port behind
(10:01):
the ME and R military. Not because I think there's
any deep love there. I think it's because they really
fear the country just crumbling, and they think much like
the BOMR military does, that they are kind of the
glue holding this all together.
Speaker 2 (10:16):
But that changed late last year when the KA, the
armed ethnic group battling the military junta, advanced on Pungwa.
Speaker 1 (10:24):
The Kitschin Independence Army is fighting a larger, decades long
struggle against the VMMR military for greater autonomy for the
Kitchen ethnic people. Late last year, the KIA started fighting
their way towards this point, looking to capture not just Pangwa,
but capture all of Kitchen Special Region one and kind
(10:45):
of take it as their own.
Speaker 2 (10:47):
The KIA took control of Pungwa along with hundreds of
valuable rare earth minds overnight. That made the rebel army
one of the largest players in the rare earth industry.
But Tim says this change of control in Pangwa has
put China in a difficult position. It's bordered with me
and mar Is Long, so it needs to secure the
(11:08):
cooperation of the military junta, but it also needs the
rare earths that are now controlled by the rebels.
Speaker 1 (11:16):
The KA is complicated because they are fighting the VNMR
junta and so Beijing and Chinese companies are now buying
rare earths from them, so funding them. But then they
are also supporting the menmar military of the junta, so
they are on both sides of this fight, and they
have voiced their displeasure to the Kia. They've also closed
(11:37):
the border on occasion to try to sort of force
their hand. So we did see the mining shut down
and saw the border close for a long time. It
is since reopened because we could see the exports going
out of VMMR into China now, so you know, an
agreement of some sort between these companies between the Kia
between China has been reached. For now, but like many
things in Nmar, at the moment, how long it will last,
(11:59):
how steady it is, is in open question.
Speaker 2 (12:02):
By purchasing the rare earth's mind in Me and Mar,
China is effectively funding the Kia, perhaps a military Hunta's
greatest and most long standing enemy. This puts China in
a pickle, and that's why it's now looking for other
suppliers of these in demand elements.
Speaker 1 (12:19):
You'll see much more coming from Laos. You'll see mining
startup in parts of Meanmar where Beijing has better relations
with the armed groups that have closer relations to Beijing,
and so the big official Chinese companies could go in
and operate. You're not relying on this kind of ragtag
middleman to kind of do this stuff.
Speaker 2 (12:39):
As China tries to find other places beyond Me and
Mar for rare earths, the US is also scrambling to
find its own alternative to China. Last month, a rare
earth mine opened in Wyoming, the first in the US
in more than seventy years. At the same time, the
US is also tentatively eyeing Me and Mar.
Speaker 1 (12:58):
For rare earths. There's been some interest from State Department
and other groups. About kind of sussing out and getting
a feel for the current situation and what it's like
on the ground. Right now, the US has very limited
engagement with Meanmar, meanmr is massively unstable at the moment.
You know, you have the hunta fighting armed ethnic groups,
(13:21):
you have them fighting smaller pro democracy groups that popped
up down for the coup. The Hunt is starting plans
for an election, which I think could be very destabilizing.
And then of course you see the military running a
really horrific campaign against its own citizens.
Speaker 2 (13:38):
And Tim says there are more than just political and
humanitarian considerations for the US to factor.
Speaker 1 (13:44):
There's just really, really really huge logistical issues. I mean,
it would take moving tons of rare earth material from
a sort of undeveloped, far remote corner of the kind,
and then you'd have to move it across the country
that's covered with hundreds of warring ethnic groups and armed
(14:06):
groups to a point of exit. Then the question is, well,
where do you bring it to refine it? And the
answer to that question is you bring it to China,
because China is the only place that has the capability
to refine this stuff. So now we're back where we started,
right and that is assuming that Beijing would allow this.
Why would China allow any US firms or companies or
(14:29):
linked people come into their own backyard and take what
they have obviously deemed a national security asset from them.
So there's a myriad of issues. There's obviously been the
sort of moral issues of the country and dealing with
various militaries, but just the logistics and geopolitics of it
alone make it sound almost inconceivable.
Speaker 2 (14:53):
And now you've got this rebel army added to the
geopolitical mix. It's such a wild card.
Speaker 1 (14:59):
Yeah, I mean, I don't think there's another situation that
ever reached the geopolitical tension that we're seeing now between
the US and China with rarersts in the middle. And
so you have these big superpowers and these big tech
companies and huge investments, and then when you drill down
one of the key players here is this group that
(15:19):
really was born out of a anti colonial struggle against
the MR government. And then I think the other thing
kind of wildcard here is technology in the advancements. Maybe
rare earth magnets will be innovative out of existence. Do
you already see some companies touting that they're running their
ev motors with batteries that don't have rare earths in them.
(15:42):
Maybe we're not talking about of them in the same way,
whether it's in ten years or fifteen or twenty years.
So there's also this other kind of unknown as the
kind of where this whole industry goes.
Speaker 2 (15:57):
This is The Big Take Asia from Bloomberg News. I'm
wanh to get more from The Big Take and unlimited
access to all of Bloomberg dot Com. Subscribe today at
Bloomberg dot com slash podcast Offer. If you like the episode,
make sure to subscribe and review The Big Tack Asia
wherever you listen to podcasts. It really helps people find
the show. Thanks for listening, See you next time.
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