Another piece of information has been released which further indicates that US leaders have not been attending to vital US national security interests. As the link below (from Bloomberg.com) indicates, China now has gained powerful leverage over the ability of the USA to manufacture its own critical weapons systems. China has cornered the market on “97 percent of the production of materials known as rare earth oxides.” which are critically necessary for the US military to manufacture such weapons systems as smart bombs, night-vision goggles, radar, the M1A2 Abrams tank and the Aegis SPY-1 radar system (which I assume is the radar system used to protect US aircraft carriers).
Congress is doing what it does best whenever there is a real crisis: it is “holding hearings.” One congressman at least “gets it.” Rep. Mike Coffman (R-CO), is quoted as saying “We need to move aggressively on this issue now before it is too late.” I think it may already be “too late.” The link reports that while the USA does have deposits of these vital elements, the GAO reports that “Rebuilding a US rare earth supply infrastructure may take up to 15 years.” We don’t have 15 years, folks. You can be sure China has deliberately cornered the market on these critical military elements in order to prevent the USA from having access to these vital materials. I’ll bet the USA used to have companies mining and making these rare earth oxides for the US military, but Chinese firms probably drove them out of business by offering to sell the same products to the US for a cheaper price. Shutting down the USA’s domestic suppliers of these vital national-security elements via predatory, low-price Chinese suppliers would have been a strategic decision on China’s part to prevent the USA from building its own high-tech weapons in the future. Ezekiel 38 prophesies that Russia, China, Iran and their allies will attack the western nations at the very end of our age. They will be closely watching the USA’s efforts to rebuild its supplies of these vital materials to enable it to make its own weaponry. You can be sure Russia, China, Iran and their allies intend to launch their attack well before the USA is allowed to rebuild its strength.
You do have to give credit to China’s strategic planners. They are taking down the USA economically, monetarily and militarily by shrewd and cut-throat business practices to put out of business key sections of the US industrial base. A book by two high-ranking Chinese military officers, translated into English in 2002, openly stated China’s intention to defeat the USA by unconventional, asymmetric means such as economic warfare, computer cyberattacks, etc. The book was entitled, Unrestricted Warfare, and it should have been required reading by all American leaders so they could understand how the Chinese were hoodwinking all American elite policymakers. America’s elites were too busy with other matters to pay attention to the USA’s vital security interests.
Unfortunately, it appears that no one in our government “has been minding the store” for years.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=aYbxhwkBPRWs&pos=14
