Do Your Own Research: How China Wins the Resource War w/ Thea Riofrancos
About this episode
The episode discusses the geopolitics and environmental implications of critical minerals in the context of the green transition and military needs.
We need critical minerals for the green transition, the military and the AI boom. In barely a year, lithium and the rare earths have become some of the most fought-over objects on earth. But the scarcity is manufactured — by refineries, choke points and the states that control them. Richard talks to Thea Riofrancos, author of Extraction: The Frontiers of Green Capitalism , about what these minerals really are, the gutted landscapes the green transition runs on, and the new geopolitics of extraction, from Trumpian state capitalism to Latin America to China.
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