I know nozzing myself, but I read some analysis earlier that those resources were potentially a pretty big deal, including some key rare earth metals IIRC. With China having ~85% of the global processing centers for such, there’s not only big profit to be made by various corps and oligarchs, but it could also be critical to future US and Western ability to manufacture tech.
But from what I’ve read in the past, those processing centers also tend to produce some pretty nasty pollution, so you can see why certain people would probably love to outsource it to a huge, sparsely-populated island. And that’s just one area of interest.
I know nozzing myself, but I read some analysis earlier that those resources were potentially a pretty big deal, including some key rare earth metals IIRC. With China having ~85% of the global processing centers for such, there’s not only big profit to be made by various corps and oligarchs, but it could also be critical to future US and Western ability to manufacture tech.
But from what I’ve read in the past, those processing centers also tend to produce some pretty nasty pollution, so you can see why certain people would probably love to outsource it to a huge, sparsely-populated island. And that’s just one area of interest.