Fortune Minerals Ltd T.FT

RE:RE:RE:Pelosi’s Taiwan Trip Spurs Chinese Battery Giant to Pause

[red]

Hmmm called this one lol

https://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/articles/2022/8/3/united-states-seeking-alternatives-to-chinese-cobalt

The bluish-gray metal’s widest use today is in the cathodes of lithium-ion batteries, which proliferate in commercial and military devices…Cobalt also serves the Defense Department in temperature-resistant alloys for jet engines, in magnets — used for things like stealth technology and electronic warfare — and alloys used in munitions…And like so many materials and commodities today, China controls the bulk of the global cobalt supply…“What makes this a really significant challenge is China could use this the same way Russia can use oil, or in the same way that the world is impacted because of grain supply,” said Brad Martin, director of RAND Corp.’s institute for supply chain security. China’s ability to deny access to cobalt “creates a national security vulnerability,” he added… “The big issue is China and its influence over the DRC, and the fact that China understands better than the United States the need to have access to strategic materials,” said Martin. “China has not only been finding sources, it’s also been stockpiling, and that is just not something the United States has successfully done.”… “If China is in a position of being able to demand political concessions, diplomatic concessions because it has a hammerlock over some set of commodities, it doesn’t need to go to war,”