Soot on Dutch. I can't believe the Chinese blocked critical...

Soot on Dutch. I can't believe the Chinese blocked critical mineral supply to the Japanese back in 2010 and here we are 13 years later and still no more progressed on creating processing independence.
It goes without saying the West will have zero access to Niobium and Manganese if things get serious over Taiwan. The defence manufacturing industry would grind to a halt and so will the battery manufacturing sector.
I find it surprising that in our media there's next to no coverage of this issue too. They'll report endlessly on the submarines but rarely, if ever cover how important the critical minerals sector is to defence, sovereignty, job creation, geopolitical balance etc