Re: <nettime> electro- vs petro-state

[Keith Sanborn via nettime-l <nettime-l@lists.nettime.org>]

Dear Petter,

They don’t go into it in a lot of detail, but they do point to Indonesia as a model of technology transfer from China and point to the emerging consensus in REE rich countries that they need to process the material themselves. Several examples are listed, among them Chile and Brazil. That seems to be the key point, though Rare Earths are really rare, processing facilities and technology for them is. And as you point out, that’s overwhelmingly in China. Another issue, however, is that current methods of processing them are extremely dirty and have lead to wide-spread pollution in China. Without an improvement in that technology, it would be inviting additional eco-disaster, something to which Brazil for example is no stranger.

Keith

> On Sep 1, 2025, at 6:04 AM, Petter Ericson via nettime-l <nettime-l@lists.nettime.org> wrote:
> 
> It's a great article and podcast, but one thing that I think might be relevant
> that they don't go too much into is the role of Rare Earth Elements/Minerals
> (REE), and their role in high-tech electronics in general, and the position of
> China in particular in their production.
> 
> Briefly, while you can certainly build an electric generator and basic
> semiconductors using elements and with processes that are widely available, for
> high-power and high-efficiency electrical components, there is a need for REE,
> and while REE are widely spread in the earth's crust (despite the name) the actual
> _mining_ and especially _processing_ of REE is highly concentrated in China.
> 
> This does place China in a more central position in purely material terms than
> maybe is implied by the article, in addition to their massive economic and
> logistic importance. It is definitely a very different position compared to the
> petro-state however: Instead of having a paradigm where the raw mining of the
> energy-carrying medium itself (oil) is quite geographically limited, with its
> production and refinement even moreso (a massive part of global shipping is
> either crude oil going to refineries or refined products going back to where
> the crude oil was mined), the electric paradigm is one step removed: the 
> centralised control and vulnerable supply chain is not on the _energy itself_
> but on the _energy producing and energy using components_.
> 
> In order to survive an oil blockade, you need to stock up on massive amounts of
> refined products that are used and gone quite quickly, but an REE or solar
> panel blockade would have a much slower and potentially more complex progression.
> 
> These are just some thoughts I had reading and listening to these excellent works.
> 
> /P
> 
> On 01 september, 2025 - Felix Stalder via nettime-l wrote:
> 
>> 
>> This is one of the best articles on geopolitics that I've read in a long
>> time, not the least because it puts BRICS at the center, rather than the US.
>> 
>> https://www.phenomenalworld.org/analysis/brics-in-2025/
>> 
>> The basic argument is that the competition between China and the US is now
>> also a competition between two techno-political paradigms, one based on
>> (green) electricity and one based on fossil fuels, with China being the
>> largest producer of green energy (by far), while the US as become the
>> largest exporter of fossil fuels.
>> 
>> And these are really two paradigms from which very different industrial
>> policies, geopolitics, eco-politics, and even cultures (think
>> petromasculinity) flow.
>> 
>> There is now a fierce geopolitical competition between these two paradigms,
>> and the US has relatively little to offer, so it has to revert to brute
>> force to keep other countries in line. This works best with allies (think
>> Europe promising to buy LNG and scrapping tariffs on US monster cars). Also
>> domestically, the US uses brute-force to keep fossil fuels competitive,
>> cancelling almost finished green energy installations and gutting the EPA to
>> offload more of the costs to public.
>> 
>> On the other hand, the China model (and cheap Chinese exports), allow
>> countries like Pakistan to leap-frog in terms of energy production,
>> installing 17GW of solar capacity in 2024 in a largely bottom-up process (as
>> a comparison, Germany installed about 20GW).
>> 
>> As they write:
>> 
>> "China’s package of automation, digitalization, and electrification offers
>> firms and nations not just carbon-reduction but also—more
>> persuasively—productivity, efficiency, and energy sovereignty. The material
>> basis of the global production, consumption and information systems are
>> being remade. One doesn’t have to be a Marxist to think that will imply a
>> radical transformation in global politics."
>> 
>> They summarize this shift as "Diversify, dedollarize, decarbonize".
>> 
>> And, interestingly, AI plays an important, but somewhat subordinate role, as
>> part of a new industrial infrastructure, which underpins the electrification
>> and digitization in all its aspects. No AGI necessary.
>> 
>> The article even contains an update of Carlotta Perez famous chart on
>> techno-economic paradigms, with the IT/software paradigm in decline.
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> I came across this article via Paris Marx's Tech Won't Save US podcasts,
>> where the two authors. Kate Mackenzie and Tim Sahay, were interviewed.
>> 
>> https://techwontsave.us/episode/291_how_chinas_renewable_push_upends_geopolitics_w_kate_mackenzie__tim_sahay
>> 
>> -- 
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> 
> -- 
> Petter Ericson (pettter@accum.se)
> -- 
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