China is Calling for Your Cell Phone
Author(s): Sharon Burke
Original Post: China is Calling for Your Cell Phone
Type: Op-Ed
Date: 10/12/2009
The burgeoning trade war between Washington and Beijing over tires is certainly a worrisome development, but perhaps even more worrisome is the trade trial balloon China recently floated about cutting exports of rare-earth elements.
Although consumers around the world understand the importance of tires, given that they roll past us all day long, rare-earth elements are probably even more pervasive - they are in computer screens, fiber-optic cables, DVD players, fluorescent lights and other items of daily use.
Even more to the point, these minerals are used in precision-guided munitions, vehicle-mounted lasers, aircraft engines and guidance computers, ground- and satellite-based communications systems, and a range of other defense applications.
Indeed, such minerals, which can be hard to find in significant amounts and environmentally destructive to mine, have quietly become a cornerstone of the global economy and the defense industrial base. And China basically owns this cornerstone.
To understand just how problematic this could be, consider that 10 years ago, about 0.2 percent of India's population had cell phones. Today, it is estimated that nearly 40 percent of the population has a cell phone - that's about 400 million people, more than the total population of the United States. India's 400 million cell phones use a range of materials - not just rare-earth elements, but also such substances as indium and gallium, for which there was little demand in India just a decade ago. The United States and many other nations are nearly 100 percent import dependent for supplies of all of these.
Worries about the security of supply for critical materials is nothing new - the scrap metal and rubber drives of World War II being a dramatic example - but shifts in the overall global context make these worries more urgent. In addition to sharply rising demand, supply of these minerals is problematic. As with oil, it is the concentration of mineral supplies that can be so economically disruptive, particularly when the source countries are unstable, prone to using resources for political leverage or focused on feeding growth at home.
China appears to be showing the motivation or the need (or both) to keep more of its rare-earth elements at home, but this is not just about China. Lithium, for example, which is likely to be critical to the next generation of batteries, is relatively plentiful but concentrated in South America. More than 50 percent of estimated global stocks are in Bolivia alone.
The trade in platinum group metals, as valued in high-tech applications as they are in jewelry, is centered in Russia and South Africa. Control of these materials is not just the stuff of states, either; U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton recently expressed concerns about cassiterite (used to make tin) in the hands of armed groups in central Africa.
While this situation has implications for anyone who uses a cell phone or a flat screen - or, even more to the point, hopes to use electric vehicles or solar power in the future - the supply of minerals is clearly a direct national security concern.
A recent report of the U.S. National Defense Stockpile identified supply concerns with about 13 minerals critical to U.S. defense systems and the need for further study of another 39 minerals. What the Defense Department does not know about minerals is even more alarming: According to the report, defense leaders do not necessarily know exactly which minerals they use in which systems in what amounts, where the minerals come from, the degree of vulnerability of the supply chain, or how to make the supply chain more robust.
All is not lost, however. Unlike oil, there are immediate substitutes for some of the nonfuel minerals, some can be recycled (and are generally not now), and if you cannot buy a new, better cell phone right this minute, it will not bring the entire global economy to a screeching halt tomorrow.
And while concentration of supplies is an inherently worrisome trend, it is not necessarily a problem - suppliers and buyers have a vested interest in a smoothly functioning system. A move from China to restrict exports may well challenge that relatively smooth system, or bring more production on line in other parts of the world.
So, if you do not know what rare-earth elements are - or cassiterite, gallium or indium - perhaps you should. Indeed, what we do not know about these minerals may be putting global economic security at risk, and perhaps even the U.S. defense industrial base. At the very least, most governments and businesses around the world have a vested interest in working together to understand the nature of today's global minerals trade.
Related:
Topic(s): Natural Resources + National Security = Natural Security, Iraq, Regional Security Challenges, U.S. Foreign Policy, U.S. National Security Strategy, WMD & Nuclear Proliferation
Project(s): Afghanistan, Asia-Pacific Security , Energy Security and Climate Change, The Iraq Inheritance, Contested Commons
People: Sharon E. Burke
