• Tattorack@lemmy.world
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    10 hours ago

    “Big” does mean “everything is available”. But you are starting to ask the right questions:

    What resources are needed to build electronics?

    Where does one find these resources in abundance?

    If you’re actually interested in learning the answers to these questions, you can find out the average rare earth minerals needed for a CPU or a GPU. You can also find the resource distribution of minerals on Earth, and their expected purities.

    You’ll probably also figure out why certain countries make the diplomatic decisions that they do. Take, for example, the mineral deal between Ukraine and the US…

    • misk@piefed.socialOP
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      4 hours ago

      It’s not that rare earth minerals are this rare, it’s that their extraction is extremely bad for the environment so most western countries are happy to make it a brown people problem.