Japan to begin extracting rare earth metals from seabed in 2024
asia.nikkei.com
asia.nikkei.com
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minamitorishima#/media/File:Ja...
especially compared to South Korea https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exclusive_economic_zone#/media...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File%3AMap_of_territorial_disp...
[1] https://cdn.cosmosphilly.com/site/wp-content/uploads/2020/01...
It's not some artificial pile of sand on a bank that will erode away if you look at it wrong, or an uninhabited atoll in the middle of nowhere, first discovered a century ago.
I can't believe I'm reading someone earnestly disputing Greece's sovereignty on HN. Either there has been a lack of information or we're dealing with a case of rampant chauvinism and historical enmity.
You should overlay the Greek EEZ on Japan's or China's claims to see how little it really is. Take a look at the US, UK and France in the Pacific for god's sake!
Sometimes it's valuable to question the underlying motives of leadership. He's not blinded enough to believe he has a leg to stand on, but perceptive enough of the intense nationalism that pervades Turkish society (to be fair the same can be said about Greek and the rest of the Balkan society). It's really not a novel insight that exploiting those attitudes, pushing those buttons, distracts from mismanagement at home and guarantees reelection.
I regard this feedback loop as one of the fundamental flaws of democracy. Echoes of every antagonising remark, every urealistic demand can be heard in Serbia, Palestine, Pakistan and wherever else there is a border dispute, causing perpetual bad governance and keeping the people riled up.
The US lays claims to many deserted islands in the middle of nowhere in the Pacific for their HUGE EEZs and bird poop.
No one dares contest the most well-armed navy on those though...or else.
Portugal's EEZ claim for example is larger than the size of India.
Excluding small island states, the seafood consumption per capita is the highest in the world, you can literally smell it in their supermarkets, and this traditional diet is supported to a large degree by the fishing industry within their EEZ.
The proposed EEZ forms one continuous area with the mainland, something that can't be said for US, UK and French posessions.
Anyway, it is only one example of many that we can talk about. The main point is that these claims are not unique or gaining this outrage outside the Chinese case because of the geopolitics differs in this case.
The US still has some strategic property in the Pacific. And of course bases in Japan and a partnership with Taiwan. And places like Panama used to be US territory as well. The British still hold on to the Falkland islands. It's not all about peace and democracy here either.
So, Japan using some resources that they found off their own coast isn't the end of the world. And of course the Chinese are all over that as well. Practically in their back yard and most of it is in international waters, which makes it fair game legally.
https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/education/resources/hong...
Your move hegemony.
Plus starting a shooting war with China isn't in our best interest, yet. If we ever get there the fishing boats will make exactly zero difference in the outcome.
Paramilitia Fishing boats are like the local insurgents in Afghani/Iraqi cities. They are still there when big expensive American boats leave the other 99% of the year. They don’t provide real military prowess but they blend in with the locals (meaning hard to permanently bully out of neighbourhoods) and constantly apply pressure tactics and surveillance resources that benefit the parent resistance org.
It also critical keeps their flags waving 24/7.
No-one wants a shooting war, but the US is eager to keep China contained, and enforcing the EEZ rules serves that interest.
The US has a far more advanced navy (a large proportion of Chinese ships are patrol ships without much tactical significance) and many more aircraft carriers. Aircraft are extremely important in naval conflicts.
Most importantly, we have tons of bases in Japan and South Korea[1].
1. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/9/10/infographic-us-mili...
If each one is armed with a few anti-ship missiles, a swarm attack from many different directions might be a real threat to a carrier group. You either waste a ton of ordinance taking them all out, or some portion are able to launch against you.
It's a serious threat as everything is low low cost and big on bang.
The US would be looking at defending itself from 100+ unmanned cigar boats each packed with enough explosives to make a serious dent at water level and all interoperating like a flock of birds, some drawing fire while others push through.
With that said, nothing prevents the U.S from imitating any tactics (including swarming by tiny boats and ships) that the Chinese use effectively against the U.S and its allies in a real naval war.
To name a very current example of my first point above in action 24/7, just look at the Ukraine/Russia war today. It has evolved in ways that very few people could have predicted just before or right after it started, with surprises on both sides.
To highlight how the same worked at the beginning of the second world war, partially prompting Churchill's own later phrase: the air defenses of the UK were thought adequate against enemies in 1939, until they were proven to not at all be so, and only improved through very deadly trial and error by 1943. France in 1940 was thought by nearly all powers to be more than a match against a German invasion (and indeed materially it was, on paper and stationary on the ground), until it was proven to not at all work as expected in just 6 weeks. All things always shift simultaneously in ways that can confound any expectation, particularly in situations as ferociously dynamic as large wars.
China itself is the larger aircraft carrier. They also have advanced rocketry, which may render the other ones obsolete.
Besides 7th in Japan, there's 6th fleet is in Italy and 5th in Bahrain.
So really half the US Navy is always stationed overseas with the first fleet being inactive.
US still has more displacement via super carriers, better subsurface and larger replenishment fleet to enable more persistent blue water ops. Incidentally PLA is rapidly building up replenishment capabilities, but ultimately most of fleet will stick around PRC shores, with some moving into IndoPac for SLOC security or Africa for anti piracy. But currenly PLAN has MORE "ocean going" vessels than USN, and gap is expected to widen to PLAN 400+ wheras USN ship building lucky to maintain 300 by end of decade.
My previous comment was with respect to actual effectiveness. China has no significant blue water navy.
Citation needed. This is borderline beyond "useful idiot" hot take because even DoD propaganda/analysis or defense wonks do not allege this, and they allege a lot of dumb shit with respect to PRC modernization. Western assesment of PLAN in last few years, with respect to blue water surface combatants, being commissioned at tremendous rates, is one branch where recent DoD writings / analysis has no substantial tech/hardware criticisms, relegating to, their hardware good but maybe software (training/jointness) lacking.
Also to repeat "Many of which more modern". PLAN's blue water surface combatants built since 2010s are considered on par, if not superior with equivalent USN platforms in terms of systems and armaments, including latest flights. Certainly more than the significant portion of USN's aging hulls, many of which are not modernized to latest tech and are held together by duct tape / soon to retire. Like USN isn't going to have anything comparable to a type 55 for another 10+ years in DDG(X). It's hard to overstake the amount of USN program/procurement fuckups in the past decades and ongoing state of US ship building that enabled PRC to catch up in both quality and quantity. Majority of which concentrated in PRC backyard, on new hulls with better maintenance and readiness rates, that widens regional blue water naval power gap even further.
I assumed we were talking about this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Territorial_disputes_in_the_So... which isn't really related to Japan.
But you have to go back to WWII to find a war where America fought a peer or neer-peer adversary and won.
Where did you get this crazy idea? China and the US are separated by a huge ocean; there's no way to do trench warfare there. A war between the two would entirely be a naval and air war, not a ground war. That's a war the US would easily win.
You're omitting the second part of their sentence, which makes it pretty clear they aren't talking about trench warfare.
> in that a bunch of new technologies clash for the first time.
This is not a CCP thing Americans underestimate Chinese nationalism when faced with foreign devils.
Not really, a US/PRC war happening off PRC coast (likely theatre) will also be against PRC land based aviation and rocketry where US is unlikely to win. The numbers game is increasingly favouring PRC is that US doesn't have the logistics to maintain a war near PRC shores going forward because PRC can take out USN sustainment fleet and turn carrier groups into single deployment assets with DAYS of endurance. US ability to generate useful sorties to actually erode PRC land based platforms and the effects they can generate that covers most of US East Asia security commitments (likely trigger) is diminishing fast.
E: over rate limit
>turn into a nuclear war
No it wouldn't, and PRC currently massively building up nuke umbrella, so US wouldn't even more against adversary that can strike back both strategically, and conventionally, especially existentially on CONUS. This US exceptionalist would salt the earth of enemies who sink a carrier wank is reserved for small/mid tier nations that US can bully with impunity. And at the end of the day without carriers, short medium term, US doesn't have the platforms to conventionally destroy PRC... because at that point they will lack "necessary" "whatever forces" to do so.
E2:
>the US has never been attacked on its own soil before in the modern age, except for 9/11, and the results there were catastrophic.
And non nuclear, on nation not particularly responsible. The broader point being US has never been attacked on it's soil because outside of single point vunerabilities like 9/11, US adversaries technically could not, hence US free to prosecute "all out", leading to exceptionalist talking point like losing a carrier will lead to nuclear war. But decision calculus change when US homeland is now permenantly vunerable to peer adversary, repeately, and at scale. This does not mean US would not be forced to escalate with full determination (again likely non nuclear) as result of homeland attacks, but change in vunerabilty means US will be more avoidant of initiating intervention that could lead to homeland exchanges, with respect to PRC this means being deterred from starting a war over TW in first place, which PRC is willing to go to existential ends for, whereas US, most likely is not.
> overestimating the Chinese military's strength
Maybe every relevant PRC platform is vapourware, but if they're remotely credible, then they don't need to match US military pound of pound but asymmetrically dismantle US power projection ability, which is what PLA modernization has focused on in past 20 years. PRC doesn't need to sink 11 carrier groups, it needs to sink 10 fast support ships at dock or and AWACs / tankers in their hangers that enables US projection, a much easier task done with concerted effort by a PRC with massive industrial base, extremely competitive S&T eco with multitude more STEM graduates, and defense budgets which in PPP terms is close to US. IMO, if anything, more people over estimate US miiltary strength vis-a-vis PRC now. Or that that PRC's goal is to build up strategic and conventional deterrance so we don't have to find out before too long.
except for when the Brits burned Washington DC in Aug 1814.
And there was this little thing at someplace named after a rental car company, "Alamo" I think.
You could argue that the wars with the various indigenous people were not fought on US soil, because the soil wasn't "ours" until after we beat them.
Oh, wait, you said "in the modern age". Ok, so since WWI, no one has attacked the US.
So Pearl Harbor doesn't count?
For one thing, Hawaii wasn't a U.S state at the time. Secondly, that's still far from the mainland U.S, an attack on which would provoke a different sort of response.
The issue the west has with China, is that China produces all the consumer goods and a decent amount of the heavy equipment. The issue China has is the west provides access to food and energy. While that’s changing, to-date the two are too entangled for war imo.
What if, after mining, a smaller amount of the minerals are put back, closer to the surface so that a smaller amount are more easily consumed and life could flourish again with less available?
The only opportunity we have to make things better is in areas we have ourselves destroyed. Then we have a chance to improve it. But if something is undisturbed we can’t really improve upon that.
This is an internet forum full of know-it-alls with Dunning-Kruger Syndrome and toxic personalities. You're not likely to get reasoned answers when you ask honest questions; instead, you just get downvotes and insults.
What isn't clear from the article is if they plan on dredging the top layer, which would entirely disrupt the ecosystem, or somehow pump up mud from under the seabed itself.
If it is the latter, the ecosystem is unlikely to have a dependency on the rare earths in the mud itself; at that depth you don't have plants with deep roots or anything transecting the layers. You will certainly have surface deformation which will be disruptive, but not so much as dredging would be.
> at that depth you don't have plants with deep roots or anything transecting the layers
Even if for some bizarre reason the metals were beneficial, what about when the mining operation is done and humans leave the area? It just goes back to the previous status quo.
It’s a disruption either way.
Any manual intervention into an ecosystem generally requires establishing an indefinite commitment to more manual maintenance.
Who determines what “optimal” means? Who implements the optimization? Who pays for it? What happens in a few decades when people lose political interest in the project? Which creatures do we optimize for? Why are we doing this at all? How have similar projects fared in the past?
I can tell you haven’t seriously studied ecology from the way you are approaching this question, so I’m not too worried. But consider questions like those as you ponder this scenario.
If they were a way to make resource extraction from asteroids commercially feasible, I’d take that over ruining this or any other planet to make our gadgets.
Seems kind of stupid to start doing this when it already has apparently strong ties with other suppliers.
I don't want to be too negative but a lot of "unusual thinking" seems to be coming out of Japan lately.
One thing I struggle with when it comes to Japanese news is it very often comes across as "Pro-Japan" propaganda these days. The headlines always seem to start with "Japan to <something awesome/edgy/innovative>"
Really a strong mind shift across society and I don’t like it.
Given their auto and tech industries (they do have fabs after all), having a local source of metals for semis and battery production makes a lot of sense.
What's starting to concern me, I know this sounds ageist, but a lot of countries have aging politicians and voting populace who (scarily) might think this is possible. It started with Brexit IMO.