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Comment by bamboozled | Hacker News Reader

I can't read the article as it's pay walled but I wonder if Japan has considered just being friendly with another country that has rare earth minerals already being mined? Such as Australia, America or Thailand?

Seems kind of stupid to start doing this when it already has apparently strong ties with other suppliers.

I don't want to be too negative but a lot of "unusual thinking" seems to be coming out of Japan lately.

One thing I struggle with when it comes to Japanese news is it very often comes across as "Pro-Japan" propaganda these days. The headlines always seem to start with "Japan to <something awesome/edgy/innovative>"

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To me it seems like it’s the same anti-globalization thing that’s going on everywhere. Suddenly no one wants to have any dependency on anyone. Everyone sees possible levers which others could use against you if you import from them. Everybody wants to be self sufficient now.

Really a strong mind shift across society and I don’t like it.

I think all of the supply chain shortages from events of the last 3 years has caused a bit of a push-back on long supply chains and to some extent globalism.

Given their auto and tech industries (they do have fabs after all), having a local source of metals for semis and battery production makes a lot of sense.

Not an expert in this area but the supply chain issues seem as simple as, let's have China (a dangerous dictatorship) do basically everything, including making all our medical equipment seemed stupid.

Of course it's completely impractical.

What's starting to concern me, I know this sounds ageist, but a lot of countries have aging politicians and voting populace who (scarily) might think this is possible. It started with Brexit IMO.

Such as China, who currently dominate most of the world supply in rare earths. I guess Japan are trying to peace out with their traditional advantage in traditional (software-light) robotics.

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